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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Look vs examine vs search
Message-ID: <erkyrathDzI6BB.EKM@netcom.com>
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Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 03:13:59 GMT
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Brad O`Donnell (s7m6@romulus.sun.csd.unb.ca) wrote:
>   Hmmm... How badly would people complain if the verb "search" did 
>  something like the following: (borrowing from Sean Givan a bit)
> [ SearchSub;
>    < Examine Noun >;
>    < LookIn Noun >;
>    < LookUnder Noun >;
> ];

I (as an author) would complain very loudly indeed, and I don't like it 
much as a player either.

Automating actions? No! That's not what I want. If my players are typing 
commands automatically, because trying everything is easier than thinking 
about what they wants to do next, then I have failed as an author. Failed 
in what I'm trying to do. I want every single action the game character 
performs to happen because the player thought, "I want to do this. I want 
to look under this bush. I want to walk over to the bush, get down on my 
hands and knees, lift up some branches, and poke around in the dirt near 
the roots."

As the author, I have to do two things to facilitate this. First, I have 
to ensure that the player can easily communicate this thought to the 
game. We have a mutually-agreed-on language for this purpose; it's 
fuzzily defined, but I think the majority of us would agree that "LOOK 
UNDER BUSH" is a valid (though not the only valid) way of translating 
this thought. Whereas "GET DOWN ON HANDS AND KNEES" is not worth trying.

Second, I must try to make sure that the player doesn't perform the 
action by *accident*. Otherwise the immersion of that mini-scene is gone, 
poof. This is where the balancing game starts. If the player types 
"EXAMINE BUSH", did he mean "get down on hands and knees and poke around 
in the dirt", or "peer closely at a leaf, paying particular attention to 
the texture and color"? What about "SEARCH BUSH"? It's questionable. My
decision has much to do with how much emotional impact I want in the 
scene, finding this thing under a bush. Because I *know* I will guess 
wrong for some players, either way. On the one hand, there will be 
the frustration of players who thought they *did* look under the bush 
when they typed "X BUSH". On the other hand, there will be the sogginess 
of players who discovered the thing under the bush by accident, when they 
never thought of looking down there at all, but only were curious what 
kind of bush it was. *That's* the choice I must make as an author. Which 
failure is less damaging in this particular case?

This is why I would not implement your suggestion, you see? It aids the 
game at the expense of what I'm trying to induce in the player. Nobody 
would use such a verb if they wanted to look at the leaves, or look 
around the roots, or look among the branches; they would use it because 
it's easier than paying attention.

> 				Who wishes that someone else was
> 				interested in being able to type 
> 				"pat head + rub tummy" in a game 
> 				and have it mean something.

I'm interested. I believe there was such a thing in Bureaucracy, right? 
"Turn handle 1 and handle 2" was different from "turn handle 1. turn 
handle 2."

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
