Category: community

You can also see some marketing here.

So Jonathan Blow’s recent criticism of the IF community has been getting a lot of attention (Aric Maddux, Chris Klimas, Robb Sherwin, Stephen Granade, indiegamer, metafilter), and that may be why we got a spin-off Metafilter thread on the topic of parsers today.

I have a couple of thoughts about this.

1. This is Jonathan Blow. He tends to be outspoken — what he has to say about adventure games in this article is nothing compared with what he has to say about social games, which he labels as outright evil. There’s some content backing both points, but it’s been generalized and strongly stated for effect. While I disagree with a lot of the substance and think it could stand to be quite a bit more nuanced, he’s giving an interview about a future product, in which he has successfully said a lot of provocative things, generated a buzz, and positioned himself memorably with respect to a couple of other schools of gaming. To a reader less sensitized than we are, this might come off as no more than “this game will be content-rich, not work like social games, and will have some of the appeal of an adventure game, but more accessible.”

2. That said, the examples that he’s using suggest that he’s not really responding to the latest and greatest. So I feel free not to take them especially seriously as criticism of the latest community output.

2a. Yeah, the hat tip to the awesome plot device that is amnesia — that’s worth a snicker, but so what? Someone sufficiently skilled could still do a cool game about amnesia. Whether that person is Jonathan Blow remains to be seen.

2b. It looks like he is taking a specific potshot at Telltale’s episodic adventure games. I haven’t played by any means all of them, but I find them relatively free of maddening adventure game logic, pleasantly accessible, and really funny. That said, they are closer to graphical adventure roots than much modern IF is to its roots. IF has made forays into the puzzleless, the systematic/simulationist (where puzzles are based on a standard set of learnable rules and multiple solutions are available for most problems), and the tactical (where there is a whole scale of possible win/loss via randomized combat, etc.) I do occasionally wonder what would happen if there were more graphical adventure games that explored some of that territory — though I’m sure there are more than I’m currently aware of. See also Life Flashes By.

3. The idea Blow repeats here is a standard meme. On the big scale of Cluelessness about the Thing He Is Critiquing, this rates only about 5 picoEberts. And that’s our problem to solve. There will always be a serious barrier to sharing and marketing IF as long as the standard perception is that it’s about fighting the parser.

Part of the problem is that lots of people haven’t really played much IF since 1980-odd; another part is that the way IF has developed isn’t in the direction that they think it should have developed. There are good reasons why the parser hasn’t (and shouldn’t!) become a chatbot that pretends to understand all player input, but that’s a natural direction to wonder about; see this old chat with Brian Moriarty, who, I think we can agree, has more of an insider view on the problem than Blow ever has.

Meanwhile, we’ve made some progress on teaching the player IF affordances — which I think is the real solution here — but it’s not a finished process. We’re working on these issues, in a lot of different forms and projects.

Anyway. Long story short: yeah, I agree Blow is incorrect about what we’re doing and about our evolution. But I don’t think his being off base is really anything more than a reminder of something we all already knew: IF has PR problems. Our best steps forward aren’t visible enough. They don’t do enough to supplant what people already think about interactive fiction.

Announce: IF Demo Fair

Do you have a vision of the (or a) future of interactive fiction that you would like to share with interested players, authors, implementers and theorists?

The IF Demo Fair will be running during PAX East (Boston, March 11-13), showcasing new and interesting demonstrations in the IF world.

These don’t need to be polished, complete games, just pieces that show off your concept. We’re particularly interested in demonstrations that explore one of our themes:

  • novel ways to interact with in-game characters
  • innovative user interfaces for text/story-based games

But if you have a great idea that doesn’t match either of these themes, send it anyway! We welcome any demonstration that can reasonably be construed as relating to interactive fiction and storytelling: traditional parser-based IF, works with multimedia and graphical components, choose-your-own-adventure, or interactive poetry.

Entries in the Fair will be set up on laptops in the IF suite for players to explore. Saturday afternoon, there will also be an official playthrough in the Alcott Conference Room at the Westin, where we will go through all the entries on a projector screen (exact time TBA).

Authors who are there with their submissions are welcome (indeed, encouraged) to talk briefly about their design concepts.

Note that this is not an official PAX event. No badges are required to attend or participate.

Entry restrictions. This is not a competition, and there are no judges or prizes. Authors who have submitted content are welcome to comment on each other’s work. The only restriction is that you must be willing to have your work showcased in a public forum, and presented or linked from a website afterward.

Intent to enter: Friday, February 18. Email me (emshort@mindspring.com) with your intent to enter and include your technical requirements, answering these questions:

  • does your project need software to run other than a standard IF interpreter?
  • is it restricted to one OS?
  • will your project need internet access to run?
  • are you going to be present in person to install your project and/or present it on your own device?

I reserve the right to refuse an entry that is technically infeasible for us to present, but will do my best to accommodate reasonable requests.

Submission: Sunday, March 6. Email me (emshort@mindspring.com) your project or a link to where it lives on the web, and installation instructions.

Optionally, you may also submit an author’s note (no more than about 500 words, please) explaining the background of your project, anything you want players to know about it, and your hopes/expectations for the project.

Feedback for authors. Forms for anonymous feedback will be available both in the IF Suite and during the live presentation. Players and audience members who would like to share their thoughts without attribution can do so via these forms.

After the event, we’ll provide website coverage for the submissions, with links to author projects, as well as an article on the event in SPAG.

Proposed: IF Demo Fair

One suggestion that we’ve been kicking around on the mud for PAX East is a sort of minicomp/show, as follows:

Authors have the opportunity to work on tech demonstrations during February, focusing on one of several themes. These would not have to be full games — a single scene or mockup would suffice, as long as it gets the idea across. The point is to share interesting new concepts, not to produce finished products.

During PAX, these will be on show on laptops so that people would have a chance to experience them individually.

On Saturday afternoon when we have the big room available, there will be a dedicated Demo Fair time when we get together and play through the demos on a projector, and discuss.

Authors will be invited to talk about why they did what they did, if they’re present. It’s still permitted to submit a demonstration if you’re not going to be there, and you’re welcome to accompany your demo with some authorial notes to be shared with everyone.

This is not a competition, in that there will be no official prizes, judges, or winners, and anyone is free both to enter and to offer feedback on other entries.

The currently proposed themes are:

* New styles of NPC interaction
* UI concepts

It sounds like this is of interest to enough people that we’re probably going to do something like it. Before we do a definite public announcement, though — are there other themes we should include? Concerns or suggestions?

PAX 2011 programming

People who might come to IF events at Boston PAX, is there anything in particular you’d like to see discussed in the IF programming? Tutorials, panel talks, other stuff?

(If so, obviously you can edit the wiki with ideas, but I am wondering whether there’s stuff people would like to see but didn’t write down because it’s not something they would offer themselves, or whatever.)

PAX East 2011

So, as last year, there will be organized IF events at PAX East this year (March 11-13, Boston). Last year’s event was a big event with lots and lots of IFfers, and plenty of fun all around, so we’re hoping for good things again this year.

I’m going to be speaking on interactive dialogue, as we just got this panel approved:

Interactive Drama: Dialogue as Gameplay

Jonathon Myers (Moderator) [Writer, Reactive Games]
Stephen Dinehart [Narrative Designer, Narrware]
Evan Skolnick [Writer, Producer, Editorial Director, Vicarious Visions]
Emily Short [Interactive Fiction Author, Independent]
John Gonzalez [Lead Writer, Lead Creative Designer of Fallout: New Vegas, Obsidian Entertainment]

Other IF and IF-related stuff: zarf will be speaking in a main-PAX panel on self-funding via Kickstarter. There will also be an IF suite as before, with some organized meetings and discussions, Speed-IF, and casual socializing; there may be some overlap activities with the IGDA Writers SIG, the special interest group for professional game writers; the IF theory book may, Kevin Jackson-Mead hopes, be finished and ready to share.

Note that you will need a PAX badge to see my panel talk or zarf’s, but that all the rest of the IF activity is separate and free to attend.

If you’re interested, check out the ifwiki page for a current list of people attending, or to sign up or suggest events.