intfiction.org

Today is an important day in the history of interactive fiction, for today is the day that I, Herman Schudspeer, release my first and probably last piece of IF: Nemesis Macana. It is not that I consider myself a great artist. It is that with Nemesis Macana, due to its subject matter and its message, interactive fiction takes a tentative but clear step towards its divine destiny. And so may you.

Saint Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. Constantine witnessed the holy cross rising from the sun. This very day, you can see Nemesis Macana on the screen of your personal computer, and who knows what conversion may follow?

Yours in love and in abstinence,
Herman Schudspeer

Great. Another troll. Don't you guys get bored?

Another day, another Pudlo account. But this time he's released a new game, so there's some cause for celebration.

(Come on, guys. Herman Schudspeer is indeed a pseudonym, or rather, a persona, and one that is integral to the work. It would be a pity if we couldn't have a bit of fun with that because the atmosphere has been poisoned by trolls and Pudlos, wouldn't it? This game is entirely in good faith. Though not, perhaps, entirely in good taste.)

NEMESIS MACANA is a quick and dirty game that can be finished in five minutes. It's a quick porno-loop riff on the Stiffy Makane mythos as previously expanded upon by Adam Thornton; perhaps this is even by Thornton in another guise.

The prose is well-written, if purplish, which is the point. There's not a whole lot to do, not much is implemented, and synonyms are scarce. This is meant as a quick SNL parody sketch of a game so that's fine. NM holds no secrets for you to discover.

The help text might even be longer than the actual game. This reads as a highbrow history of Stiffy, IF, and the hypothesized latent sexuality of IF in general.

There is a germ of a good idea here: the floridly narrative protagonist who speaks like a British earl could possibly be an interesting jumping off place for a sendup of IF tropes - Aquire the Glass Electronical Communication Structure and Meet Your Maker as a poor example.

It is distressing to contemplate that in so many minds the concept "troll" has grown so bloated as to eclipse the concept "joke." It's even sadder when this monomania separates people from really good jokes.

Mister Schudspeer: A+.

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we gotta move these refrigerators

A misplaced notion, I think. This particular joke is being presented in the style of a troll. That's a deliberate choice on the part of the jokester, and the consequences of that choice are (if the jokester knows what he or she is doing) therefore also deliberate choices.

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

(Actually, the deliberate choice was to present it in the style of someone who is not completely sane, or at least someone whose view of the world is not one that many of us share. I was taken by surprise when this was interpreted as the style of a troll. My mistake, of course. I should have thought about this possibility more carefully.)

Well, the distinction between that, and the local examples of trollishness, is not so much a fine line as a permeable membrane

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

It looked similar to that NOM3RCY guy who's been uploading his "games" to IFDB. I was mistaken