Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: jorn@chinet.chi.il.us (Jorn Barger)
Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction as Literature
Message-ID: <C4L5Bq.Gp6@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
References: <1993Mar26.162906.14760@ultb.isc.rit.edu> <1993Mar27.113721.24786@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <schweda.733251021@vincent1.iastate.edu>
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 06:14:13 GMT
Lines: 34

Chris Schweda writes:
>[Mark Woodward writes:]
>>  [...]  My first impression was that as a medium it had real
>>promise, but it seems hard to break the 'game' mode.
>
>At first, this was my impression, too. 
>But I read Robert Graves's White Goddess and changed my mind.

Hmmmm... a videogame about a culture centered around poetic values, co-opted
by violent patriarchy? (Tell me more! ;^)

>I was drawn to IF several years ago
>after reading Joseph Campbell's _Hero With A Thousand Faces_; I realized
>quite quickly that Infocom's fantasy/sorcery games possess many of the same
>mythological elememts of which Campbell frequently wrote about -- the idea
>of the lone hero beginning a quest, deciding whether or not to continue
>the quest, receiving help, etc. etc. [...] would a literate IF game be almost
>unplayable if its aim were more highbrow and more (strictly speaking)
>"literate?"

So long as the puzzles are all 'materialistic' (arrange physical items in
a certain way), the mythology will necessarily be painted on...  But if
you can add enough psychological simulation that *solving the puzzles*
demands 'simulated virtue'... then I think you begin to tap deeper emotional
responses.

Courage, humility, honesty, self-restraint, justice, charity, optimism...

Some role-playing games give points for virtuous acts, don't they?

jorn@chinet.chi.il.us



