Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
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From: ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christopher E. Forman)
Subject: Re: The entries re-revisited
Message-ID: <1995Oct19.143125.154695@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 14:31:25 GMT
References: <459l7o$7ru@flood.xnet.com> <GDR11.95Oct19135854@stint.cl.cam.ac.uk>
Organization: Illinois State University
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Gareth Rees (gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: I disagree.  I dont' like having to read through lots of introductory
: material before starting to play an adventure game.  If I wanted to read
: a short story or a novel, I would do so (and the best novels are far
: better written than the best IF introductions).  Interactive fiction is
: supposed to be *interactive*, right?  So the background and sense of
: belonging should be established as part of the game, interactively.

True, but some I-F games need to provide a substantial amount of background
instead of simply hurling you into the game without a clue.  Take my
upcoming release, for instance.  I included a long introduction for the
purpose of establishing the 11 major NPCs you are able to interact with.
Theoretically, your character should have grown up knowing these people
and how to act around them, so it's necessary to point this out to the
player (who doesn't know) when the game begins.  With 11 NPC's, this takes
considerable text to accomplish.

: When playing an Infocom game, I never read the packaging material until
: I've finished the game or until I get stuck and suspect there might be a
: hint in the packaging.  If I try to read it before I've played the game,
: then it just bores me.  It's the same with long introductions; for
: example, I've never had the patience to read the whole of the "Beyond
: Zork" opening spiel.  Perhaps I'll go back and take a look if I ever
: finish the game.

This is the best way to handle it, if you hate long introductions.  But
please don't say they're just plain wrong -- some of us happen to like them.

Let me share my own experience regarding long intros, and you'll see that
it's impossible to please everyone.  I mentioned long intros on r.a.i-f
awhile back, when I posted a message about having trouble displaying text
in Inform.  I received a few replies that suggested shortening the intro,
claiming too much text is offputting.  So when I took the four days to
write MST3K, I decided, rather than having the text as an intro in the
Z-code itself, to store it as a separate text file.  This, of course,
required PKZIPping the file to put it on the archive.  I got complaints
about THAT, since a lot of players don't use DOS.  I was also asked why
I didn't simply make the intro part of the game.  So I thought, okay,
people complain if I have a long intro.  They complain if I DON'T have a
long intro.  What to do, what to do?  Finally, I decided, "screw it, I'll
do it the way I want to."

Sorry to waste bandwidth like this (and I doubt those of you who hate
long intros will actually bother to read the above), but I just thought I'd
mention how frustrating it is to try to please people with wide tastes in
I-F.  So I'm going to do the game my way, and the people who like it will
stick with the series.


-- 
C.E. Forman                                      ceforma@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
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