Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Path: news.duke.edu!newsgate.duke.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!alnews.ncsc.mil!feed.news.qwest.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!netnews.com!newsfeed.nyc.globix.net!uunet!ash.uu.net!world!buzzard
From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Trinity: Explanation Please. (HEAVY SPOILERS)
Message-ID: <GGLqJ1.7LF@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 05:13:49 GMT
References: <T_o37.266$jB4.84992@news.pacbell.net> <Xns90E0A870FBDF0pt101594@209.155.56.97> <MPG.15bd59f311ed0afb98968f@spamkiller.newsfeeds.com> <9j0dbn$njh$1@news.panix.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 43
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:64307

Andrew Plotkin  <erkyrath@eblong.com> wrote:
>Does anyone know when this IF convention -- a puzzle which you cannot
>possibly expect to solve the first time you play -- was first
>categorized as a bad thing?

DikuMUD is a mud system which doesn't really allow programming
by its "wizards", only some kind of fill-in-the-blanks scripting
(or at least that's how it was when I played it).

One of the things it allowed creating was instant-death-rooms--
rooms where when you walked in, you died.

This was fairly obviously to me bad game design when I played
them, which would have been sometime between 1989 and 1992.

It's obviously not literally the same thing as you're describing
(especially given the huge difference between single-player
gaming and multi-player gaming--[the latter does not allow
save/restore, but then again doesn't end the game when you
die]), but it's similar enough that I suspect I would have
said learn-by-dying was bad design in 1990.

>When I first played Trinity, not only did I not categorize that as a
>bad thing, I didn't even categorize it as a thing that makes the game
>harder. You walk through a door and are teleported into space? That's
>not a *difficulty* -- or rather, it is a difficulty, but so is a
>locked door. It's an area that I don't know how to enter yet. Restore
>the game and start keeping an eye out for space suits.

There was always a big difference between Lucasarts and Sierra
adventures--Sierra adventures would kill you, and Lucasarts ones
wouldn't--you didn't need to paranoiacally save in the LA oes.
So if we focus on "it's ok to need to restore" that puts us
back to whenever Lucasarts adventures started being that way (which
might even have been from the start, I think Maniac Mansion was
pretty forgiving); it was fairly obvious to me when I played them
that this was a more user-friendly game design--which Sierra
eventually addressed by adding an 'undo' option when you died.

Obviously a matter of opinion about whether this is really
the same thing as what you're asking.

SeanB
