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From: svanegmo@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen van Egmond)
Subject: Re: What could IF be??
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Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 09:15:13 GMT
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Jean-Henri Duteau  <jeand@myrias.com> wrote:
>We tend to talk about IF as if it were a distinct medium from the rest
>of the gaming world, trying desperately to associate it with the
>FICTION in IF rather than the INTERACTIVE.  Yes, yes, I know that's a
>pretty broad statement, but I think it applies in many cases, and I'd
>like you to bear with me on it.

I'm not sure that what I have been seeing is desperation.  The tools to 
create the interactivity side seem to be maturing fairly well.  Parsers 
come pre-fabricated and can handle a fair range of input; they can be 
coerced into handling more.  Lord knows what neato natural language 
gadgets Microsoft or Bell Labs or the OZ Project or MIT are sitting on.

At any rate, the recognition has surfaced that the fiction part has been 
woefully neglected, and what the gender war, and much of this newsgroup 
for the past 5 years, has been about is what the parameters of that art 
should be.  Picture filmmakers in the 30s and 40s, recording sound and 
image, producing newsreels and cheezy westerns: "How do we make this better?"

Anyway, moving on ...

>The whole idea of the main character of a work of IF not being defined
>seems to me to be a problem and a major one of that.  What if you read
>GONE WITH THE WIND without knowing (or learning) anything about
>Scarlett?  It would be an extremely boring work (almost as boring as
>it's sequel).

As a counterexample, tell me who the main character was in Pulp Fiction.  
Or Shallow Grave.

A story can be told without having to focus on one character.  I look 
forward to the IF that does that...

For the point of a game, it may be necessary to fix the player in time, in
place, in gender, in history, in familty situation, which character in the
story they are (cf. Hitch Hiker's Guide/Suspended) and so on.  Or these 
variables may be left to range freely.  Both can be interesting. 

We've even talked around here of placing the character into an unsavoury 
role: forced to do things they normally would not -- murder, pillage, 
take the tags off of mattresses, etc.

>  So then why do we do it in IF?  Why do we make our main
>characters (the ones normally played by the user) undefined?

Because it works.  Play A Change In The Weather.  That's you sleeping in 
the cave, or admiring the sunset.  Maybe the author was lazy; but then, 
why construct a persona if it doesn't add anything to the story?

>  We should be
>observers watching the story as it unfolds with an additional ability
>to observe what we want to observe, how we want to observe it and also
>take a role in the actions that unfold.

I tend to think of this as the God model: the player is God, shaping 
events, observing them from wherever sie pleases.  My friend and I had a 
great time coming up with a game where you could

> DROP PIANO ON YOUNG HITLER 
... and observe the changes in history.   It seems Infocom thought of 
this game (perhaps as a joke), as can be seen from the Masterpieces CD.

The mathematics of it is depressing, though:  if in every situation you
get 2 choices, to give the player 8 choices in a row requires 256
"outcomes" to be written, not to mention whatever leads to those outcomes
in the meanwhile -- a total of 511.  Think of what you could do with 511
branches in an IF game instead.

>NOTE: This requires the authors to demand some basic intelligence and
>desires on the part of the users.  We have to believe that they will
>want the main characters to survive and prosper (or do whatever is
>required to "win the game").

What was that someone said about pushing, pulling, looking inside, 
looking under, smelling, kicking and picking up everything in sight? :)

>"Choose-Your-Adventure" books worked like this.

They also let the reader project themselves into the lead role quite 
frequently.


But that's what's cool about IF.   All this diversity fits into the 
genre and it's not about what is objectively Good or Bad, because there's 
no such thing.  The analogy to film is quite strong and worth thinkikng 
about.

/Steve
