Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Review of Russ Bryan's Review of Andrew Pontious's Capsule Reviews of Contest Games
Message-ID: <erkyrathE20FAJ.BIA@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL1]
References: <5826jv$1h8@news.thorn.net> <JcaPGFA17GqyEwg7@amster.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 20:51:55 GMT
Lines: 62
Sender: erkyrath@netcom.netcom.com
Path: nntp.gmd.de!news.ruhr-uni-bochum.de!news.uni-stuttgart.de!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!news.gtn.com!news.frankfurt.ecrc.net!news.ecrc.de!news.cybernet.dk!news.algonet.se!eru.mt.luth.se!solace!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!netcom.com!erkyrath

Bob Adams (amster@amster.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> ["generic" fantasy plots"]
> Strangely enough, if you examine the output from the commercial IF 
> houses - guess what is still the most common theme for a plot?

Commercial IF houses have very little to do with what I'm interested in. 
I dislike almost all of what they do.

> And it was also this point that disturbed me the most when reading the 
> scores and reviews. I saw someone say that his reviews did not 
> necessarily equate to his scores (duh, I'll have to lie down for a 
> while to comprehend that one!)

Sorry. Maybe I shouldn't have called my reviews "reviews". They were my 
comments on the pieces, with an eye to what I'd like the author to 
change, or fix, or do more of. They really weren't "reviews" in the sense 
of saying whether I thought other people would like them. (They included 
comments on whether *I* liked them, which is at least as important in a 
review, but they did not attempt to be complete or consistent on that 
subject.) 

I was willing to allocate five words to an aspect I liked, and five
paragraphs to an aspect I didn't like, *even if the aspect I liked had
more impact on my final score*. I was willing to pick out and analyze the
single good aspect of a game I didn't really like at all. That's what I
mean when I say the comments did not necessarily equate to my ratings. 
See?

> but I definitely didn't like the 
> inference that if a reviewer didn't like the storyline (or even worse, 
> the utility used) then he didn't like the adventure.

But it's true. If I don't like the story, I will tend to not like the 
book (or movie, or in this case, game.)

> Sorry guys but your own personal pet loves and hates doesn't (shouldn't) 
> come into it. You were supposed to be judging and scoring according to 
> the authors all-round competence

You make this supposition, but I don't accept it, and I don't see 
anything in the rules to imply that Whizzard intended it.

> Otherwise, next year the authors will find out who the judges are and 
> what their favourite plot is - and write an adventure to suit. Is that 
> what you really want?

There were 60 judges in this year's competition, discounting the "Miss
Congeniality" contest. That must have been a fairly representative sample
of the readership of r.a.i-f and r.g.i-f. If the authors write to suit
that audience -- the newsgroup readership -- wow, are you surprised? Isn't
that we're *all* doing, implicitly, by reading this newsgroup at all? If I
wrote a game that I thought you people wouldn't enjoy (and I did), I
certainly wouldn't enter it in the competition with the expectation of
winning (and I didn't. I only entered "Lists" because I thought you 
people would find it worth a giggle.)

--Z

-- 

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