JayIsGames gave a brief mention to To Hell in a Hamper: the use of the cover art there is a good sample of how outside bloggers would like to be able to show off IF. (Not that I’m obsessed with this at the moment or anything.)
The XYZZY awards were yesterday! Congratulations to the winners and nominees.
Jeff Nyman has written up some experiences using Inform 7 and TADS 3 with authors new to IF (or at least new to IF programming) and their responses about storytelling this medium and the specific tools involved.
Recently there has been a bit of an argument raging on several blogs about how much a game idea stands alone, how much it’s worth without any implementation, apropos of Squidi’s 300 game mechanics page.
I’m not going to dive into this debate, mostly because the point I’d want to make has already been made eloquently and repeatedly by other people: that the process of implementation includes a certain amount of further design work, raises questions that aren’t covered by the original specification, and so on. It tends to warp an idea in other, subtler ways, too. (A great book on this, not about game design but about art, is Baxandall’s Patterns of Intention
On the other hand, not every game idea is viable even in its basic form: it’s either not a description of anything that could be elaborated (because it’s about incidental features of the game), or it leads inevitably to terrible implementation problems. So Squidi has genuinely accomplished something by serving up an assortment of ideas at least some of which are really pretty decent starting places.
I occasionally look through the search terms that have led people to this site, to see whether I’m providing what people are hoping to find, and one of the things semi-frequently mentioned is “ideas for interactive fiction” or “if premises” or the like. I wonder what these people are looking for — maybe, in fact, something like Squidi’s list, only IF-specific instead of directed to other kinds of (primarily video) games.
…re. the cover art drive, since a couple of people have now expressed concern to me about this.
I am not uploading to IFDB any contributed art for any game by any author unless that author has explicitly accepted the art.
I tried to make this clear in the original rules, but perhaps I didn’t do it loudly enough up front.
So no, there’s no “if you don’t speak up, I’ll modify your work (or the context in which your work is presented) without your consent!” thing going on. I would not be cool with that myself. Really don’t want to do it to other people. Submitted art goes on the Flickr site, and should be regarded as just some fan art until it’s officially adopted; and the Flickr site is only up for the two months of the art drive, after which it will go away again.
I did put some material on IFDB before the drive, but this was either (a) art already included in the game file or displayed on the author’s website as cover art; or (b) added with the author’s consent. In cases where (a) seemed marginal (i.e., there was some art on the author’s website, but I wasn’t sure whether the author intended it to be officially tied to the game) I contacted the author first.
Of Rendition. Well, “review” might be the wrong word. But it’s up.
The list of XYZZY Finalists is available — vote now!
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 