> Ger: designing the tempo of a video on a stroyboard is very very 
> difficult
> for our students, A threaded storyline (Oops.. with LOOPS??) should be
> suddenly easy because the tool can do it easily?.

As I noted, IF games have improved dramatically in terms of controlling 
of sequencing and adapting to state changes.  My point is that this is 
insufficient to obtain good IF.

> Ger: yes and no.. The RIGHT Tempo is everything (most games have boring
> difficult=long puzzles on to many places... it invites children to 
> cheat. As
> designer you can anticipate on that. My Youngest daughter cheats in
> ThemeHospital and then the speaker-system of the hospital shouts it loud
> over the corridors... She really hates it every time she does cheat, 
> but not
> enough to turn off the sound...)

I agree.  A story must be appropriate for the particular reader/player.  
A great story for grown-ups may be wholly dull and unsuitable for 
children, and vice-versa.  However, computers can do a great job with 
this, if you will.  The computer game, unlike the paper book, can 
monitor and adapt to the behavior of the reader/player (although few 
do).  Likewise, both the simulation and game tempo can be properly 
adapted accordingly.  This is even more challenging once the game 
becomes multiplayer.  But it can be done.  I have experimented 
extensively in this arena both in the real-time/real-space and computer 
game media.

Adaptive story-telling simulations are possible, and are one of the 
"smoke and mirror" tricks to which I referred:  If someone looks under a 
chair for something, they have told the computer a fundamentally 
important thing.  They have told them that it would be interesting to 
them to see something there.  A good story-teller (gamemaster) would 
recognize this and something would be there.  Net effect, the player 
enjoys the result, and things the story-teller (gamemaster) quite 
brilliant for hiding the clue in such an interesting place.

You would be amazing how effectively this trick works.

> Ger: You can also create the feeling that the player thinks he is so 
> close
> to the solution that it would be a pitty to stop after all his efforts,
> hours later he still thinks the same. Or the puzzle should look 
> misleading
> simple: like that simple looking rubic-cube puzzle: give it three turns 
> from
> the correct position and then ask someone to solve it: he knows that you
> gave it only three turns...

Again, puzzles must also be adaptive, or else they become dead ends.  
You have a choice: have an excellent puzzle-game challenge; or tell a 
story.  You can't do both in fact (although you can make users think 
that you are doing both -- which is how great games are made).

> Ger: What about a good detective-story from Agatha Christie. Every time 
> she
> makes you think that the wrong person did it, until he dies also (MY
> favroite as child: Ten little ...)

Good writing is one of the key differences between a good 
detective-story and a crappy one.  Not a one of Conan-Doyle's stories 
made for good puzzles -- but they were so beautifully crafted that they 
caught imagination of the readers.  Many modern products of the genre 
provide better, more sophisticated challenges (of the one-minute-myster 
type), but are not as well-written.  I like both, in fact.

>> Ger: You have more hints to create better IF?

I have already posted several in this forum.  The best hint is this: 
stop trying to make interactive fiction.  Build an awesome simulation 
and superimpose a story, or vice-versa, and then try to "trick" the user 
(read cheat) to believing that either: (1) there is more freedom than 
there is; or (2) there is more story than there is.  The manner with 
which this is done is, as noted, "smoke and mirrors," the very craft of 
stagework.  [By the way, photorealism and other representational, as 
opposed to suggestive, media work very hard against smoke and mirrors.  
It is much easier to obtain a suspension of disbelief when the player 
isn't focused on inaccuracies.  Consider, for example, Final Fantasy v. 
Shrek.  not once did I concern myself in the latter case that the female 
protagonist's hair was identical throughout the movie.]

> Ger: when desktop-tools came up everyone thought he could do quality
> printing on the fly, isn't this the same with these tools? Don't we
> underestimate the creative work of heavy teams working at the creation 
> of a
> new game: Didn't even Disney to easily think that they could compete 
> with
> the real game-industry while they where good in movies, cartoons and
> theme-parks and heaving some of the best fiction-realizers in house? 
> Why do
> game-companies rise and fall? (like Infocom, to stay with the subject.)

I can tell you from personal experience that it has only a little bit to 
do with the quality of the product.  Surviving business cycles has far 
more to do with the amount of cash flow and reserves held by a company 
than its intellectual property assets.  Quality is a necessary (though 
not always), but not sufficient measure of success.  The success of a 
game-company depends solely on the question whether there is market 
demand for the company's product.  Infocom died (in practice) long 
before game hardware could make first-person real-time visuals -- it was 
something else entirely.  In the case of Infocom, I stay out of it.  
There were internescine wars between the founders and creators of 
product -- and in those scenarios, nobody wins but the competitors.  
(Consider who won Lotus v. Borland, for example.  After 10 years of 
litigation and a non-opinion Supreme Court opinion, who won?  Microsoft!)