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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Drama in IF: Limited?
Message-ID: <G9JK2p.8A3@world.std.com>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 23:04:00 GMT
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Daryl McCullough <daryl@cogentex.com> wrote:
>For example, in "Romeo and Juliet". It was a big mistake for
>Juliet to fake her death without letting Romeo in on the plan.
>So, if the audience could make decisions for her, the terrible
>mixup wouldn't have occurred, and the two lovers would have
>rode off into the sunset to live happily ever after.

Plenty of IF doesn't allow the player/audience to make
decisions for the character, though, railroading (with
full interactivity) the player into a particular action
by simply making the game not advance until the player
allows the character to make the required decision.

As such, I really don't understand your entire argument,
which seems to be assuming that IF can't do that.

There's a separate argument of the form "good IF leverages
interactivity by allowing the player to make real decisions
of significant consequence, and hence there are certain kinds
of drama that are not attainable by good IF", but I think it's
pretty clearly false (although I believe something quite
closely related, but largely irrelevant to this discussion).

SeanB
