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From: jont@harlqn.co.uk (Jon Thackray)
Subject: Re: A bill of players' rights
In-Reply-To: neilg@fraser.sfu.ca's message of Thu, 20 May 1993 01:32:03 GMT
Message-ID: <JONT.93May20112708@ml.harlqn.co.uk>
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Organization: Harlequin Limited, Cambridge, England
References: <1993May18.223852.18303@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
	<1993May19.195915.20566@infodev.cam.ac.uk> <neilg.737861523@sfu.ca>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1993 11:27:08 GMT

In article <neilg.737861523@sfu.ca> neilg@fraser.sfu.ca (Neil K. Guy) writes:

   gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (G.D. Rees) writes:

   > [...]  But which of these games would you rather play:

   >    You are on the south side of a chasm.
   >    >north

   >    You plunge to your death.
   >    *** You have died ***

   >or:

   >    You are on the south side of a chasm.
   >    >north
   > 
   >    You decide not to throw yourself to your death.

    The former. The latter makes presumptuous assumptions. Maybe I *do*
   want to kill myself for some obscure thanatoid reason. Then, if I'm
   playing a well-written game that uses an UNDO feature like that built
   into TADS, I simply undo the last move. No problem.

Well there are games around where you have to make the ultimate
sacrifice, for example Acheton and Last Days of Doom from Topologika.
In Acheton, one had to arrive in Hades and solve a puzzle to complete
the game. There were plenty of opportunities to die within the game,
but from many of them one couldn't complete even after having died. So
part of the puzzle was to find a correct place to die. Under these
circumstances, dying seems a perfectly valid thing for the game to do.
What is unreasonable is to make the player explore a maze, where many
wrong turnings cause death and end of game, ie death happens too often
and there's nothing to be gained from it.
--

Jon Thackray                    jont@harlqn.co.uk       44 223 872522 (voice)
Harlequin Ltd.                  jgt1@phx.cam.ac.uk      44 223 872519 (fax)
Barrington Hall
Barrington
Cambridge CB2 5RG
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