intfiction.org

I'm still trying to figure that out. "Why play IF". Well, why play *any* kind of game?

This is a complete tangent, but if you can get through that awful Benezia fight in real-time, then my hat is off to you. It's possible I just suck at games, but for me, pausing all the time is the only way to make it any fun at all.



Simpler to produce doesn't mean it's any easier to make it good. You still have to have talent; it's just a lower initial barrier of entry. Since you don't need an art or sound department or any tools beyond the compiler, it's easy for some guy to see a text adventure and think "I could do that." With Inform 7, it's not difficult to write something that at least compiles and runs and resembles a game, whereas with a lot of other types of development, Joe Shmoe is likely to give up before ever getting to that point. (As has been pointed out, though, that crummy, amateurish games are certainly not exclusive to text adventures; just take a look at 90% of the iPhone or XBLIG marketplace for proof of that.)

At the same time, more experienced designers who would be great at making text adventures are probably pursuing making graphical games instead, since that's the more glamorous and lucrative thing to do. No matter how well written a text adventure is, it's never going to attract attention the way a pretty screenshot will. If you want your game to be played by as many people as possible (which presumably most authors do), it really doesn't make a lot of sense to make it a text adventure unless you have a mechanic or story that won't work in any other medium, or you just like text adventures. I think plenty of people in this thread have given good reasons for that to be a valid opinion, even if other types of games are occasionally capable of doing similar things.

I'm under 30 and don't have any real nostalgia for text adventures (I played one or two as a child but was never super into them); I grew up playing consoles and that's still how I do the majority of my gaming. But they interest me now because I think they have a lot of potential for experiences and subject matter that other types of games either can't or just generally aren't interested in providing.

I also agree that it doesn't seem like this discussion is going anywhere.

I can't fathom trying to play Mass Effect without pausing, at least to give orders to your companions.

I enjoyed the first game immensely (though I haven't played the second), but the conversations did turn into a Choose Your Own Conversation sort of deal and that could be somewhat tedious. Adding graphics and decent voice acting didn't make it inherently any more entertaining, less artificial, or more interactive than a well-implemented ask/about.

I'm hitting the 1/3 century mark this month. I never played text adventures prior to October 2010, but they account for a good bit of my meager personal hobby time now, between actually playing them, reading about them, and trying to learn to implement them. If they remain a niche market, I can live with that; the appeal is not universal. If they magically explode into popularity again someday, I can be elitist and go around telling people how much cooler they were before they went mainstream.

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Ласка кусает меня за лодыжки.

Make a system so easy to use that an idiot can use it, an idiot will. Sad, but true.

One of the reasons ADRIFT has got so much stick over the years is because it's so easy to use, almost anyone can use it. It lulls you into falsely believing that just because it's easy to write a game, it's easy to write a good game. No, it isn't. It's hard to write a good good in any system period. It's just that the easier to use the system is to get to grips with, the more likely it is to attract the sort of people who don't have either the will or the skill to learn a more difficult system.

It's interesting to see that kind of thing beginning to filter into Inform 7 now there's another system out there that can be mastered (to a degree) by someone who couldn't program his way out of a virtual paper bag.


As for the appeal of text adventures for me:

As a player, I just find them interesting. I played no end of them as a kid and grew up lamenting the fact that the bottom had dropped out of the market. Imagine my delight upon discovering a whole thriving text adventure community on the internet, albeit the commercial side still seems to be largely kaput.

As a writer, they appeal to me because they're something I can do myself. In theory, I could write the best damn IF game ever written all on my lonesome; I certainly couldn't do that if I was to write a FPS or an MMO or what have you. I'd have to work as part of a team and the writing process would be more akin to a job than a hobby. IF can be written by anyone. That's the appeal for me.

For a long, long time I played nothing but graphical adventures. They gave me what I wanted - a good story, good puzzles, good characters (apart from the games with bad stories/puzzles/characters, of course), not to mention a very pleasing feeling of immersion in the story. Text adventures I fiddled with, but kept going back to graphical adventures because they were what I wanted to experience. Occasionaly I'd play a good RPG or cave crawl just for the heck of it.

The first non-adventure game I really REALLY played (with the exception of all the platformers of my youth such as Sonic, Mario, and the odd-genre game here and there, all casual stuff) was System Shock. It was then that I belatedly realized that different genres can still convey exactly the sort of thing I want to experience - wrapped up in a new package.

Today I'm as likely to appreciate Syberia as Deus Ex, and my games-to-play list includes stuff like Rayman, Silent Hill, replaying all my Gabriel Knight games, and of course my huge collection of IF. If I feel like a multimedia story, I'll boot up a graphical adventure, like when I recently finished Back to the Future. If I feel like shooting and jumping I'll boot up maybe Tomb Raider or Soul Reaver, or American McGee's Alice 2.

All these games stimulate visual and auditory senses in a very immediate way, using them to achieve their goal. But for the times when I want all those things with a different kind of stimulation - in a sense, for the times when I'd rather read a good book than watch a good film - I play IF.

This thread has covered some very interesting points, but ultimately the answer to the original question is as subjective as ever.

Incidently - I've bought both Textfyre games and intend to keep buying them. And try playing Howard Sherman's games from the archive before investing into Malinche.

You don't have to know how to write a story in the sense of being a good storyteller. I've played many text adventures where the story was pretty lame. IFDB reviews indicate many such games. You do have to know how to program to an extent, I agree. But just the act of writing a text adventure does not make you a writer or even a good storyteller. It just makes you someone who can put words together in the context of a game.

The same argument applies to other games, I'll grant. Just writing a graphical games doesn't mean you write a good one or one with a good story. So this to me is a bit of a null point. I do agree that since text adventures are all about the text reading experience, it would really help if you were a good writer and could do things that good writers do. But I don't see anything in text adventures that necessarily demands this. There's a certain level of skill to write graphical games. There's a certain level of skill to adding effective audio to games. You have to have those skills before you even come in otherwise you can't get started. With text adventures there's no bare minimum of skill you necessarily need. Which could be an argument in its favor from an authoring perspective. But somehow it doesn't feel like a good argument.



That's true. And the competition of other games usually sinks those sub-standard games fairly quickly. And even if it doesn't, at least those games are getting played by a wide audience and game designers and makers are learning what does and doesn't work by constant refinement based on seeing what does and doesn't work. I don't think that's quite the same for text adventures. Even with the understanding that it's a more limited audience, I don't really see the impetus for text adventures to improve all that much beyond what they are.



Never said it should.

Many gamers answer this all the time. For the type of experience they get while playing games with certain elements.

Through this thread, I've heard a few of the elements that people who like text adventures consider important. It's just very defocused and it's like pulling teeth to get it. (Ask a similar question to mine in other game forums and you rarely have trouble getting to an elevator speech really quick.)

So I was really trying to understand what kind of experience players of text adventures are getting that they clearly find satisfying that the vast majority of gamers out there aren't seeing.

People keep couching it in the terms of "more glamorous" or "more lucrative." But a lot of people are doing it largely for the fact that such games are what people respond to. And authors (whether of books, films, or games) tend to go where the audiences are, regardless of possibly glamorous or lucrative aspects. If you go to the former (where the audience is), the latter two tend to follow to some extent.



For me, it was useful. It showed me how people think. I don't see how any discussion like that can be considered going nowhere. It's part of how a community is introspective about its passion.

Following your argument, I cannot make a graphical game featuring ? and ! as the protagonists and # as the walls of a maze, with audio effects from Ctrl+G. That's a pity, because I've done it ~27 years ago. I haven't needed serious skills in graphic nor sound to do it, just an idea what the story of ? and ! should be and some programming skills to implement it. Still it was clearly a graphical game with sound effects. Plus, the game wasn't crap but actually fun for a while.

EDIT: Reading your latest argument again, I too agree this discussion is going nowhere. And you don't get "how people think". This is because you circle around the abstraction needed to understand how games work and why without ever getting nearer to it. What is "how people think" here. Anyway, it's no fun to argue with you, so I just leave this game and don't care that it's over. There is not even a highscore list for it. LAME!

As I think on it, I guess this sums it up for me and why I'm "suspicious" of text adventures. Not everyone can be a novelist. Not everyone can be a filmmaker. Not everyone can be a graphical game designer. But anyone can write text adventures! It just feels like text adventures are described as a "Can't do anything else? Then do a text adventure!" I'd rather someone say "It's NOT just anyone who can write a text adventure. It takes skill as a writer and as a game designer."