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From: 94mcneim@wave.scar.utoronto.ca (Douglas McNeil)
Subject: Re: IF Criticism (or, Review of Review: The Light...)
Message-ID: <Dp5AsM.28y@wave.scar.utoronto.ca>
Organization: University of Toronto
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Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 18:45:57 GMT
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Stephen Granade (sgranade@itchy.phy.duke.edu) wrote:

: I believe that, in our race to make interactive fiction a "serious" art  
: form, we have begun to lose sight of the gaming aspect of IF.
: [excellent commentary removed]
: There is amazing pressure on authors now.  Unless games break new ground  
: technically and are artistically wonderful, we seem to look down on them.   

This has been troubling me as well, and it's mildly reassuring to know
that I'm not the only IF fan who has recently been wondering if his taste
for Zork makes him base and uncultured.  Work on my entry for the 1996 IF
Competition started some months ago, and I've seriously considered
abandoning the effort as it may be too much the "text adventure" and not
enough the masterpiece of literary interaction for the modern
discriminating player; at least, if the reviews I've read are
representative. 

Take Gareth's review of JIGSAW, for example.  I have no doubt that he
considers it a stunning accomplishment, and an engrossing game, but
reading his criticism I realise that our standards must be worlds apart: 

"Still, Jigsaw is extremely good by the standards of existing text
adventure games, and certainly good enough to be worth paying the
compliment of taking it seriously. Although it adopts a traditional
puzzlebased style of gameplay, and doesn't make any technical advances
beyond the state of the art, it does wonders with the limited techniques
at its disposal."

Although everything written above is *technically* complimentary, it
leaves me with an uncomfortable feeling, as if something excellent is
being denied its due.  I know that there is no such intent, and I suspect
that the above might be considered high praise by some for an art and
science still in its infancy, but something grates against my heart. 

Someone sees the sun falling through rose clouds in early autumn, and
gives a review.  "Very good; certainly worth taking seriously.  While this
sunset makes no technical advances beyone the standard (perhaps the
creator should consider new research into rule-based simulation theory; an
interactive flock of geese would have improved it), it is nevertheless
worth watching.  Any fan of nature should see it, and I look forward to
future works of God's."

I admit that many of those whose works I consider both artistically
excellent and great fun to play have been among those strongly requesting
the further development of IF criticism; and who am I, author of painfully
little, to object to the masters when *they* request analysis and
commentary?  No one, I suppose, and yet I hesitate to criticise their
works for one of the very reasons I find them enjoyable - their nature as
adventures.  It is because I enjoy them, among hundreds of other reasons,
*as* puzzle-based that I complain (in Christminster) that the phone puzzle
is unfair. 

Perhaps I've insufficiently attended to separating my two streams of
thought, the first concerned with the increasing divide - at least in the
fashionable IF theories - between those of us who like Zork and those of
us who like AMFV - and the second concerned with the new (proposed) wave
of reviewing.  My defence is that they seem to be converging at present,
and I don't know what I think about it.

I'm off to play some more Spritwrak. 


Out of his league, as always,

Doug
