raise hand
Also, for me, “plug”.
Are there official pronunciations for these things? And Glulx, and Glulxe? It’d be interesting if IFWiki had a pronunciation guide for things like that. Or even those little sound clips, like online dictionaries have. (Sound clips might not be practical; I just find them amusing.)
Anyway, the interview is very nice! Smart questions, intelligent conversation. Do you really think that asking money for a game is a way of “valuing it more”? (I’m not against commercial ventures, I just have never been convinced that giving stuff away for free means that you don’t value it.)
Also: please make that difficult game you talk about at the end! If you want to discuss the problems of doing that stuff, I’d be very much up to it, having at least a little experience with something similar (in The Baron).
In my first (and so far, only) adventure game, I included a book called “Plugh and Play - Spellcasting Made Easy”. (Which says a lot about the low level of most of my jokes.) Nothing happens when the player character says “PLUGH”, and he comments “I probably didn’t say it right.”
Regarding how to say “ich” in German, that’s extra fun for me that I’ve been saying it wrong because the correct pronunciation is how I in my native dialect (unlike most of Sweden) almost always pronounce the sch-sound when I speak Swedish, while the “fish”-like sound is how Swedish is spoken in the rest of the country, but something I had to learn for foreign languages.
In my world, Quixe = “quicks”, like the plural of “quick”. Or possibly “kweeks”, with a slightly different vowel.
…it’s interesting to realize how inconsistent I am about this stuff.
Glulx has posed a problem for me since day one. My best pronunciation sounds kind of like Andy Serkis’s cat-hairball “Gollum” - all the letters are there, but it still sounds like I’m choking on something. (Zarf is unimpressed and likely amused by my ongoing complaints about this.)
For Glulxe, I drop the second L and flatten the vowel out to “glooks”. I have no justification for this. I never realized what I was doing until I typed it out now.
It ain’t me that asked that intelligent and insightful question, I’m afraid.
I think of Glulx as sounding like “glum”, but with an LX (ecks-style X) at the end instead of the M. Build-up of tension, stress the u, then a delicate diminuendo for the last two consonants.
Actually, come to try it out, I make it into two syllables: Glul + X.
My language colours of all this, of course - in Portuguese, quixe IS naturally read “quiche”. For that reason, GLulx and Glulxe are totally identical to me, and I routinely confuse the two.
Sorry, something went wrong. Fixed it.
Oh, that’s easy.
Glulx, I pronounce like “glue-licks the virtual machine”
Whereas Glulxe, I pronounce like "glue-licks the interpreter app no this glue-licks is different from glue-licks the virtual machine because there is a silent ‘e’ "
Oh, I see. It’s so obvious when someone explains it to you.
Yep. They’re as different as night and knightte. 8)
“X-ray” is the only word that starts with X not pronounced like Z. That may be pedantic though.
I say “gloo-lix”. I think xyzzy might be one of those words designed to be unpronounceable for our own safety.
If I had to guess, I’d say “zigh-zee” or “zizzee”.
I’ll admit, I never presumed that my pronounciation of any of these words was correct (if there is such a thing), but I thought there’d be at least a standard. There’s been almost as many different pronounciations as people in this thread. I find that honestly fascinating, especially since we use these words all the time and know exactly what they mean and where they came from.
A few appeals to authority…
From “Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave”:
From a very old rgif post I found through a search:
(I would link the discussion here but I can’t find a way to get a permanent link from Google Groups…it was a topic called “XYZZY” started by Adam Dawes on February 20, 1997.)
As far as Glulx and Glulxe, I haven’t had occasion to speak them, but in the event I ever do, expect to hear Glulx rhyme with “bulks”, and Glulxe the same with a postpended schwa (like “bulks-eh”). I’d also likely do as Laroquod does above, and additionally distinguish the engine from the terp. (“glulks the engine”; “glulks-eh the terp”). Quixe will by intent be ‘Quicks-eh’ but will almost certainly end up being ‘Quicks-ee’.
I figure that Quixe is like Quixote without the “oat.” So, “quicks.”
I’m trolling, though I do pronounce Quixe that way, and quixotic “kwik-sotic.”
I pronounce glulx “gloolks” all at once, with a vowel sound like “wool.” I pronounce glulxe “That thing on the inside of the interpreter program that hurts my head to think about and is somehow different from git, no not git the version control system, that other git.” It’s a homophone for glk.
I don’t think I ever thought about pronouncing Quixe until just now. I registered it as visual, like the time Prince was an unpronounceable symbol.
I say ‘keeks’. And I pronounce Quixote ‘Keehoatay’, but also Quixotic ‘keehoatik’. It always throws me for a loop when people say ‘kwiksotik’.
Hi Victor. Thanks!
I will come talk to you about Difficult Game if I continute to thrash about. I don’t think I’ve started to do the serious thinking on it yet. I let thoughts percolate in my downtime, but I haven’t consciously pointed myself at it yet.
Re: freebie-ism.
It’s a very complex topic. I guess no, I don’t equate asking money per se = flat out more valuing. Or giving it free = no value. But this is in the context of IF, a context with a long history of being a certain way. Obviously lots of people have done excellent IF work which they do not charge for.
I’m tainted a lot by being a musician. I do think music was devalued a lot at the height of music piracy via Napster etc. I’m glad I’ve got Taylor Swift on my side! The capability of musicians to do things without being on a label has gone through the roof (like my own, and I’m even on a label now) but I don’t think the valuing of music by the public has recovered since back then in any commensurate way.
People have a lot of uninformed ideas. ‘Oh, you can just tour to make money can’t you?’ Touring is one of the most physically grueling exercises for any human being. With my mental health troubles, I realised on my last tour I can barely stand it. The 1 hour of playing a show is fantastic, but the months of grinding organisation and stress to bring about that 1 hour, separate from even making music, outweighs the hour of playing the shows by a fair bit for me.
But I’m getting off track. In general, I’m wary of seeing any of these races to the bottom where people keep making creative product as cheap as possible, borderline free, or just free.
We don’t have that problem in IF because we’re coming from ‘everything is free’, and we’re a small pond. But we’re getting bigger. And I think there are positive things that come with even low-grade commercialisation. Like potentially better quality assurance of the game. And also just more of that outreach that a lot of IF people were yelling about a few years ago.
Probably my overall thought is just that I think more IF folk could sell their games. You could reach new audiences, make a little money, and maybe the feeling of responsibility towards anonymous purchasers may spur you to polish your game more. That’s all a kind of extra value.
-Wade
Just finished listening to this. I like Ken Gagne’s “It’s not just Gamma because you implemented G?” crack. But there was a lot of content too of course.
To me, Qix is “Kicks,” Quixe is “Keeks,” and (Nestle) Quik is “Kwik.”
I just say the letters of XYZZY.
Good to hear the later plans.