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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: you people are masochists: on quitting
Message-ID: <G4Bw79.Iq@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 14:57:09 GMT
References: <G45vtz.791@world.std.com> <EsZR5.26287$0X4.5195459@typhoon.southeast.rr.com> <8v9s62$lk2$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk> <8vb40q$43a$1@nnrp1.deja.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 111
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:58802

The following is an awfully defensive article on my part
in which I explain my state of mind and intentions as
regarding this thread.  As such it is probably an utter
waste of time and maybe I should just label it off-topic.

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

In article <8vb40q$43a$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,  <a_raisanen@my-deja.com> wrote:
>Whether we are talking about reviews or critiques, it can be done
>tactfully. That's all Greg was asking for. Sean's first message in this
>thread was admittedly rather provocative from a game author's point of
>view.

It's arguably provocative from a game player's point of view,
since I accuse them of being masochists in the subject line.

In the body of the text, however, it was only phrased in the
form of a question ("what are you people, masochists?") if
I recall correctly, so I'm afraid I'm guilty of being intentionally
provocative in the subject line, in that worst way that magazines
and some newspapers are.

For those trying to follow along at home with their dictionaries,
please note that I was not accusing competition players of
deriving sexual pleasure from physical pain, but the secondary
more generalized meaning of deriving pleasure of any kind from
suffering. And I had hoped this would be understand as meant
as lightly teasing, although I can see that I didn't cue that at all.

And finally, in the interest of fully contextualizing what I
said so as to make clear why I don't think authors should
feel provoked:

  What I was trying to say (and what I *thought* was successfully
  said; I don't know if people are just misremembering now or
  if I really dropped the communication ball this much or heck whether
  I'm misremembering) was: "why, as a player, *if* you encounter
  something that really reveals the impossibility of playing
  a game, such as the undescribed living room exit in The
  Clock that you (the person I am following up) just mentioned
  in your post, why would you keep playing such a game anyway
  unless you were a masochist?"--and although provocatively stated,
  I was hoping the extremity of that word choice would suggest
  I didn't feel *that* strongly but rather was actually looking
  for an answer, but since I didn't get one I may well have
  failed here, or it may just be something people can't explain
  rationally--followed by "and for what it's worth, here are
  the reasons why I stopped playing all the games I stopped
  playing".  In no way was the second intended to say "everyone
  should have stopped playing these games".  Clearly, for
  something like Enlistment, there can be issues with luck
  of the draw; I got unlucky and got rather stumped
  on the very first action of the game, whereas, say, Kaged
  I didn't get stuck until quite a bit later.  At the very
  instant I was posting it, it would not have surprised me
  at all had someone else experienced the exact opposite;
  indeed, it was an invitation to discuss just those sorts
  of things.

Either nobody understood it was an invitation to discuss/debate
on those terms, or nobody wanted to do so.  Actually, there was
one response, about my explanation of Planet of the Infinite
Minds, offering an alternative point of view, on which we had
a very brief discussion.

The list of why I chose to quit can also be viewed from the
point of view of authors examining the list (as opposed to
players comparing notes).  In that regards, and as represented
by my follow-up post about Enlistment, I consider my willingness
to study on my thought processes in detail and post them
here a service to authors, not a disservice; since the
role of the author is to create experiences in the player's
mind through the medium of IF, a careful transcript of the
experience of my mind through that medium (as in the followup)
or just a brief account of my reaction to the game can be
viewed as a piece of data for the author to consider and
factor in, or not, based on his judgement of that experience.
If the author looks at this data and says "this player was
a moron" or "this player is too impatient and not the kind
of player I care about", that's fine, but hey, for a game
like "The Trip", it still provides feedback about the fact
that some players *are* having that reaction to the game.

I could, of course, have individually
emailed every author with that piece of data, but since the
exact same data might be of value for discussion amongst
players for other reasons, and since authors might find
value as well from seeing similar data for other games, I
chose to post it in a public forum.

When the author of Enlistment expressed dissatisfaction or
disbelief that my brief account of my experience with his
game was a fair or reasonable way to approach a game,
I invested a rather long time (much longer than I had invested
in the game) in providing the details; and even that account
seemed useful to share with other authors (so maybe I
should have shifted to r.a.i-f) since I noticed several
other games that made similar mistakes with default responses
that could mislead the player and since the dangers of using
the rules of traditional fiction writing without considering
the rules of IF writing are something I like harping on (e.g.
the Metamorphoses exits discussion).

And after my followup post about Enlisted, I shifted to email with
the author since none of the content seemed like it would be of
potential value to anyone else.

And now I'm going to stop explaining my posts and go back
to finishing my reviews (yay I'm on my last one).

SeanB
