The Princess is in Another Castle
May 16, 2003 2:56 AM Subscribe
How To Destroy Possibilities. How much interaction is too much? Immersive world or guided tour? The fine folks at Grand Text Auto explore the narrative structure of video games.
Awesome link, arto.
I don't know how common this knowledge is, but 'IF' stands for Interactive Fiction; it's the modern descendent of text adventures like Zork and Adventure. I've always thought it had real possibilities for experimenting with video game narrative, since the languages built since ~'93 are so easy to use that you can have a smalll world up and running within an hour. It's all the interaction of any other video game narrative, without any of the hassle of a graphics engine, physics modelling, or what have you. I'm glad to see that there are still people out there willing to play with the stuff.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:42 AM on May 16, 2003
I don't know how common this knowledge is, but 'IF' stands for Interactive Fiction; it's the modern descendent of text adventures like Zork and Adventure. I've always thought it had real possibilities for experimenting with video game narrative, since the languages built since ~'93 are so easy to use that you can have a smalll world up and running within an hour. It's all the interaction of any other video game narrative, without any of the hassle of a graphics engine, physics modelling, or what have you. I'm glad to see that there are still people out there willing to play with the stuff.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:42 AM on May 16, 2003
I enjoyed reading this discussion enormously, and it has certainly made me, as a computer games player of 25 years standing, reconsider several of the most interesting games experiences I've had in a very different light indeed. If anything, I'm even more impressed by them now I've had a bit of insight into the issues facing the folks who designed them.
I did find myself wondering about just how many games do in fact have this level of consideration in their design and how many are just thrown together, and wondering if the 2 groups would map exactly onto a good/bad games list. Then I gave that up as a bad job because surely any attempt to make such a comparison is of course wholly subjective and therefore pointless :-)
The whole site looks like one that I will return to often, many thanks for the link arto.
juv3nal, I'm not certain it's the right one but I found this Facade info on Google; it certainly sounds like the same thing...
posted by Gamecat at 7:06 AM on May 16, 2003
I did find myself wondering about just how many games do in fact have this level of consideration in their design and how many are just thrown together, and wondering if the 2 groups would map exactly onto a good/bad games list. Then I gave that up as a bad job because surely any attempt to make such a comparison is of course wholly subjective and therefore pointless :-)
The whole site looks like one that I will return to often, many thanks for the link arto.
juv3nal, I'm not certain it's the right one but I found this Facade info on Google; it certainly sounds like the same thing...
posted by Gamecat at 7:06 AM on May 16, 2003
This is well covered territory, though it's usually referred to as "Indirect Control". Cool stuff nonetheless.
posted by kfury at 7:28 AM on May 16, 2003
posted by kfury at 7:28 AM on May 16, 2003
that's a fantastic site. not only that, it's given me inspiration that there might be a (grad school) place in academia for me after all...i never considered that i could actually do graduate work in theorizing about games.
posted by juv3nal at 11:35 AM on May 16, 2003
posted by juv3nal at 11:35 AM on May 16, 2003
I did find myself wondering about just how many games do in fact have this level of consideration in their design and how many are just thrown together, and wondering if the 2 groups would map exactly onto a good/bad games list.
That's a good question. Certainly, a huge majority of the games on the shelf at e.g. Electronics Boutique seem to be based off of a few standard formulas--your RPGs, your shooters, etc. But that could be an artifact of how they're marketed, similar to how movie trailers all seem to use the same cheesy voiceover and action cliches. (In a world gone mad, only ONE MAN has the ANSWER! Joe Schamolean is--THE JANITOR! in theatres near you consult local listings)
This is well covered territory, though it's usually referred to as "Indirect Control". Cool stuff nonetheless.
Any links on that, kfury? I'm pretty new to this whole academic-study-of-games thing, usually I just play 'em.
posted by arto at 2:07 PM on May 16, 2003
That's a good question. Certainly, a huge majority of the games on the shelf at e.g. Electronics Boutique seem to be based off of a few standard formulas--your RPGs, your shooters, etc. But that could be an artifact of how they're marketed, similar to how movie trailers all seem to use the same cheesy voiceover and action cliches. (In a world gone mad, only ONE MAN has the ANSWER! Joe Schamolean is--THE JANITOR! in theatres near you consult local listings)
This is well covered territory, though it's usually referred to as "Indirect Control". Cool stuff nonetheless.
Any links on that, kfury? I'm pretty new to this whole academic-study-of-games thing, usually I just play 'em.
posted by arto at 2:07 PM on May 16, 2003
Great link Arto, this stuff fascinates me. Might I add that Chris Crawford has loads of interesting articles on game design at his Erasmatazz site. Including How To Think: Algorithmic Thinking and Fundamentals of Interactivity. Jorn Barger has an article on Crawford's work which has lots of useful links.
posted by jamespake at 5:30 PM on May 18, 2003
posted by jamespake at 5:30 PM on May 18, 2003
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posted by juv3nal at 3:20 AM on May 16, 2003