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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: JRW Author Reviews
Message-ID: <G4CGxG.LC3@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 22:24:51 GMT
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Stephen Granade  <sgranade@phy.duke.edu> wrote:
>Wait, what? In one case the mood of the intro is ruined for you. In
>the other case the mood of the intro is ruined for him. I fail to see
>how we can decide between the two based on the information currently
>available.

I'm not clear how the mood of the intro is ruined for
him.  Does double-clicking on the game to launch it
ruin the mood of the intro for him?  Presumably not,
because the game hasn't started yet.  The game uses
the operating system as a delivery vehicle, leaving
startup under control of the user, of course.

Once the "game" has started "running" on the interpreter,
the interpreter itself is now a a delivery vehicle for
the game, and I don't see why, if an author chooses
to not yet start the game and instead provide meta-information,
one can claim the "mood" of the "intro" is ruined, since
there is not yet an intro.

It's like bitching at somebody for wrapping their retail
box in shrinkwrap, because having to unwrap the shrinkwrap
"ruins the mood" of the product.

Is it annoying?  Possibly--especially when it's as poorly
designed as the little top-edge seals on CDs.  Is this
case a little different; sure, because you might launch
the game multiple times.

On the other hand, some users are known to launch their
interpreters, then from within the interpreter browse
to the game and launch it.  Now, this requires extra
UI activity, but that's not my point: the point is that
somebody doesn't get in there with the interpreter open
but no game loaded and say "the mood is ruined".

Ok, obviously, maybe somebody really does feel like their
mood is ruined by this, but I don't see how it can be the
mood of the *intro*, or of the *game* itself.

Ok, gedankenexperiment time. Suppose the next game I
release starts off with a blank screen that just says
"[press any key to begin]". Is that going to piss people
off too? And how about if I start it off with a quotation--
something somebody *else* wrote instead of something else
I wrote, and you have to hit a key to get past that. Have
I somehow ruined my game now? This is a case where I not
only don't see where to draw the line, I really don't
understand what line you're trying to draw.

Certainly there is a user-interface argument to be made;
each requires more actions under various conditions, and
the shrink-wrap analogy is imperfect since *every* time
you launch a game you face it's meta-intro.  But the
cost of an extra keystroke every time you restart is
very different from the cost of the mid-game ABOUT.

Last gedankenexperiment: I release a game in two versions,
one with the meta-controls at the beginning of the game,
one which the meta-controls are only available after you've
started the game, via a menu launched by about. Does the
person who dislikes having to configure things at the start
complain now that they have to choose between two different
games before they can launch their game, and making that
choice ruins the mood of the game? And isn't there an
analogy between that situation and, say, putting the exact same
choice in an introductory menu?

SeanB
