XYZZYnews Issue #20 http://www.xyzzynews.com/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TABLE OF CONTENTS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Contents: ** Hollow Voice ** Top 10 Picks for IF on the Web ** Letters ** And the Winner Is...: Results of the XYZZYnews Essay Contest ** Scott Adams: Storytelling in Computer Games -- Past, Present, and Future +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ HOLLOW VOICE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear readers, I'm sending this update on the heels of my return from my recent trip to Russia. It was amazing, and certainly different from any country I've visited before. We went to so many intriguing places -- a company town built around a nuclear power plant, an orphanage, a 500-year-old settlement where we were the first American visitors they'd ever had -- in addition to the usual tourist attractions like the Kremlin and the Hermitage Museum. The main purpose of the visit was a cultural exchange: The men's chorus that my husband sings in performed concerts all over St. Petersburg, and the group leaders taught classes to Russian musicians and academic types. For my part, I lugged around costumes for the guys, handed out little pins and giveaways to everyone we met, especially the kids, and generally played the diplomat at the many social events (oh, how those speeches went on and on...!). The concert audiences were so amazing and appreciative... it truly made me feel like we were living up to the group's mission statement -- namely, to keep the whole world singing. Part of what kept me in such good humor during the trip was having the opportunity to play a long list of text adventure games (and even making a huge dent in Heroine's Mantle) during the long bus rides, airline travel, and jet-lag-induced insomnia. With regular battery recharges, my Philips Velo and its reasonably sized keyboard definitely came through! In other news, I'd like to encourage your day-to-day comments on what games you're playing, what you're writing, and your general thoughts and feelings about text games at the new XYZZYnews discussion boards set up at http://pub86.ezboard.com/bxyzzynews --enjoy! Until next issue, happy gaming! Eileen Mullin eileen.interport@rcn.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Issue # 20 Top 10 Picks for Interactive Fiction on the Web +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Help! Where do I download IF stuff for my computer? http://www.bright.net/~jonadab/if/ Interactive Fiction According to Fredrik http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6116/if.html Interactive Fiction Basement http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7442/if/ Interactive Fiction - Suite 101.com http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/interactive_fiction The Keepers http://www.dan.hartland.btinternet.co.uk/hotel/ PalmPilot IF Adventure Games http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/rpg/22/ Plugh Main Page http://games.xyzzy.net/ Reviews from Trotting Krips http://members.dencity.com/petro/reviews.html Solving Electronic Adventures (this issue's retro link...) http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/solving.html Writing and Playing Inform Games http://www.surfhouston.com/if/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LETTERS +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Hi there, I was really sorry to hear you stop the PDF version of XYZZYnews. Although I can understand your reasons I still am sorry you don't publish the mag in that way anymore. I loved the way it looked like a real magazine and I printed out every issue you published so far to take with me. Well, anyway, keep up the good work and hopefully sometime in the future you will find the time and a good reason to do the PDF thing again... Cheers, Harry harry@haha.demon.nl ---------------------------------------------------- Greetings, My name is Konstantinos Evgenidis and I have developed a software product suitable for creating and playing text based role-playing games. It is distributed as freeware and is currently in beta testing. It is quite different from other similar products since as a text based rpg is not online and also includes a visual editor.It has no command line and many other unique features. You may visit http://www.legendarytales.com/ for more information. Sincerely, Konstantinos Evgenidis konevg@hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------- Dear XYZZYnews, At Synapse Entertainment, registered users can provide a description of their game, upload new releases and development versions of their games, provide current news about their projects, include changelogs with every file for informing users of all changes to their game, post a list of all the game's developers and email addresses, and much more! The Project Manager is a very powerful, very easy to use rescource for all text game developers. The Project Manager is not only for developers, however. Text game enthusiasts are able to search for games by game type, operating system, title, or keywords in game descriptions. For a broader search, users can 'Browse' the entire list of games currently hosted on Synapse Entertainment by utilizing our easy-to-use navigation bar on the left side of any page in the Project Manager. And to make watching your favorite game easier, you can simply type in the game's ID and click 'View' to instantly see the most recent update of that project. Also, users can rate their favorite, or least favorite, games from 1 to 5 using the poll provided on each project's page! Andrew Dietz allanon@synapse-entertainment.com /--------------------------------------------------------------------\ NEW XYZZYnews MESSENGER BAGS Help support the XYZZYnews Web site and look cool with our new, limited edition Messenger Bags. They're great for the office or school. Check them out in our online store today, because after September 30th, they'll be history. Visit http://www.cafepress.com/xyzzynews/ to see for yourself...! \--------------------------------------------------------------------/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ AND THE WINNER IS... Results of the XYZZYnews Essay Contest: What's your most memorable gaming experience? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ In July, we held an online essay contest: Write about your most memorable interactive fiction experience. Contributors had their choice of prizes: A copy of the Masterpieces of Infocom CD or any item of XYZZYNews-logo'ed merchandise. And now, without further ado... Madness and the Minotaur by JamesMunro2@aol.com As an adventure game addict, I thought Madness and the Minotaur was the perfect choice. Random and gigantic, I'd be lost for months! I prepared my bedroom as I usually did. Paper was close by for maps. Pencils were ready. My parents (for I was 15 at the time) were busy. I had the night to myself. I had read the directions in the car on the way home. After typing CLOADM MADNESS and a quick EXEC to start up, I was on my way. I'm not sure if I felt it first or heard it first. A rumble that came from all around. I dashed out my bedroom confused. My dad simply answered that it was an earthquake. It lasted for what seemed like forever. We went outside. Chatted with the neighbors. Checked the house over. All was well until my mother yelled to me, "I don't think that's very funny!" I followed her to my room. There, the green computer screen was filled with the same phrase over and over. "The ground is shaking!" It was a common occurrence in the game, though I wasn't yet aware of that. I paused and marveled at the power of my 16K computer with extended color BASIC. After all, it had determined that there was an earthquake! +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SCOTT ADAMS: STORYTELLING IN COMPUTER GAMES PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Scott Adams, creator of the classic computer game "Adventureland," visited the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire on May 3, 2001 for a panel on "Storytelling and Computer Games: Past, Present and Future." Dennis G. Jerz compiled full-text transcripts -- excerpted in this issue of XYZZYnews -- and audio downloads of a 2-hr panel. The complete transcripts can be found -- and will continue to be updated as necessary -- at http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/if/adams/. Browse the table of contents and excerpts below for highlights... --------------------------------------------- 1. Brief History of Interactive Fiction    --------------------------------------------- Dennis G. Jerz offers a brief history of narrative gaming, and discusses how game development affects electronic storytelling.   Jerz: I would like to extend a special welcome to our panelist of honor, Mr. Scott Adams, creator of "Adventureland," the 1979 text game; founder of Adventure International, a tremendously influential computer gaming company dating from the early 1980's. And for those of you who might not be familiar with the Scott Adams name we'll say first of all, not Dilbert -- different guy, same name. Having Scott here to share with us his thoughts on computer games is not unlike what it would be like to have Alfred Hitchcock here to talk about suspense films or Jane Austen here to talk about the history of the British novel. If you don't [think you] know Scott Adams, you still do if you've [ever] looked at a computer game, because computer games and designers of computer games can't get away from the effect of people like Scott Adams.  There are only a handful of names up on that tier. And Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, but you did market the first computer game commercially, or as far as we know. Others were available online but he's the first one who started making a living off of it. I'd also like to introduce Amanda Fullan, who is a student in my Writing Electronic Texts class, and her project is writing a text-based computer game. And she's had no programming experience before my class and has done a really good job of getting all the things together; so, come on in, Amanda. And also, Jake Okun, another UWEC student, who has spent time working for three graphic computer game companies, and does beta testing now. In the mid 1970's Will Crowther, a programmer and an amateur caver, having just gone through a divorce, was looking for a way to connect with his two young children. Over the course of a few weekends he slapped together a text based cave exploration game that featured a sort of guide/narrator who talked in full sentences and who understood simple two word commands that came really close to natural English. Crowther's children reportedly loved the game. [Actually, Crowther later told me in e-mail that his children only humored their father. --DGJ]  They were excited that they could talk to a machine, and even more, that the machine could talk back to them. Some time later Stanford graduate student Don Woods came along, and he came across an unfinished copy of this game on a mainframe computer. He expanded it and released it on the Internet. (Yes, there was an Internet back in those days.)  Scott was one of many [other] people who came across this [version of the] game, on a mainframe machine that you could use [only] after hours to play games. They were huge, refrigerator-sized -- or multiple-refrigerator-sized things. He wrote "Adventureland," a tiny game, as I mentioned; the first commercial computer game, as far as anyone knows. It was dinky, because it had to be very small to be played on the ridiculously small, cruel memory restrictions of computers at the time. He sold his first copy by taking out an ad in a computer magazine. Shortly after that he formed the company Adventure International, which released many other titles, some by other authors in the first half of the 80's.  You used the computer by entering a command, and I remember some commands from those days. You could type "dir *.*", or you'd type something like "run hello.bas" and the computer told you, with a textual output, whether the action was successful. If it wasn't successful it didn't tell you how to fix it, it just said "error" or "abort, retry, or fail." You could type anything you wanted at the prompt. You could type "hi there".  You could type "bleep you" -- and boy, did I, many times. (Laughter.) The classic Scott Adams computer game was text only. The computer displayed a few lines of description. Here's an example: You're in a dismal swamp. Obvious exits: north, south, east, west, up. You can also see: cypress trees -- evil smelling mud -- swamp gas -- floating patch of oily slime -- chiggers.  (Adams, "Adventureland" 1979) You played the game by entering commands. You would type something like "climb tree", or "take slime" and the computer told you whether or not the action was successful. You could type anything in at the prompt. You could type "take tree". You could type "eat chiggers". Not everything worked, and the computer wouldn't always tell you how to make it work.  That was "fun." --------------------------------------------- 2. Scott Adams Speaks    --------------------------------------------- Scott plays "Adventureland" with the audience, describes the technical restrictions on computers in the late 70s, and explains the value of user-testing interactive works. Adams: Do you guys know what 16k means? You all have computers right? And they have a couple of hundred megs of memory right now. What's a meg? Audience: Somewhere around 1024k Adams: Approximately a thousand k of memory. Shrink that down to 16k -- that's what these early computers had. There was not a great deal of waste in the early programs. All my early games were two-word sentences -- verb, noun oriented. The locations, descriptions were sparse, but I always tried to use a location that people can relate to. Lets play a game here. We're going to play a real fast game of Adventureland. I'll be the computer and I want you to tell me what to do in a verb, noun situation. Here's your opening: I'm in a forest; I see here trees. Obvious exits: N, S, E, W. Tell me what to do. Audience: Go north. Adams: Go north. Ok. I'm in a forest. I see trees. Obvious exits are N, S, E, and W. Audience: Go north. Adams: Go north. I'm in a forest. I see trees. Obvious exits are N, S, E, and W. Audience: Go south. Adams: Excellent. I'm in a forest. I see trees... Audience: Examine tree. Adams: I see a tree. It looks climbable. Obvious exits: N, S, E, and W. Audience: Climb the tree. Adams: Two words! Two words! We don't let you get away with anything here. Ok, climb tree.  I'm in the top of the tree. To the east I see a meadow. Obvious exits: Down. Audience: Go down. Adams: I'm in a forest. I see trees... Audience: Go east. Adams: I am in a large sunny meadow. Sleeping here, a large sleeping dragon. I see a sign. Obvious exits: E, W and S. Audience: Eat dragon! Adams: Doesn't look very tasty!  Tell me what to do. Audience: Read sign. Adams: Sign says: "In many cases mud is good in others..." I think you're getting the idea here.  This is the actual way the game plays and the idea is you go through the game; you have an adventure. You have a puzzle-solving situation. You'll meet a lot of things you've got to deal with.  That's what these early games were. Keep in mind, when these games were written and the the first games I released were on the TRS 80. Anybody here know what that is? Audience: (Laughing) Adams: Ok, we've got a couple. This is a very early pioneer computer put out by RadioShack. "TRS" stood for Tandy RadioShack. It was 16k of memory, a Z80 processor (which was an old 8-bit processor), and a cassette drive, as he was saying, that you loaded your software in from. And a monitor. Well, the monitor came with the machine, which was very nice; the thing was was that it wasn't a TV. It didn't even have the resolution of a TV because it couldn't even draw pictures. It had text, period. You couldn't do the pictures if you wanted to, unless you wanted to have little black and white dots. I mean, big black and white dots. So this was where the industry started and that's what the games were like. They have grown since.  The amazing thing about these adventure games is, I still get fan mail from people that are playing them today, which just boggles my mind. But the game is still basically the same. I'm in a forest. I see trees. Everyone relates to that. You can relate to the picture. Later I put pictures in my games and made graphic versions of my games, and you know I got fan mail saying, "I liked the text better. My pictures look better than yours." Your mind gives a much better picture than the finest artist. There is tremendous capability in the human mind. Now if I said I was in a bluh-bluh-bluh, that doesn't do anything. But we all know what a forest is and we all have certain expectations. The interesting thing is, your expectation of a forest and her expectation of a forest could be totally different. So the game's got to be aware of that.  The other thing was, I had to be aware of what the users might and might not say. Which was a very important part of getting a game ready was beta testing. Normally I would sit down, I would come up with a theme I wanted for a game. Old West, space, Count Dracula, whatever. I'd set my theme. I'd set my locations. And I'd start putting items in, and putting in puzzles. I'd get the game about two-thirds done and then I would stop.  The next one-third of the game literally came from the people I gave to to play the game. I'd watch how they played the game. I'd watch what they'd try to do with the items that I never thought they might try to do. [I said,] "Wow, what a good idea! I think I'll put that in the game." I literally did. So the games were written by the users.  If you guys ever get out into the world and you are doing something creative like this, making entertainment for people, don't design the whole thing yourself. Let the people you plan to use it do some of the design. You'll get a for better product out of it. Because they are going to do things you didn't think of. Two heads are better than one. A hundred heads are far better than one. You keep control of the direction it's taking, and let there be creative input coming in.  --------------------------------------------- 3-4. Panelists; Audience Q and A    --------------------------------------------- Question: How much have you felt story-telling has improved in video games over time? Adams: There have been a lot of different games out there. Of recent note probably one game sticks in my mind more than anything else, two games actually, as fantastic storytelling opportunities that they took advantage of.  One of them, the first one, was "Half-Life." Anyone hear of that? Ok. Anyone here play it? Hands, hands. Ok, a number of you.  Basically what Half-Life is, is a science fiction first-person shooter. You're plunked down in this world with literally nothing, and you're thrown into a world where a disaster happened of an extra terrestrial nature and you're going to save the world, literally. The thing is, the writers did a very good job. They suck you into the story. You, after a while, feel like you are the player[-character]. There was something awesome about walking down this darkened corridor, seeing this monster coming -- no, I'm sorry, walking down this brightly lit corridor, just having accomplished this great task, and I'm walking back and all of a sudden, one by one, the lights start going out. And the next thing I knew is I hear a roar down at the end of the corridor. I was like this in front of the computer, OHH!!  The artist who wrote that sucked me into his world. He was telling me a story and I was living it. That was excellent.  Another game that recently came out that also did the same thing was "Deus Ex". Yes, it's from the old Greek [actually, Latin --DGJ] "deus ex machina," which meant basically "from God", but it meant the hook that would come in and rescue the protagonist when they're put into a situation that they couldn't get out of... Jerz: God from the machine, deus ex machina.  Adams: A lot of people will pronounce it "deuce ex," but the game itself was unique and one of the first to do it and you'll see a lot of them coming out that are going to imitate it. You're put into the same type of thing, first-person shooter -- except it's not. You can go in and solve any one of the problems. You can be the guy with guns blazing, blowing out the marines at the front door, or you can decide you want to play this as a computer hacker, come around the back, hack the computer, and have their weapons that are there to protect them turn and shoot them. You can decide that you want to play it as a thief and sneak through the tunnels and through the air-conditioning ducts. You play the game not exactly the way you want to, because there are constraints, but your freedom to play the game is greatly expanded.   This was tremendously difficult for the game developers.  Not only did they have to provide all the different routes in, they had to make sure that every person that was playing the game and wanted to choose a particular route would have that available to them.  Also, as you played the game, the character you were playing would grow, and you'd come to choices.  He was like The Bionic Man, he came to section where he could get implants.  But depending on which implant you pick now, that would mean later you can't pick a different implant, so a lot of choices were made, a lot of branches. But the whole thing has to come to a conclusion at the very end, and that was kind of hard to do.  I see a head nodding, did you like that one?  Audience: I love that game.  The four different endings I thought were amazing. Adams: Exactly.  Not one ending, four endings that you could choose from.  This is one future of interactive fiction or interactive game playing.  The other one is, as he was mentioning, is the massive-multiplayer online role playing games.  I recently got sucked into, it was about three weeks, I haven't been playing it long, EverQuest.  If you've never tried a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game, that is something worth trying.   Right now, it used to cost $50 for the game and $10 a month to play, right now they brought back the classic version.  It costs $10 to buy the game, they give you the first month for free, and you can cancel it at any time.  So basically, you can try the game for $10 for a month.  Itıs extremely addicting because itıs not only do you go in and youıre fighting the monsters. Thatıs fun. Everybody wants to fight monsters, sure. What youıre doing is youıre building a character. You basically come into the world in a loin cloth or a bikini, depending on the sex or gender youıre playing, and a couple of cents in your pocket and a wooden club and you go from there. Youıre not just fighting the NPCıs, which are non-player characters. Itıs the PCs in there.  At any given time when I log on to the EverQuest world there are literally 50 to 100,000 people playing at the same time. Now weıre not all playing in the same world, they are divided up into multiple servers. The world that Iım playing in usually has about 2000 people online at the same time.  So you have all these people playing together. Weıre not only relating to the monsters, weıre relating to each other and that is the fascinating part.  Hereıs an example. First day Iım playing this character, I get into the world and there I am in my loin cloth and my wooden club and I said, 'Iım going to role play.'  You can role-play or you can be an avatar. Role-playing means that I am a creature that really lives in this world. Iım acting Somebody comes up to me and says, 'Hey man, what level are you?' And I say, "Excuse me young sir, I am a new apprentice and do not know what this level is that thou talks about." "I said what level are you!!!" "Please do not shout at me I am just a lowly apprentice and do not understand this strange talk."  Jumping up and down, "What level are you!!!" By this time he has attracted a crowd around us, I donıt know why. So we have other players standing around looking at this guy jumping up and down, yelling at me, "He wonıt tell me what level he is!!" (Sniveling voice) "I am a lowly apprentice. Please sir, donıt hurt me."  A woman walks up dressed in big flowing robes and a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand. Obviously not a new player. And she starts talking to me and she says, ³Is there a problem here?²  And I said, ³O noble lady, please I am but an apprentice and do not understand the strange ways of this land.²  We start talking back and forth, meanwhile this guy is over in the corner‹³What level are you!!²  (Laughter.)  One-track mind, OK.  Talking to the nice lady, every thing going well, every once in a while she would turn and say, ³Shut up!²  (Laughter.)  Still no good, heıs still bouncing up and down.  She turns and she gives me 10 pieces of platinum. A platinum is approximately a thousand dollars in this game world. I have the equivalent of fifty cents in my pocket, starting as a game player. She suddenly gives me ten thousand dollars. This is a tremendous boost.  By the way, when you go into this game, it doesnıt matter who you are, rich, poor, whatever. Everybody starts the game at the same level, starts with the same things. Everything you want, you have to get for yourself or have somebody give to you as you build up your character. Socialization is very important in this game. It is amazing.  So she gives me the 10 pieces of platinum and I turn to the other guy and heıs looking at me... (Crying sound.) She just gave me a small fortune and heıs going, ³What level are you?²  So I decide to take pity on him and I go OOC mode, out of character mode. It means that anything I say, Iım deliberately not role playing, Iım talking person-to-person, and I say to him: ³Iım role playing, Iım not really mad at you, Iım not upset -- Iım just simply role-playing a character." And he types back, ³Whatıs role playing?²  Audience: (Gasping and murmuring.) Adams: Very serious. So I proceed to explain to him and all of the sudden on his avatar was like ³DING². A light bulb goes on over his head -- and heıs role-playing now.  He gets into it a little slowly but he falls into it and we play that night. I played with him. So I was having fun. We went out and killed monsters and looted their corpses. And he was a level 7! Ooh! I was a level 1. So he could go after monsters I didnıt dare attack. And he got some loot that there was no way I could get. And he gave 90% of it to me. He was really generous and friendly.  At the end of the day I said to him ³This is really nice. You were a tremendous friend to me.²  I kept calling him Young Sir. ³You were a tremendous friend to me, Young Sir. I shall always remember you when I become a famous fighter.²  And I had a plan to become a tailor. I know, sounds funny, but hey, it pays well -- let me tell you. And I said, ³Maybe someday Iıll be able to help you out.² And he says, ³Ha ha ha, Iım a level 7. Youıre a 1. Youıll never be able to do anything for me. Never mind, just forget it.²  Yesterday, or just last week, I was playing and I ran across him again. Iım a level 12 now, heıs a level 7 still. I was able to help him tremendously and I told him it was because of the nice things he did for me while I was first playing. The key to this whole thing is, though: Iım getting sucked into this world these designers created, and Iım creating the story as I go along. And there are a thousand other people doing the same thing at the same time. Weıve got guilds; weıve got groups that play together. It is utterly amazing, what is happening. The graphics are still relatively primitive compared to going to see a movie or something like that. But the interaction between people is what makes the game a lot of fun. And there are those people who get in that simply go in, kill the monster, get what you can and get out. Thatıs fine. You can play it that way. They donıt know what role-playing is. For those who jump into the world and wrap themselves in it and want to become an actor, itıs fascinating. Now... you had a question. Audience Member: Yes, I played Ultima Online, which was another online role-playing game.  I played that back in school and I thought it was interesting how we would travel different worlds that you could play on all basically the same map, but eventually the game got so popular that you could build houses. All the land where the people would run around and kill deer and do stuff like that it was all being overrun by houses‹ Adams: It was all being built up.  Audience: Yeah, actually you had people like lobbying for conservation and it was kind of funny. Adams: Could you imagine this in a role playing game? The Green Party! Yeah!! Yeah, absolutely and these types of things happen. And youıll get another group that comes in. Thereıs a very popular thing, in Ultima Online originally, and it still is, players, meaning humans on the game, could kill each other. Normally, youıre playing on the game and you walk up and you want to kill someone, you canıt. You fight. Fight it out till the death. Alright. EverQuest came along and they thought, this is driving a lot of people away. They donıt like the inter-player conflict so weıre going to make it optional. In EverQuest you can be a player killer, or not be a player killer. And if youıre choosing not to be a player killer the other players, in general, canıt hurt you. But they may not help you either. In general the majority of the players are not player killers in most of EverQuest. But there are a couple of servers where anybody logging on to that server is in a player killer world, and thereıs no choice. So they have it both ways for the people that want to play it.  Jerz: Jake, really quick, you have experience in the industry, the stuff that weıve been talking about, graphics versus story-telling; whatıs your experience of that from your side?  Jake Okun: Iım more the opposite of you guys.  I designed games and stuff that were, lacked form and lacked substance in a sense where the player is seeking immediate gratification. Iım talking about first person shooters and stuff. And the 3D graphics.  When you essentially, again, Ultima Online and stuff, those games lack a form of story line. In that sense, consumers can replay the game. A game like Quake 2, those games are still really popular, because thereıs no story line and itıs constantly... Adams: Dynamic. Okun: Šdynamic. Itıs replayable. You donıt play through the story line once because there is no story line. Adams: Like Deus Ex or Half-Life. Good example, you play through Half-Life and youıre not going to play it again. Youıve already played through Half-Life. Jerz Story takes a lot of resources. When you run out of story, youıre done with the game.  Adams: Plus you can only put so much story in there. And if youıre story driven youıve got a one-shot game, so itıs hard -- how do you make it?  Now Deus Ex sort of changed that, because then you can replay it being a different type of character. But still thereıs only one type of story in there.  Okun: And even most single player games out there now, youıre talking about a max playtime of 48 hours, and to invest that much time and resources in developing story lines just is not practical these days. Adams: Now there are some that are different. A good example would be Baldur's Gate 2, which recently came out. Itıs a fantasy role-playing game, something like Ultima Online, but single player. You go in and you control up to 6 characters and you have a story through it.  They literally have close to two or three hundred hours of game play in there and whatıs happened is some people say thatıs too much. That they get tired of it, doing the same thing over and over. So sometimes thereıs got to be a balance between the two to. 48 hours is an average. There are some games that are even shorter. 20 hours and somebody says, ³Hey, I paid 50 bucks for this game, and I only played it for 20 hours, and I wore it out."  Jerz: Amanda, you are writing a game for my class; tell us a little bit about your experiences, learning what gives... what you have to get rid of, in order to use the strengths of the interactive media. Amanda Fullan: Well, a lot of the problems I ran into in the beginning was learning the program language. Like Dr. Jerz said before, Iıd never done any programming before and this is very new to me.  So, a lot of my creations were limited by my programming ability and so I originally wrote out a transcript of things that I wanted to happen in the game and when I went to program it, there would be glitches in things that I couldnıt put into those things that I wanted.  So I ended up cutting out a lot of that original material and some of it is stupid things like you forget to put in a comma and the whole thing wonıt work. For someone whoıs not used to that kind of thing itıs very, very frustrating.  Adams: Computers are very, very literal. If you say one thing they take it exactly the way you say it and not what you meant. Fullan: And so that works with your processes... Adams: It plays havoc with your creative process!  (Laughter.) Jerz: Oh, Scott, could you tell us the story about the bear and the parser.  Adams: Ok, hereıs a very good example of an unintended side effect. I told you about my first game Adventureland. Well, to conserve space in the 16K world, I only looked at the first three letters of the nouns and verbs that people typed in. Thereıs a section where thereıs a bear on a ledge and youıve got to get past this large bear and, being a pacifistic game, youıre not going to be able to kill the bear no matter which way you try. You can give it honey if you want, but honey is one of your treasures and youıre going to end up wasting your treasures.  Jerz: Thatıs why I didnıt get the full score!!  Listen along in: Adams: There is an alternate solution. What I wanted the player to do was to yell at the bear, to scare it off. You could also ³scream² at the bear too, as an acceptable synonym.  Well, I got a fan letter in that just had my whole company rolling in the aisles. It said: We got to that bear on the ledge. We tried giving it the honey and he ate it up and boy that was a treasure and that was no good. So we reloaded the saved game and we went back to that bear. We pushed that bear, we prodded that bear, we tickled that bear, we have gotten so upset with that bear we could get nowhere. So we finally said "Screw the bear!!" And the game replied, "The bear is so startled he falls off the ledge!" (Roaring laughter.) They thought I was a genius programmer!  (Laughter.) Jerz: Dave, from your childhood playing Scott Adams games, do you have any experiences like this with one puzzle that youıve just never been able to solve, and you would like to ask Scott now how to get past it? Shih: Yeah. I hope Iım remembering this correctly. This was around 1981 or 1982. This was before we got the IBM PCıs. We had a TI 99/4A.  Jerz: Oh, yeah! Shih: It came with a very expensive single sided floppy drive if you wanted to have that. But, what most people had was a cassette recorder, and you kind of hooked it into the computer. Thatıs the way that I would play the Scott Adams adventures and you had to get a cartridge that you put in and you would purchase these cassette tapes with the games. The one that I remember the most is, I think it was called "Tomb of Horrors." Iım not sure if "Tomb" was in the title, but there was this moment when you were in a kind of pyramidŠ Adams: Pyramid of Doom. Shih: Pyramid of Doom, right. Pyramid of Doom and youıre supposed to move this block somehow and Iım not sure youıre supposed to get on top of the block to go through kind of a passage way, but youıre supposed to do something to this block and move it out of the way.  I swear I must have spent a couple of weeks (laughter) trying to figure it outŠ Adams: Screw the block! (Laughter)  Shih: I guess I should have been more profane.  (Laughter).  I was twelve. But would you remember that situation? Adams: A very funny thing about Pyramid of Doom.... I didnıt write it.  This is an interesting story. I did seven adventure games, and was starting to think about number eight, when I get, in the mail, a letter from a fan. A fellow by the name of Alvin Files. Heıs a lawyer. He still is, I had email from him recently. But anyway, he was a lawyer and he loved my adventure games so much that he disassembled my source code and figured out my system. I couldnıt even figure out my system. (Laughter). He literally was able back up everything that I had done, figure out how I did it, and he wrote an adventure game and he sent it to me. He wanted to see if it would be alright if he sold it. And I thought wow, this guy really has got something on the ball. To take my code, literally, and take it apart bit by bit, and figure out what it was doing, figure out the system and write a game.  Thatıs what Pyramid of Doom was. I didnıt write that.  Shih: Hmmm, do you have his e-mail address? (Laughter).  Adams: Yes I do. Actually Iıve got hint sheets on my Web site so they can download and see how to get past it.  I did play the game and I did edit it with him. I went back and forth and I said we canıt do that. This is going to be a non-violent game, but in general 80% of the work is his.  I honestly donıt remember the stone thing. Shih: Yeah, yeah.  Adams: So sorry. It was an interesting side note though.  Audience: What do you think of the effect of violence in video games nowadays, how it'sŠ  Adams: Well, I play EverQuest. And in EverQuest the idea is to act and kill the monsters. It is not graphic though. You are sitting there swinging the knife and they're sitting there clawing at you or whatever. You donıt see blood going or you donıt see blood gushing... itıs cartoon violence.     I have seen some graphic, very graphic games. Soldier of Fortune is one that comes to mind, where shooting someone in the groin they kneel over, grabbing themselves, screaming in horror. My feeling of that is itıs too graphic. I donıt need that. I went to see the latest 'Hannibal' movie and walked out halfway. I donıt need that. I donıt need those sort of images burned into my head.  Itıs not fun. Itıs disgusting. Thereıs by nature a violence in us, and man is a violent animal. Weıre not herbivores. We are omnivores who are out there. And in general the male of the species is more violent then the female. There is a need to express that violence, whether it's in professional sports --  let's face it, professional sports is not a knitting club, thereıs a reason for this, that's the way it is. Itıs manıs violence against men, being channeled. And I can see channeling in video games -- thereıs nothing wrong with that. Taking it to extremes though I think is wrong, and going to cause more problems in our society than anything else. Thatıs my personal opinion.  In general, I like, myself, writing games that I know anybody can enjoy. I donıt have to put a label on it and say this is just for "R" rated or "X" rated. When I do a game I just say anybody can play it, anybody can enjoy it.  I can understand writing games for an adult situation. What I canıt understand is writing games that give people the desire to cause more hurt to other people. I donıt like it.  The games I enjoy playing are cooperative. I love playing a cooperative game of EverQuest. I work with people, against the evil that confronts us. I donıt like the player-killer servers, where the desire is to go out and kill the other players. Thatıs not for me. I donıt like that. Iıd like to see less of it myself. I think a world that works together and teams together against a common evil is going to be a far better world than one where youıre going head to head. --- Audience Member: I'd actually like to go back to the comment David made. Talking about these original games and I feel that what made the game so successful wasn't necessarily the storyline, but it was more so the thought process involved to be able to interact with the game. Like, you spent two weeks trying to figure out how to move a block, and I think that is what really... the challenge is what made it really popular.  Shih: With friends too, you play these with friends and you would have a kind of social interaction, which you don't necessarily have now. I mean if you do have a social interaction, with certain kinds of games you're trying to kill the other person, rather than cooperate with the other person. Adams: EverQuest is a good example. I work for a company now. I'm a 9­5 guy and I'm a basic engineer geek, okay?  I may seem very outgoing and forward here in this setting... and I can be. But my normal persona is I'm quiet, an introvert, and I do what I'm doing and I don't really go out to seek people. Got eighty engineers in the company. I maybe know five or six of them.  Started playing EverQuest, we got a group of about ten players together. I know more about them now in the three weeks that we've started playing EverQuest together than I did in the last five years working side-by-side with them. It's a tremendous draw to have something in common that you're enjoying, that just brings out the social aspect of it. Shih: There are some new first person shooters that really stress cooperative playŠ Adams: Tribes. Shih: Yeah, or Counter Strike or games like that. Adams: Counter Strike. Teamwork, you've got to play as a team. You can't play it solo. You got to be a team. Audience Member: I disagree with that. Especially going back to the early days of computers, I think the story carried a lot of the games. Especially text adventure games like anything from Infocom in the early 80's or games like "Portal" [a hypertext by Rob Swigart, Activision, 1986 --DGJ] that came out on a Commodore 64 and stuff like that. A lot of those -- if it wasn't an action game, the story carried it. I mean if it wasn't "Centipede" or something like that, I think the story carried it. Audience Member: I think the story did keep interest in stuff, but what kept people coming back to the game, kept people talking about the game, kept people interested in the game itself was the challenge. Audience Member: To find out how the story ends. Adams: It's like having a book and also having a puzzle that goes with the book. Well, you can't turn the next page of the book until you complete this puzzle. Well the puzzle is the challenge, but you're right, the story is also a draw too, but they're both there. Audience Member: What about the King's Quest games? Jerz: And about this unlocking puzzles, I do assign some interactive fiction in my class and I know that if I were assigning a regular story, students can flip through it and get an idea of the plot and fake their way through a quiz. But if I say, "What's the significance of the queen in the purple section of Photopia" and somebody hasn't played it, they're totally check-mated. There's no way that they can spill that out. So... I know how far each of you got in these games, my students! Audience Member: With games like Quake 3, that comes out and pushes the game with the technology you know, and really demands a lot. Do you think those games are significant? Adams: This is a very good question. Final comment here.  The computers you have today, these PC's with large memory and great video cards, do you know why they're as good as they are? It's not because of Word, it's not because of Excel.  The computers you have today have been pushed to where they are today for one reason only -- and that's computer games. That's what drives the technology. You think otherwise you're kidding. It's a billion dollar industry, easily. And it's the games that require the better technology.  Word will run fine on a Pentium 90. Try playing Quake 3 on a Pentium 90. [At this point, part of the audience left  because the scheduled time for the roundtable elapsed.  However, the panelists remained.]  [At this point, part of the audience left  because the scheduled time for the roundtable elapsed.  However, the panelists remained. --MH.]  Audience Member: With interactive fiction, do you think that as things progress people will write interactive fiction where they don't necessarily code every object?  Adams: Exactly right, you can't. You've got to have the tools in place that allow you to become more and more creative.  People like Amanda here, shouldn't have to be a programmer to put into the media her creative thoughts. Today you have to be. Five years? I don't think that will be the case. Audience Member: Do you think there will be a drive from the audience for text or will it haveŠ  Adams: It doesn't matter what the game is. There will be an underlying tool that you'll be able to use to shape, be creative as you need to. Today, that doesn't exist. It will exist. Audience Member: What's your favorite interactive fiction game?  Adams: Strange thing is now, I don't play text adventure games. I don't like them. Audience: (Laughter)  Adams: I find them too boring.  Audience Member: You do?  Adams: Yeah, they're basically puzzle quests and I got over that about twenty years ago.  [Note: There's a gap in the audio file at this point. --DGJ]  EverQuest is a puzzle quest of a different nature. I like the graphical things. I think text adventures have their place. I've licensed my game to Warthog, they're supposed to be bringing them out on cell phones. So there's a place for text adventures, but I think a really good graphic adventure with really good graphics is going to be wonderful.  Jerz: I'll just jump in here. In the last five years or so, in fact since Graham Nelson made Inform, which is computer programming language that allows people to write "Infocom style" computer games. Since he released that, with a detailed manual, which just came out in the 4th edition (handing a copy to an audience member), the interactive fiction community on the Internet has really gone into a renaissance. I'm an English professor type guy and I really do think there are quite a few interactive fiction games that are definitely of the quality of at least a short story.  Ok, we're not talking novels here, we're not talking epics or Shakespeare, but there's just like the, I'm paraphrasing from Graham Nelson's book but... he explains that although sort of the heyday of interactive fiction is gone... to many people it's tedious, and I kind of joked a little while ago, this is how we played games and it was fun -- and everybody laughed.  It was really fun. It wasn't a date... I mean it was either that or Pong, right? (Laughter) In this case, there are a lot of talented authors... using the tools, and there are plenty of text tools that allow you... For instance, if you want to create a door, Graham Nelson has already got a library that allows you to create a door. You don't have to deal with all the details.  But, if you were going to write a game that had a flying pig in it, OK? And I said, "Matt, a flying pig is dumb, make it a flying gerbil."  Search and replace, and the pig turns to a gerbil. Ok?  So... revision [is easier].  Just like the simple quote "'you are on a beach' unlocks vistas," with the right person who is a talented storyteller a and talented programmer, one person can create an interactive masterpiece, whereas EverQuest requires a lot of people. If somebody, a computer game manufacturer wants to innovate, wants to try something unusual, millions and millions of dollars are at stake. And the computer gaming industry is going to get a choke hold on people who want to try something radical -- unless there is freeware, open source, things like Inform. Low risk areas.  If I come out with a computer game that experiments with a new kind on NPC and it's not a game, it's just a "sit down and have a conversation with an NPC," then that raises the bar for all other NPC's.  Emily Short has done that -- a short story called "Galatea."  The Pygmalion myth, Pygmalion creates Galatea, and falls in love with her.  You are an [art critic] walking into an art gallery, and there's the statue of Galatea come to life. It's a branching conversation tree. It's a moody character study. It's not a game. It's a different kind of textual experience. It's as different from graphic computer games as poetry is from novels, as novels are from rap music.  But, within that realm, within that new realm of interactive fiction, people are experimenting. They're trying new things. They're learning how to tell a story when you've got to manage all these multiple branches, so that text games don't have to be tedious. You know, for me sometimes a dungeon crawl is very, very tedious, but there are times when I want to map that maze. You know? Sometimes finishing a crossword puzzle  -- what have you done when you've finished a crossword puzzle? You've finished a crossword puzzle. That's all you need to do. And, sometimes I want to frag bad guys.  I don't always need a story... Interactive fiction of twenty years ago -- it really has changed quite a lot. And there's an annual competition, if you only have time to play a couple of interactive fiction games, look up the interactive fiction annual competition and play the two or three winners each year, and you'll see how far interactive fiction has come. It's definitely up there with the best of Infocom's games, as far as story depth. And there are plenty of obsessed people who spend a lot of time following this stuff. Adams: And if you want to try a graphic adventure game there's a new one out that was very big in Europe and it's finally been published in the United States and that's Longest Journey. It can get tedious in the conversations. It's also PG-13 or R rated at points, but it is an excellent example of what somebody can do with a graphic adventure game. Audience Member: Is Inform a designers' manual, or what is Inform? Is it  aŠ  Jerz: Inform is a computer programming language. It looks a little bit like C. It's object oriented and it's a free language that some guy created because he wanted to make interactive fiction games and he just gave it for free over the Internet. Look up Graham Nelson and Inform in any search engine, you'll find it. Okay? Alright. Take my class. Writing electronic texts, English 309.  Audience Member: Is it fun?  Jerz: Yep, yep, three of these guys, their projects in the class is writing interactive fiction using Inform... Also, like I said, there is an obsessive group of Internet fanatics. Matt posted a programming problem. He wanted to code a case of cigarettes and people just sent him codes -­ here try this, try that.  Adams: Are you using Usenet when you're doingŠ Jerz: Yes, it's the Usenet discussion group rec.arts.int-fiction.  Audience Member: I have a question. I've heard a lot of terms and a lot of people talking that are very much role-playing like, with paper and pencil type of role playing. How much, if any, of an influence would you say that has had? I mean you mentioned dungeon crawl, you mentioned Tomb of Horrors which is actually a D&DŠ Jerz: Will Crowther the creator of the original Colossal Cave Adventure, was a Dungeons and Dragons fan. In his role playing in Dungeons and Dragons his character was ³Willie the Thief² and in the Colossal Cave Adventure, in the maze you meet a thief. So, definitely, absolutely, also J.R.R. Tolkien is another strong influence.  Audience Member: What's your take on the bleed-over between EverQuest and selling things on Ebay?  Do you think that's going to get more and more prevalent?  Adams: That's a good question. I went out to Ebay and did a search on EverQuest. Try it yourself sometime. I found somebody selling ³in game money² for real world money. In other words you want to buy 2000 platinum it'll cost you 100 dollars. You want to buy a full character that's already at level fifty, cost you 1500 dollars. There's a lot ofŠ Audience Member: If you have nothing better to spend your money on.  Adams: And you who's paying it? Guys similar to me. Older guys, they get hooked into the game. They have a successful career. Jerz: And have lives, yeah.  Adams: And have lives, and want to play the game at a higher level and don't want to work their wayŠ Audience Member: Šjust don't want to waste the time building up the pointsŠ  Adams: To me it's not a waste. To me the fun is the build up. I don't want to be that higher level character unless I got there on my own. But, other people play differently. They just enjoy playing the higher level character.  Audience Member: Do you think as games become more sophisticated, that's going to happen more and more? Adams: Sure, you'll pay someone to play the game for you. Get it to the point where it is that you want to play it at. Jerz: Start a business idea, guys?  ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Coda Adams continued speaking afterwards at a small reception sponsored by the Department of English, where he offered career advice and gave away free copies of his most recent text game, "Return to Pirate's Island 2.".  Later, he took several starving students out to dinner. He got more and more generous as the day wore on. I hope he had as much fun on his visit as we did. My students already want him to come back. --DGJ (Complete text and audio of the entire panel are available from http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/if/adams/ and http://www.xyzzynews.com/) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ LEGALESE +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ XYZZYnews is published by Eileen Mullin, 160 West 24th Street, # 7C, New York, NY 10011, USA. E-mail: eileen@interport.net. URL: http://www.xyzzynews.com/. Send all inquiries, letters, and submissions to any of the addresses above. Contents (c) 2001 XYZZYnews. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. Electronic versions: The plain-text version of XYZZYnews can be viewed with any text reader. You can also read this issue online at http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.20.html. To be added to the mailing list, please write to eileen.interport@rcn.com. 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