I have been wondering how they would look updated for writing prose/process for storylet-based designs. I’m having a bit of a difficulty transitioning from the static fiction mindset, with all its attendant shortcomings in the IF context (text not bite-sized enough, difficult to decide on salient information , too much linearity, etc.)
If you had to address these two articles’ topics today, how would it be different?
This is asking for an update to two articles, and so I’m also going to split out the response.
This piece will focus on the process side rather than the prose question. If you’re writing a game using storylets, how do you plan it, and how do you stay on track through executing it?
February 29 is the next London IF Meetup. We’ll be playing and discussing games with trans protagonists.
March 5, “Game Over,” the radio play I wrote about indie game development, is being rebroadcast by BBC Radio 4 at 14.15 (or 2:15 PM, for those of us still keeping time in the US fashion). This is a chance to catch it if you didn’t hear it the first time around and you’re interested. Sometimes the Radio 4 website also hosts the programs from that month for streaming.
NarraScope organizers will be May 29-31, in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
Podcasts, Articles, Videos, etc
The excellent Anna Megill, Lead Writer at Massive, talks about writing for video games.
Competitions
If you plan to enter Spring Thing 2020, you have until March 1, 2020 to declare your intent to enter. Spring Thing is a long-running competition for interactive fiction that welcomes longer games than IF Comp can accommodate, and features a “back garden” section for games that are unfinished, commercial, experimental, or where the author just wants to opt out of the competitive aspect of the competition. The games themselves will be due March 29.
February 15-16, Rob Sherman is running an interactive fiction masterclass at the British library. This is a paying event; tickets here.
February 29 will be the next meeting of the London IF Meetup. We’ll be doing a shared gameplay session with a curated list of games — I’ll post a link as soon as the session information is up on the website.
March 20-22 in Toronto is Breakout Con, a conference on boardgames and tabletop RPGs. Some great narrative designers are scheduled in as guests.
NarraScope will be May 29-31, in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
If you plan to enter Spring Thing 2020, you have until March 1, 2020 to declare your intent to enter. Spring Thing is a long-running competition for interactive fiction that welcomes longer games than IF Comp can accommodate, and features a “back garden” section for games that are unfinished, commercial, experimental, or where the author just wants to opt out of the competitive aspect of the competition. The games themselves will be due March 29.
I gave a talk about storylet design at the London IF Meetup. The session was (atypically) recorded, and we’ll be able to share the recording when it’s been edited, but there is also a tweet thread about the event for those who are curious. The talk included a workshop component where the group brainstormed possible story events, worked out what the prerequisites and effects should be, and then collectively played through the resulting game.
The Counterfeit Monkey puzzle chart was one of my major design aids when I was building the thing.
This is a chart of the puzzles in Counterfeit Monkey. It used to be linked from a blog post on the puzzle design, off-site, but it’s no longer at the endpoint of that link.
Instead, let’s put it here. I swear I have a good reason for doing this right now and it is genuinely not just because my blog gets the most traffic if I tweet a colorful diagram.
Don’t look too closely at the fine print if you’re planning to play and haven’t yet.
The Oxford/London IF Meetup next convenes January 29, when I will be talking about (and leading some workshoppy exercises around) storylet-based narrative design.
January 31–Feb 3, Ryan Veeder is running the first of three events in his Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction. This one is a short jam for Inform 7 games. There are a number of rules about how to participate, so please do check out the fine print.
February 15-16, Rob Sherman is running an interactive fiction masterclass at the British library. This is a paying event; tickets here.
March 20-22 in Toronto is Breakout Con, a conference on boardgames and tabletop RPGs. Some great narrative designers are scheduled in as guests.
NarraScope will be May 29-31, in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
Competitions
The Gaming Like It’s 1924 jam runs through the end of the month, and celebrates works that recently entered the public domain. There’s a whole list of possibilities in there that you might enjoy.
If you plan to enter Spring Thing 2020, you have until March 1, 2020 to declare your intent to enter. Spring Thing is a long-running competition for interactive fiction that welcomes longer games than IF Comp can accommodate, and features a “back garden” section for games that are unfinished, commercial, experimental, or where the author just wants to opt out of the competitive aspect of the competition. The games themselves will be due March 29.
The finalists for the Independent Games Festival were recently announced, with the awards scheduled to take place at GDC on March 18. Andrew Plotkin has been on the judging panel for a number of years, and shares his thoughts about some of the nominees here.
This video has some interesting design insight about Disco Elysium. I am told. I haven’t actually watched the video all the way through myself, because I haven’t played the game yet, because I need to borrow a Windows machine. That’s all being looked into and taken care of. I hear the video’s interesting, though.
Tools
YarnSpinner is a tool, in line with Twine or ink, that can be used to write and manage branching dialogue for games. It has now had a 1.0 release, and is available for free, though users are encouraged to support its Patreon.
Hi Emily, I appreciate the content you create to further the IF community.
I’m curious what games or platforms stand out to solve some of the issues you listed in your parser article 9 [years] ago.
I’d like to create a text heavy game with detailed world state and want to research the projects that handle these situations the best. Specifically UI driven interaction from the player.
[I then asked for confirmation that the writer would like to see this handled as a mailbag post.]:
I’d love to see a follow up on how you feel things have changed. From the perspective of a “traditional” game developer IF seems stuck in an award state [sic] of being too gamey for readers and not enough mechanics for gamers. It’s a hard problem to solve as most people aren’t writers, programmers and designers , that’s a lot of skill sets to tackle.
I’m not quite sure what “an award state” is, but maybe “an awkward state”? I disagree, though. “Not enough mechanics for gamers” or not, games from 80 Days to Choices and Episode to the works of Choice of Games to Failbetter’s entire oeuvre are making enough money and attracting enough attention to support quite a few small to medium studios. And that doesn’t touch on the audio IF, the visual novels, the interactive film, etc., etc., etc. Interactive fiction, broadly drawn, is doing fine. And I know quite a lot of traditional game developers who think so, too.
But okay, let’s set aside that part of the question. The question is about how to do UI for a game with a lot of world state and a lot of text, but without a parser.
March 20-22
January 17 is the deadline for proposals for 
The finalists for the Independent Games Festival were 
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 