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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [Comp 01] Beta-tester's review: Vicious Cycles
Message-ID: <Gn1HCp.JGs@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:38:49 GMT
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Because most of this applies in general, I have
removed essentially all the spoilers for Vicious Cycles,
but there is one sort-of-meta one left that I hope is
really irrelevant.

























DaveL <mityjack2@adelphia.net> wrote:
>[availability of an alternate ending in Vicious Cycles]

One should, I think, never consider multiple endings in
and of themselves a strength of a game. As an author, one
risks alienating one's players by including an unsatisfying
ending that the players will attribute to the author as
the author's sole intent. The availability of more alternatives
mean there are more (slightly-different) works that the author
is responsible for; the author is still the author, and must
answer for the game experience had by a player who is
participating within the boundaries expected by the author.
(I.e., the author isn't at fault for a player who, say, spends
the entire game typing 'BLOW ON COW'.)

Let me be more specific; first with a negative and then
with a positive (about the possibility in general).

In any purely-written medium--books, screenplays--professionals
describe it as a cliche newbie-mistake to provide a 'finished'
work, and to say 'oh yes, and I included both an up and a down
ending, take whichever one you prefer'. As a creator, one
strives to make the work the best possible work it can be; and
that entails *knowing how it will end* when writing it, and
filtering the entire work through that sensibility.

But, I hear you say, IF is different because it's *interactive*.

And you're right, and that is my second, positive, point. Of
all the artistic media, interactive ones allow a personal
customization not otherwise possible, and that can be a
powerful tool. But it's a dangerous, tricky tool. You want
to give each player the best possible experience--the most
impact, the most fun, whatever effect you're trying to
have on them. If you can really pull that off, great.

However, what faces us in Vicious Cycles is not that at all.
Everyone I know finished it the obvious way--because of the premise,
the story, the presentation of the player character, and most
importantly, because _there_was_a_puzzle_to_be_solved_by_the_player_,
and stopping early wouldn't have allowed solving it. Not that
I even realized stopping early was an option; but had I, I
cannot imagine I would have felt the ending satisfactory,
since it would have left the game qua game unfinished.

Indeed, an enormous number of games not widely considered
actually have multiple endings already, but since the endings
are marked as "losing" endings, and they generally result in
seeing only some small fraction of the entire game/story,
these are not considered "real" multiple endings.  I suspect
(without having seen it) that VC's alternate ending falls
into this category.

At least there it's based on semi-informed user decision; in
some past games it's based on player actions while having effectively
no predictable relation to the player's actions, so it can hardly
be considered to be maximizing the impact of the work on
the player. I wrote a miniature game as part of my comp
reviews last year on this matter: http://nothings.org/games/if/ill.zip

The best way to leverage multiple endings is not with a player
choice right before the ending, with a lady-or-the-tiger
feel, but by making use of it as a *tool* that enables player
expressiveness in other ways. "Galatea" and "Best of 3" are probably
the best example of this; the game gives the player a wide-ranging
freedom to play as desired, and follows this through all
the way to a variety of endings that emerge as a *natural*
consequence of *all* your actions through the game. (I don't
think this is particular to conversation games; I suppose
"Masquerade" might also be this way.)

Mind you, I'm coming down rather hard on this point, because
I don't think _this_feature_ makes VC a better game. I did,
however, rank VC number 2 out of 50 games this year, based on
the strength of the structure and design of the main puzzle
section. I think, despite the multiple endings, it clearly
sends a certain negative message about technology, whether
the author intended that message or not; a message that I
do not care for but am willing to ignore given the quality
of the game design, in the same way that most of the IF
community seems willing to ignore interactivity for the sake
of story/writing.

SeanB
