okay, but that’s not what anyone’s saying at all. serially misconstruing what someone’s saying isn’t terribly helpful either. no one is “put off by” any command in this case. they’re put off by the fact that what results is juvenile, sexist, and ultimately a failure of both prose and design. tracy valencia isn’t a believable character, and the things that I-0 expects us to believe aren’t entertaining. i’d also bet that adam knew that, and that’s exactly why he doesn’t attach his name to it, and why it’s a little weird and impolite to be discussing self-labeled juvenilia like this. what this isn’t about, though, is the concept of having a command with a nasty word in it.
The reason we’re discussing it is that it made a difference. It earned awards, it included multiple solutions to puzzles, was strongly coded, it had AIF sections that you could totally bypass (and yet everyone is focusing on them, fancy that. I know the game makes it easy to focus on the sex bits, but you don’t have to ignore the fact that you can play it bypassing all that stuff. I did).
It’s not the sort of thing that gets forgotten. Heck, as far as game design goes, it’s quite tight.
Also, FWIW, reading the about text (or whatever text) I never got the feeling Tracy or the situations she was in was supposed to be believable. Rather, it was admittedly juvenile (a word getting thrown around as though it were dirty) and in a very specific style - a “sexy pulp” (and yet - bypassable AIF. I do find that interesting!).
I mean, if you don’t like the style, that’s ok. But that’s pretty much par for the style, and the style was, it seems, intentional from the beginning. And some people are less judgemental and enjoy a good romp.
True, thanks for reining (sp?) it in. Quotes after quotes after quotes, arguments against snippets, it’s easy to lose the focus of the original point.
but we’re not discussing the historical value of I-0’s puzzles. we’re discussing the concept of rewriting history, which is adjacent to but not identical to the concept of I-0 having perhaps pioneered a series of now-prevalent mechanics or design paradigms.
and perhaps the reason we’re discussing it in that context is that that was the point of the game. the tagline was “the jailbait on the interstate game,” not “the well-made, well-written, historically sagacious game.” and so here we are, and here adam cadre is, and maybe that should be the whole of the lesson?
The original complaint which prompted that particular discussion was:
And in the context of that complaint, I think it absolutely makes sense to point out that the player has to type >MASTURBATE (unprompted, and not to solve any puzzle or advance any story) in order to trigger that.
I’m also not a fan of I-0 per se. But I don’t think that means that it’s “weird and impolite to be discussing” it: because as the first published work of a now-well-known author, and an early example of many now-well-known tropes and concepts, it does have merit.
I’d be glad to get back on that, to be sure. 
But you can’t dismiss “the concept of I-0 having perhaps pioneered a series of now-prevalent mechanics or design paradigms”, because we’re not just talking about rewriting history: we’re talking about an author rewriting his list of past works, when one of those works was important up to a degree. So if we’re discussing the concept of rewriting history, we need to be aware of which history is being rewritten, how much so (not really very much at all in this case, unless - like me - you like to play author’s previous games and see how they grew from their early exploits), and whether it’s a bit of history that no one will much notice or mind.
Again (though you may have missed me on that because it was on an edit), it’s the game’s chosen style. It’s fine not to like it (plenty of people chiming in clearly don’t). It’s less fine to dismiss what it does well - including having a clean path for people who might not like the style.
EDIT - And Draconis posted while I was writing, and I say +1 to his post.
I have issues with the length of copyright terms and the way in which the novelty and nonobviousness criteria are (not) applied when issuing software patents, but my concern here is just about altering or unpublishing things that have previously been published without creating a history of changes and without allowing access to previous versions. This is more of an issue with centralized digital media than with decentralized media such as printed books. Unpublishing the latter would require going door to door and destroying each copy.
Anyone’s free to find anything bad. I’m interested in whether a player should complain about the result of an action that they initiated (assuming that the result is reasonably predictable and not coming out of left field in response to an innocuous command like “examine door”). I’m also interested in whether a third party should complain about a game interaction to which both the author and the player have mutually consented (the author by implementing it and the player by initiating it). Either could have declined to do so. See, for example, this interaction from The Mary Jane of Tomorrow by Emily Short in which the author refuses to consent to the player’s attempted action:
i’m not saying the discussion shouldn’t occur. just that it’s very obviously occurring against the wishes of an author most people seem to be quite respectful of. obviously i’m not personally offended.
and the fact that you have to type “masturbate” to masturbate is self-evident; i severely doubt that that was the point of the original complaint. the point is when you type “masturbate,” it presents you with even dumber ways of explaining the same; it is a game which thinks writing its own thesaurus is cool and edgy and doesn’t realize that it’d be a better game, and less laughably bad prose-wise, if it just said “You masturbated.” and left it at that.
The only thing that’s obvious is that he removed his name from it. As was said before, maybe he just didn’t want prospective employers to google him up and see his “jailbait on the interstate” game. He has not expressed a wish that we don’t talk about it (in fact, since his game is like it or lump it - part of the fabric of modern IF, could he even do that?). As far as rewriting history goes, his is very minor (whoops! Pun not intended!)
FWIW, I just typed it because I wanted to see what everyone was talking about.
First, I didn’t even realise there WOULD be synonims until I typed the command more than once.
Secondly, heh, in its own way it’s fascinating. Tons of expressions I never knew about, most of which fill me with fascination - the way that people’s minds work! The way that the most amazing things can be euphemisms for sexual acts! And the similarities between some English and Portuguese expressions! And yes, some of them are of the “ I can’t believe he actually wrote it” variety, and that fits in perfectly with the style. Pfff, for once it’s refreshing not to have shields over dirty things all the time and be a bit closer to the way some people are in real life!
You can keep your two-word response. I’m not saying I-0 is great literature, but it knows what it wants to be, doesn’t shy away from that, sticks to its guns, is well written within the genre, and by golly I happen to think we’d benefit from more games like that.
A few of those responses actually made me laugh. Feel free to presume to judge me on that basis.
EDIT - And I’m veering this whole thing off-topic and it’s almost 2.30am and my judgement is shot so maybe my head will be a tad cooler in the morning so this is me signing off until I can make on-topic contributions again.
For what it’s worth, it’s not the only game that implements it. Rameses comes to mind. (I think I’m on record, too, as thinking that was perfectly fine – what else would a horny teenage boy do in that situation?)
I wish there was a “like” button, for when people are making much smarter arguments than I can come up with.
There are other reasons (other than embarrassment and/or employers a-googling) an author may want either their name, their work, or both to vanish.
Children - not wanting your children to read something (and if something’s well known their friends are bound to find it and show them). I wrote a highly autobiographical game which mentioned my daughter toilet training. Probably okay, but possibly not.
Youth and/or mental illness and/or poverty - we all make bad decisions sometimes, and even knowing the internet will remember us forever, most of us will take that gamble rather than burn all our games.
Personal growth - a joke that was funny at the time can be extremely unfunny later. Not that long ago, I found it funny when a man wore a dress to a party. To me, he was showing he’s not afraid of being thought to be a gay or trans man. But I imagine that will get less and less funny with time, as trans people are more accepted. It’ll either be “just another man in a dress - what’s funny about that?” or it’ll be painfully offensive, since it mocks people who are in the process of transitioning gender. [This paragraph probably shows my ignorance and may be offensive - if so, I’m sorry.]
Whatever the reason, I think authors deserve to change their name to “Anonymous” and to ask for a potentially offensive or harmful game to be deleted (or at least clearly marked as offensive/dated/harmful), and those requests should be honoured… even though it’s a losing game for the author.
Well, once you type X ME, it’s fairly clear where the game’s focus is.
We don’t think masturbation is distasteful, but obsessing about it is certainly immature.
Regards Marie and Roman
Very eloquently put! I’m pleasantly surprised by how many intelligent people there are on this forum. This place is much better than some other game fora I could mention.
I was recently voted best clad person by my colleagues at work. While I appreciate the gesture, it is not something I would mention in my CV. The feeling I get from the XYZZY awards is that they are a very cosy, internal affair, somewhat similar to my co-workers complimenting me on my taste in clothes.
Just for the record – and I’m only mentioning this because you seem willing to acknowledge your mistakes and willing to learn, so please do not take this as an attack – but a lot of trans people object to “transsexual” as an adjective and a noun and prefer that the term not be used, unless it’s being used by a trans person in a reclamatory way. It has quite a painful history and some rather ugly connotations, especially when used by cis people and/or used as a noun.
I know a cis person who doesn’t appreciate being called a cis person. I suppose not everyone considers their gender/sexuality their salient characteristic.
As far as I’m concerned, someone who comfortably embodies the gender assigned to them at birth objecting to being called “cis” is like me objecting to being called “white” or “ambulatory”.
There is no value judgement, nor traumatic history attached to the terms “cis” and “cisgender”. They are absolutely not comparable to “transsexual”, which has been used to pathologise and otherise trans people for quite some time and still turns up in unsavoury contexts like dehumanising pornography and screeds denouncing the very notion of being transgender.
Further, I do not think that merely noting that one is trans (or, indeed, cis) says anything about how salient an identity characteristic one’s gender is. It’s merely a statement of fact.
But this community is not a place where you put in 8 hours a day every day and take wages home. This is a place people come to because they like/love the medium, and the awards are meaningful. There’s a lot of love and the usual “blood sweat and tears” poured into games.
To put it another way, your comparison would be more valid if you were a fashion afficionado and were intent on always looking your very best. Peer recognition is important. If peers change and perspectives get skewed so that these new peers no longer appreciate the old fashions, it’s still important to regonise that - and why - old fashions were so enjoyed.
EDIT - I’d like to suggest that the dialog about cis and trans and etc be redirected to a new thread. Not that I don’t want to see it discussed, but it’s a bit out of place in this particular thread (the discussion on the quality of I-0, a highly sexed work, is already by itself tangential but understandable). There’s a place for this sort of discussion, and if there’s interest the discussion should exist.
I’m just tired of seeing threads hijacked by those topics, y’know. I had to control myself not to derail this thread any further with a couple of replies to these above posts.
EDIT: The post I replied to was deleted, so I’m deleting my quote and response. Though, to the OP: nothing you said was offensive in the least and the question was reasonable. I’d be happy to reply in PMs, if you’d rather speak in private.
I actually was in time to see your reply and will consider it, as it made sense to me. 
There are two competing views on I-0 expressed in this thread. One is that it is an important game because it “pioneered some techniques that were virtually never used at the time, like aggressively branching plot” (Juhana) and won two XYZZY awards, as well as six nominations (cvaneseltine, Peter Piers). The other is that I-0 is “juvenile” (Marie) and a “failure of both prose and design” (furkle). I find Juhana’s archaeological approach archaeologically valid but aesthetically irrelevant. The aesthetically interesting question is not who used a certain technique first, but rather who did so successfully. Here I agree with Victor Gijsbers’s take on the “aggressively branching plot.”
As to the XYZZY awards, I’ve already expressed my disrespect for them and I stand by it. I cannot bring myself to respect the aesthetic judgement of someone who professes that the writing in I-0 deserves an accolade or that Tracy Valencia is an interesting character.
I’m a little late to this but when I started playing IF (when I was sick at the start of 2015) I already had to look up Interstate Zero to find out who wrote it. It is the IF that I first connected with and it’s so great… If it’s his wish to no longer be named alongside it I will respect it but it’s sad to see something you have such strong positive feelings for get set aside.