Harvesting Interactive Fiction

Рет қаралды 28,476

6 жыл бұрын

In this 2015 GDC talk, Choice of Games' Heather Albano leads a guided tour of some important Interactive Fiction games released over the last few years, including commercial and free titles, and suggest ways that IF techniques could be adapted to other types of games.
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Пікірлер: 19

@mitravic 2 жыл бұрын

Honestly, that's the best of all the GDC talks I've heard so far. It was awesome. Thank you, Heather.

@ChristopherDrum 6 жыл бұрын

The point Ms. Albano makes at 18:30 however is also what takes so many potential players out of their immersion in parser-based games. She rightly points out that the illusion of "I can do anything" is incredibly strong, so when the player says, "What makes sense here." and tries something outside the game's necessarily strict guidelines, that immersion is cut abruptly short when it fails with, "I don't understand that sentence." This happens frequently and is a huge huge barrier-to-entry for new players. "guess the verb" is an earned slight against parser-based IF for good reason. Not saying this is unavoidable, and not saying this has ever stopped *me personally* from enjoying Infocom games in the past. Not acknowledging this point seems like a big oversight in this speech, yet is implicit in the list of recent award-winning games, none of which give full parser control to the player.

@JoshPowlison 6 жыл бұрын

I agree. I'm one of those who want to love parser text games but I feel more constricted because many times I assume that what I want to do isn't possible, and unfortunately I feel like I'm proven right. I'm sure some text parser games do better with this than others though; any you'd recommend?

@alexxx4434 5 жыл бұрын

This just proves that the quality of the parser is of utmost importance. Recent award-winning games aren't parser-based for two reason: 1) they're on mobile; 2) parser IF is pretty demanding of a player (i.e. you need to think up and input your next action instead of chosing from a very limited list of options the game presents to you) - not suitable for the mass market

@jzungre 4 жыл бұрын

I disagree. I think part of the fun of text adventure games is discovering the size of the possibility space, rather than assuming that the possibility space is infinite ("I can do anything") and being disappointed whenever you discover it's not. Figuring out what words the text parser understands is part of the challenge / fun / exploration.

@anmuloced8673 2 жыл бұрын

Synonyms help a lot. As a writer, figuring out every way someone could do something, (get lamp, take lamp, pick up lamp, steal lamp, grab lamp, etc.) and actually taking the time to implement all of these synonyms with the same result helps tremendously with reducing "guess the verb." Also, playtesting is very important. Having people walk into your fictional places and observing not only what they did that worked, but, more importantly, what they did that didn't is critical. Even if you don't wish to branch the story based on that action, simply acknowledging their attempt to do so and a quick reason why that isn't an option helps retain immersion. "You strain to lift the statue, but it is far too heavy." is an immeasurably more satisfying response to "pick up statue" than "I don't understand." Both are effectively the same result, the statue isn't an option, but the one feels like a boundary within the world as opposed to one due to the writer simply not addressing it.

@przemyslawbak 6 ай бұрын

Nice video but I'm surprised that Ms. Albano made such a big mistake and put wrong logo for Twine. This one is not and never was logo for Twine made by Chris Klimas.

@anupamchauhan5172 3 ай бұрын

Hope God forgives her

@alysdexia Ай бұрын

@@anupamchauhan5172is this a joke?

@anupamchauhan5172 Ай бұрын

@@alysdexia if you need an explanation, go back to school.

@alysdexia Ай бұрын

@@anupamchauhan5172 that doesn’t help for jokes or for nonsense like yours.

@komakaze1 3 жыл бұрын

I thought this was an interesting talk, but I think missed an opportunity to mention narrative in Mass Effect, the Wolf Among Us, KOTOR, Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate and perhaps even Pillars of Eternity.

@hebamedhat1517 3 жыл бұрын

i guess she mainly focused on narrative based interactive fiction more than digital fiction

@TamalPlays 2 жыл бұрын

Actually, you misunderstood the video.

@TheAssassin642 6 ай бұрын

But this video is about interactive fiction, not other types of games.