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From: mike@skaro.lawlib.wm.edu (Mike Phillips)
Subject: Re: Marketing, was Re: C
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References: <30C5D93F.4F7B@cis.compuserve.com> <60.7496.4154.0N2024A5@canrem.com> <4af1hp$nn0@news.infi.net> <kkn6DeG00WB40Jv_Uz@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 15:36:51 GMT
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In article <kkn6DeG00WB40Jv_Uz@andrew.cmu.edu>, "Andrew C. Plotkin"  wrote:
>
>To be completely honest, I think a lot of it is Golden Age Syndrome.
>Anything ten years old is terrific. We remember _Beyond Zork_. Anyone
>look back fondly on _Moonmist_? (If you do, substitute some other game
>you didn't like.) The good stuff sticks in memory. 

Well, *I* look back fondly on Moonmist.  I played Zork I (briefly) 
shortly after it came out, but it never floated my boat, so to speak.
As a result, I didn't touch IF again, even though the same friend who 
made me play it on his computer (we didn't have one yet) loved it, and 
Zork II, and who knows what else.

Then, some time later, I played Moonmist, and enjoyed it tremendously.
Maybe it was the atmosphere, maybe it was the secret passages, maybe it
was because I'm *not* a clever person at all, and the puzzles didn't 
kill me (and, in fact, to *me* never seemed to get in the way).  Then 
again, that was quite a while ago, and I don't remember much about it 
other than the satisfaction at getting through a secret door, the 
curiosity to explore, and the fact that there were four games (sort of)
in the one.  I will probably be re-playing Moonmist this week, so my 
opinion is subject to change :-)

There isn't a point buried above, really, other than yeah, the good 
stuff sticks in memory, but tastes vary.

>Advantages that Infocom had that we currently lack:
>
>1) Much more beta-testing. No game I've seen here has been really
>polished until the second or third *public* release.

Well, they were more organized ;-)

I think that if authors swapped thoughts on what good/bad things people
thought they did (say feature 'A' seemd to draw a positive response, but
feature 'B' received no comments or only negative ones), it would be  
a start.  A good place to start: XYZZYNews articles ;-)

>2) Much more internal design support. By which I mean, Infocom people 
>(being in a company of full-time people) obviously spent some amount
>of time looking over each other's shoulders, chatting at lunch about
>programming points, etc, etc. We talk a lot about design in general,
>but we're very secretive about specifics. This makes sense; the only
>people we can discuss them with are the audience who're going to play
>the final product! But the difference shows up in a sort of raggedness
>*between* games. There's less consistency. 

Two points to make in response:

(a) Someone has already proposed hashing out a sort of 'standard of 
    interface' document, not at all a bad idea, even if only useful 
    as a rule of thumb sort of thing.

(b) It spoils some of the pleasantries and surprises in the current 
    crop of games to have a wide-open discussion forum such as r.a.i-f
    in which to discuss *specifics*.  However, some are able to 
    surmount that (anywhere from IRC, talk, or MUD sessions to bounce 
    ideas in real-time, to phone conversations, to e-mail, to having 
    a housemate who enjoys this stuff to just chat with).

    Why not create a *small* e-mail roundtable in which authors of a 
    particular system (say, Inform or TADS) can chat up their 
    experiences?  And warn non-authors signing up that major spoilers 
    and lots of disappointment could accrue from listening in on 
    conversations before the games are released?

    It could also result in a large/consistent pool of beta-testers.

    Of course, then one realizes that the last thing that's needed is
    Yet Another IF Forum.....  I know I'd be more comfortable talking 
    about/asking for input on the largish game I'm working on if I 
    don't feel like half the potential audience is listening in (which 
    I do on r.a.i-f, and I'd like to not spoil what pleasure may come 
    from it long before it gets into a beta-testing form, much less
    a <gasp> release).

>That's the sort of raggedness I mean. Different games make very
>different assumptions about level of detail of action, level of detail
>of description, amount of hand-holding, etc, etc. These are not just
>deliberate differences of difficulty; they're different assumptions
>about how games should go.

    Well, I like simple-to-medium with some hand-holding, and I think a 
new, free beginner-level game would be a good idea :-)

>What we can do about it:
>
>There is nothing we can do about it.

    Not so sure about this (see above), although I'm sure we all disagree
over exactly what to do about it :-)

    Mike Phillips, mike@lawlib.wm.edu


