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The 500 Meter Hurdles In Being Wrong About Something
Feb 15th, 2011 by Ice Cream Jonsey


Aric did the heavy lifting
here. The original interview was on PC Gamer, here.

PC Gamer interviewed game developer Jonathan Blow about his upcoming game, and this came to light:

Adventure games are all confusion. If it’s text, it’s “Why doesn’t the parser understand me still?” So the core gameplay of adventure games is actually fumbling through something, right? And that’s true with modern [versions]. All the episodic stuff that’s coming out. And there’s a whole community that makes modern interactive fiction games and all this stuff. And it’s true for all these games.

This is inane and offensive.

There’s something about text adventures that makes everyone feel like a expert historian. You can be given a backpack full of weapons in a first person shooter and be unable to get past a locked door — everyone is OK with that. Reduce the entirety of NFL football to a rating for foot speed and the same three offensive players, and millions of people will buy it at $60, every year.

But type “WIN THE GAME” as your first move in a text adventure, and people can’t keen loudly enough that the illusion is broken. Ha ha ha, look at these idiots! While giving more possibilities for meaningful interaction than all other genres of game and entertainment combined, text game authors haven’t finished the job and created parsers that can pass the Turing Test! Morons!!

But no, the modern day text adventure isn’t about struggling with fucking parser confusion. This would be immediately obvious to anyone who has played a decent modern-day game. I am obligated at this point to prove it, so here’s Narcolepsy. That is the most immersive game of all-time, which maintained mimesis successfully until the last move. It was developed by a wizard of his craft who hated the I CAN’T SEE THE YOU shit that everyone else did. There’s at least two dozen people as talented as Adam who have made similar strides, but Adam basically wrote two complete text adventures depending on the player’s actions at the beginning, thus taking the issue of reacting to player decisions and rocking its world.

I’ve probably read 90% of the reviews and comments on GET LAMP. I miss a few that would appear in Google Alerts because not everyone can spell “lamp.” I would like to note that while people are constantly referencing the limitations of text games, as they pertained to 1979’s Zork, another group of people whine about all the “new guys” in the documentary, and how unwelcome they are. The people that are advancing the art form far beyond what the forefathers ever did, to help stop text games from being a punchline have their work ignored and visages unwelcome. I don’t make text games for the fame and recognition, but good grief.

I was going to write more, but the ‘painting on the ledge’ puzzle in Braid is worse than almost anything I can think of in the whole history of text adventures. There were absolutely no clues that a completely new mechanic was necessary, and the game mechanic involved wasn’t used anywhere else in the game. The thought of anyone seriously discussing what’s wrong with other genres and then brightening at the inclusion of “amnesia” is hilarious, and we all should have known the guy wasn’t speaking with any authority on text games when it was announced that he’s naming his new game The Witness. Jesus Christ, dude.

Anyway, I figured out how to save platformers, gameplay is going to center around rings coming out of people, and I shall call it Major Havoc.

It’s The Little Things
Nov 20th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

(An exchange between my friend Gerrit and I.)

Robb: Did ya “dress up” for Halloween?
Gerrit: Yes. I spent $2.00 to get some green face paint and went as the Ghast from Necrotic Drift.
me: Hahahahah
me: You went as BEN’s character!!
Gerrit: If Ben won’t go to a party, at least his character can.
Gerrit: Kelley went as Max from Where the Wild Things Are
Robb: I have never seen “Where the Wild Things Are.”
Robb: So I am probably the only person in the world who would have “gotten” your costume, but not hers.
Gerrit: It’s amazing how those things work out sometimes.
Robb: Did you two crazy kids take any photos??

I have been working on the same, unfinished game for 1676 days. 4 years, 7 months, 1 day. I will never attempt a project this big again. It pains me that it is not finished. But it’s the little things, like one of your buddies going as a character in one of your games, that helps you complete the journey. Thank you Gerrit.

I still don’t know what on earth “Where the Wild Things Are” is, however.

Hugo, via DOS, on the iPad
Oct 31st, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Flack wrote an article on his site regarding the iPad app “iDos”. He was able to run Hugo games in DOS mode with it, which is, of course, close to my heart. Read more here.

Rob “Flack” O’Hara’s Interactive GET LAMP Review
Sep 14th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Ooooh lookit me, Planet IF whoring here! I don’t think this made the feed. Rob “Flack” O’Hara wrote up his review of Get Lamp in the form… of a text adventure! Let me link you to his blog post. Perhaps you’d like a direct link to the review, which you can play via Parchment over the Internet?

There actually IS an ending to it, and a ton of things to talk about. Can you steal a virtual man’s copy of his hard-won independent documentary??

Omegle and the Z-Machine
May 18th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Bananadine, from Caltrops, has a thread going that depicts his attempts to bridge the gap between a Z-machine interpreter and the program Omegle. What is Omegle? It is a website that picks another user at random when you connect, and puts you in an awkward conversation. Here’s some of his output:

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: Welcome to Adventure!
You: ADVENTURE
You: The Interactive Original
You: By Will Crowther (1973) and Don Woods (1977)
You: Reconstructed in three steps by:
You: Donald Ekman, David M. Baggett (1993) and Graham Nelson (1994)
You: [In memoriam Stephen Bishop (1820?-1857): GN]
You: Release 5 / Serial number 961209 / Inform v6.21(G0.33) Library 6/10
You: At End Of Road
You: You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
Stranger: The fuck
You: That’s not a verb I recognise.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Unfortunately, there is almost literally…. literally NOTHING BUT THE ILLITERATE on Omegle. So this isn’t nearly as awesome as it could be.

Here’s the thread. Includes failed transcripts from games like LOCK & KEY and Sensory Jam.

Parchment: A web-based Z-machine interpreter
Apr 25th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

I had known about the beautiful program called Parchment for a few weeks now, but been unable to do anything about it. I assumed it would require throwing a web app on JC and … – I made poor assumptions. This is one of the, if not THE easiest way to play Interactive Fiction. I don’t even know what verbs I should be using here, because I did nothing but type in a link to get this going. “I arranged things so you can play two of my games using Parchment”? No. “I uploaded two of my games and … typed some stuff an-” – No!

“I did the barest minimum and now you can play two of my games over the Internet in a delightful font.” That’ll work.

Chicks Dig Jerks, using the Zcode web terp Parchment.
Revenger, using the same.

Many thanks to the Parchment team! I’m extremely delighted and extremely impressed.

The PAX East Files: From the Desk of Roody Yogurt
Apr 3rd, 2010 by Roody Yogurt

Ellison, Zarf and Rob at Infocom Headquarters

Ellison, Zarf and Rob at Infocom Headquarters

I was going to write my thoughts on my Live Journal, but hey, I haven’t updated that thing in like two years- why start now?

First off, these days, I’m kind of surprised when I meet people that I haven’t met before and find it especially enjoyable (I dunno, I’m fatalistic enough that I just get to a point where I figure I’ve met everyone I need to meet so far). I could list everyone I enjoyed talking to, but for fear of leaving anyone out, I’ll just give a special shout out to Mike Sousa, Worm, Chris Klimas, and Paul O’Brian since they are the most likely to read this.

I was very impressed with the quality of panels we had over the entire weekend. I was a little worried going into Robb’s panel that, being the one where people unfamiliar with the medium would go to, it would be the most watered-down talk of the weekend. Instead, it was quite the nice talk about various aspects of IF, and unsurprisingly, Robb delivered many of the funniest lines.

We had a panel the next day in the IF Suite about “IF Outreach”- promoting IF to new people. I was impressed with the caliber of the panelists. One guy was an AV Club writer for The Onion and another did stuff for jayisgames. It was great getting outside-the-community perspective from people who still appreciated the format.

The last talk on “adaptive difficulty” was good, too, but I’d like to chew on it some more before I really say much about it.

“Get Lamp” was good fun (and gave me my chance to finally thank Lebling personally for The Lurking Horror).

I think the weekend did a great job at showing new people that, yes, there is a community bundled with this gaming interest (which, sure, everyone knows but there’s just something about being crammed into a room full of people you’ve only known virtually). For us older people, many of whom are not as excited as we were when we found IF on the internet 10+ years ago, it was a great reminder that there are still new frontiers to be discovered in IF and that more progress and innovation are still ahead of us.

I know of at least three IF authors who haven’t written anything in years that have either already started coding something new or intend to, and I’m sure there are several more.

Near the end of the weekend, I was once again reminded that some of the recent IF games most mentioned aren’t similar in scope to the games I intend to write (I aim to continue writing games that are somewhat old-school, in at least limits-of-implementation and keeping-wordage-on-the-less-verbose-side aspects if not actual old-school puzzles), but the weekend was effective in making me rethink some scenes in the game I want to write (and I think it will be better for those changes).

Also, I have to admit, watching people code in Inform 7 is pretty even if I intend to stick with Hugo. Just the same, seeing that in person helps contribute to the whole “brave new world” feel.

All in all, the various game design talks were great, but just because I personally didn’t get into work-in-progress game mechanic discussions, I have found myself wanting another IF meet-up for authors where we concentrate on more on the applicable than the theoretical. Some other people feel the same way; we’ll see if it happens.

The PAX East Files: The Panel
Apr 1st, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Before I start: if anything I write below comes off as obnoxious or pretentious, it’s not intentional. Benjamin “Pinback” Parrish is under strict orders to punch me in the mouf if I get that way while talking about my experience at PAX East last weekend. He’s looking for an excuse; you have no idea how much he would love to fight me right now.

I was determined to go to PAX East once JScott said he was premiering GET LAMP at the con, so when Emily invited me to speak on the panel called Storytelling In The World of Interactive Fiction, it was a bonus to what was already going to be a great weekend. There was only one “problem,” scare quotes: I don’t talk about text games, verbally, with anyone.

It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s just because, well – the experiences I have as a player are solitary. My experiences as an author are also solitary, with the exception that one of three cats will attempt to carve their source code contributions into my arm using their claws. (Shit code, too, filled with semicolons.) I get my social fix from all this by going to a mud and reading a newsgroup instead of hanging out at an IF Suite. At one point during the weekend, Jeremy Freese asked me how I pronounce “Cryptozookeeper,” the name of the game I’m working on now. I really didn’t have an answer for him, because I’ve probably only referred to it five or six times in my real life. (Jeremy is a professor, so I’d be going with his recommendation anyway.) So I didn’t want to mess anything up due to simple inexperience about formulating my thoughts in the real world. I didn’t want to be asked a question and then have to write it down on paper, muttering “hold up…” while I crystalized my thoughts.

I also had no idea how any of these panels work. I asked over at Caltrops and got some good advice. From “N” over there:

[Y]ou probably want some talking points like:

o How to analyze storytelling and how somebody can even measure or determine efficacy.
o List of effective storytelling mechanics and some examples.
o List of ineffective storytelling mechanics and some examples (in other panelists’ work if you want the rest of the session to take care of itself).

I’m not recommending anyone head over there, but I’m very fond of all of them, and those are the kind of people I didn’t want to “let down,” I guess. It’s a jagged alliance at Caltrops anyway. Passing out on stage wasn’t going to help me. Slagging each other’s games would have made for an entertaining hour, but I don’t think it would have furthered the art form much.

The Panel, photo credit Ben Collins-Sussman I was the first person to make it to the Wyvern Theater at PAX, but that’s only because my friends helped me find it well before. Aaron Reed joined me a few minutes later with his laptop and I was slightly relieved – if nobody else showed up I’d commandeer his PC and the panel could be him giving me hints while I finished Blue Lacuna on the projector. I realize now it wouldn’t have done much for anyone attending, but I would have had a great time.

However, Rob, Zarf and Em arrived quickly thereafter and we were a go. Jason was also there filming, and he placed the lantern from his movie on the table next to me. I decided right then that if I froze up or something, my “out pitch” was going to be shoving the mic in the lamp’s face and letting it answer. That sounded a lot better in my anxious mind than it does typing it out, so I got lucky there. We all did.

I had two things mentally prepared for the panel, one of which I actually used. I wanted to note the intentional disconnect between player and player character in Pantomime, hoping to relate how I tried to start the character of Raif in an inevitable position to gain player sympathy, and then drive a wedge there, leveraging the fact that the exact opposite happens in three of my previous games. I got that in, but I was cognizant in the actual act of speaking that it that it was coming off as rehearsed. (The other bit I had planned beforehand was regarding stories in a non-traditional order: in No Time to Squeal, Mike Sousa and I centered a story around an unborn baby, and as someone who doesn’t have children and isn’t trusted with their care, I knew trying to write a game AS a baby wasn’t going to work. By me, I mean – Stephen Granade did a great job in the game Child’s Play where you’re just that. But one of the strengths of IF is that you can make a game with five different settings, because it’s the same “cost” to do a golf course, house, hospital as it is a Magnetic Scrolls-inspired-Wonderland. We were able to take advantage of the fact that all text costs the same… so go IF!) I never really prepare things beforehand because I hate how phony I sound when delivering it. When we got further into the panel and I was able to relax, I think I did a better job coming off as someone genuinely interested in IF.

My heart was racing during Emily’s opener, but by the end I felt completely at ease. I could have talked text games for another two hours. Three if we’re counting The Circuit’s Edge as a text game and, er, Inshallah. So my advice, if you ever find yourself on a panel for custom Doom 3 levels or something, is to surround yourself with a brilliant moderator and three other talented speakers. It takes the edge off; it would have been much more difficult if I were up there with Matt Barringer and Three Panks. I think the only part where I really diverged from my colleagues was when discussion turned to first-person shooters, Half-Life 2 specifically. I enjoy shooting people in the face, but I didn’t really care for HL2, so that was about the last game whose defense I was going to jump to. Although I would say that one of the most satisfying video game experiences of my life was in the level “We Don’t Go To Ravenholm,” the first time I threw one of those giant, circular, industrial razors at a zombie from half a mile away. (I didn’t want to say anything because it would take time away from IF, and there were other panels to discuss shooters, like every other video game panel in the whole of recorded human history.) But here’s the thing, even with that – Aaron had mentioned how he would have liked HL2 if the entire game had been hiding out from those fascists, and when I personally think back to HL2 for good thoughts, I remember throwing razors… and the part where you go up into the building at the beginning and look down at the troubles below. Offhand comments kind of inspired ideas for games I want to make one day, if that makes any sense.

One thing I noticed attending panels is that you can’t deadpan a joke initially – the audience, as a group, needs some sort of indication that you were kidding around. After that, everyone’s expectations have been set, and it’s all good. I attended the General Computer talk, and Kevin Osborn said something hilarious in a steady voice, and he didn’t get the laugh his comment deserved. I’m sure sociologists have researched group chortling dynamics to death, but still. (The General Computer talk was also notable as the guys there mentioned Racing the Beam to describe the method used to display four monsters-turned-ghosts via the Atari 2600. Racing the Beam was co-written by Nick Montfort, who was on the panel for GET LAMP. I wanted to text Nick that he just got his ass name-dropped!!!! by the GC guys, but I didn’t want them to see me texting on my phone because they would have had no idea it was texting through awesome, not boredom. But I loved how it was referenced, it was like, “fuck that 2600; read this one guy’s book describing it, we can’t get into that silicon monstrosity here.”)

We had some interesting questions at the end of the Interactive Fiction panel, although it’s my understanding that every one of these in the world gets multi-part, multiple questions. Alter Ego thought some of the questions went on for a while. Don Woods, Don FREAKING Woods got up to join the Q&A line and I was really pumped to hear what he had to say, though it was funny that HE was asking US something. The last question he asked me, 20 years ago, was if I was going to kill a dragon with what, psh, my bare hands, so it was great that there was a follow-up after all that time.

The final bit from the Q&A was from Jon Blask and it was there that I sort of completely and callously dropped a major spoiler for Pantomime. I had a half-second of mental hesitation before deciding to do it, but what the hell – hopefully it would be something crazy and unpredictable and leave everyone there with one last laugh.

I had an amazing time and if you were there, I hope you did too. If you got turned away, I feel terrible – if I could have done anything to help, I would have. I can’t wait to do all of this again sometime, although you’re gonna want to make sure you either finished Annoyotron or plan on skipping the Q&A, narmean.

I’ve got one other post in me about what it was like to be at the vendor table that I’m going to write up for the next issue of SPAG.
I tried for two minutes to attach a proper caption to that photo. It’s by Ben Collins-Sussman. Thanks, Ben!

The PAX East Files: The Disc
Mar 30th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

My favorite game developer is Steve Meretzky. I could go on at length about exactly why – I could totally spaz out in excruciating detail, like how the Malls n’ Muggers scene in Spellcasting 101 is one of the things I like best about video games… but I’ll simply say I want to make games like he does.

In 1998 I went to E3 with my pals Walrustitty and his girlfriend-turned-wife Cathy. It was in Atlanta, and I recall it behind hot, humid and miserable at day, but quite pleasant at night. The citizens seemed to have an almost palatable dread that their football team wouldn’t win it all before their rivals in New Orleans. I’m just kidding, nobody in Atlanta cares about the local teams. Douglas Adams was at E3 promoting Starship Titanic, an adventure game that he created with The Digital Village.

Douglas was sitting by himself before the official thing for Starship, and I had my “Masterpieces of Infocom” CD. I said hello and asked if he would sign it. He did and I thanked him and immediately left before I made a jackass out of myself. That was critical, I thought at the time.

I had always said that if I could ever add one autograph to that disc, it would be that of Douglas’s co-collaborator on the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game, Steve Meretzky. Well, on Friday, thanks to the generosity of GET LAMP director Jason Scott, I was able to meet Steve and tell him I love his games. I wanted to just put a picture of the CD on the Internet because otherwise it will just continue to be one of my favorite things at my house, and nobody can get here because of the hollyhocks and sunflowers.


You can click on it to get the larger photo. I know that HHGG isn’t actually on that disc (both Hitch-Hiker’s and Shogun were unable to be included, as they were based on previous novels) but I like it anyway. I probably even like it because of that. I don’t have many autographs or anything, but it makes me happy every time I look at that.

The PAX East Files: Welcome to Adventure!
Mar 11th, 2010 by Ice Cream Jonsey

Stephen King once said that he considers you talented at writing if you’re able to pay the electric bill with money somebody gave you for something you wrote. This is great, but I have an ever-increasing number of arcade games down here, meaning my electric bill creeps higher and higher each month.  I therefore become more and more untalented at writing in the eyes of Stephen King every time I add another one. This sucks, though I’m one impulse Pengo away from getting a three-picture deal as I transmorph into Dan Brown.

I can’t get any money from the writing of interactive fiction, but luckily that doesn’t stop me from pumping money into it. I just ordered 100 promotional CDs, to be handed out for free at the Interactive Fiction Suite at the end of the month at PAX East. If you don’t know what any of that means, here’s a link. I tried to add some new games to the 2005 version on the archive. I don’t want to imply that the only people likely to read this blog post are my fellow developers of Interactive Fiction, but if I didn’t add your game, it’s only because I got this project at the last minute and was only able to get a hold of people I already knew. Games 40-75 on the thing are just recompiled Annoyotrons. My favorite’s “grape,” and I think yours will be, too. In putting the disc together, I became extremely frustrated with both of the .ISO managers I used, but I complained into Google Buzz to ensure that nobody would ever, ever see it. Oh, except for Chinese nationalists (你好, amigos!).

I think we’ve got Mrs. Winchester’s other nightmare nicely defined here, but at any rate, that should prevent anyone just walking off with the entire spindle of discs because they were attracted to pure aesthetics of it.  I did clean up the ripped wallpaper under the Lacuna Bee, but – “Template Is On,” more like GAME IS ON, BABY one sec, I have to get the door, a guy is dropping off an environmental Boon-ga Boon-ga cabinet tonight.

Okay, I’m back. My kitchen is actually more of a patient-zero mess than the one on the disc there, so I have to go. See you at PAX East! Oh – right: the gentleman that dropped the game off was average in height, with a slender build and narrow shoulders.

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