Though

Sven Delaney delaneysven at hotmail.com
Wed Aug 8 15:23:53 UTC 2001


you might like this.

Foucs:

This stack is soo interactive.
It can literally leap out and
stangle the child!

bye.
colm.

IN MEMORIAM:

Philip Kindred Dick.
1928-1982
AM:PM
EST:
NIght


>From: "Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com>
>Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>Subject: Re: [OT] Interactive Fiction is an Oxymoron
>Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:15:50 -0400
>
>>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!)
>
>


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