Design: February 2004 Archive Page

Most non-arcade games that retain a rabid fan base years after they've become technically obsolote fall into one of two categories. They have a obsessively complex world that's been built up around them (Nethack, say, or tabletop roleplaying games), or they have a simple rule set with much greater depth in the gameplay and strategy than you'd expect on first glance (games like M.U.L.E., or the boardgames that many of my friends adore). Text adventure games don't really fit either of these categories, quite. As a classic piece of criticism and theory puts it, their goal is to avoid crimes against mimesis. They are telling a story (with puzzles, most likely), and it is the goal of the author to never once induce the player to think about the artifice and contraints of the system used to tell it.

A new type of game has sprung up in the past few years. Call it unfiction or alternative reality gaming -- the idea is that a narrative is strung together on the Internet (and possibly even to a limited extent in the physical world) which participants can unpack using exactly the same research tools and conspiracy-minded obsession over detail that they would for a real-life mystery.

-- Steve Cook --Interactive Fictions (Snarkout)

A usefully-linked summary of the history of interactive fiction, including the current IF revival.

BTW, the winners of the 2003 XYZZY Awards have been announced.

Let's assume that you have a brilliant Idea. Let's say a sitcom about a group of different people living under the same roof. Or a story about a police unit who dedicate their lives to solving crimes. Or maybe some other equally original idea that demonstrates how creative and innovative sort of a person you are.

Now, let's continue by assuming that you'd want to make it as a virtual series with a staff of writers and producers and you want to release scripts in regular intervals.

This is all very nice and all, but you might not have an idea as to how to do it. Well, this is where I tell you one way of doing it. --T. Henrik Anttonen
--A Beginners Guide to Starting Virtual Series (Voice Over)

An interesting article about organizing a team of writers to produce scripts for a non-existent TV series. Writing is hard work; some of those who wanted to do it for fun gave up when they looked at the schedule. But whether you are hoping to hone your skills for a shot at a professional job, or you simply have a passion for using words to create, an exercise like this would be a tremendous experience.

I used to participate in a collaborative epistolatory science fiction epic, at the suggestion of my high school friend Gilbert Stack. We started off writing letters to each other in-character, but I started supplying one- or two-page fictional treatments to contextualize the letters (sometimes showing what the character chose NOT to put in the letter), and soon some of us were writing mock newspapers and scripts. Steve Spishak (a Medievalist and the drummer for the cheesy 80s cover band "Gonzo's Nose") wrote an entry in blank verse... I still remember one of the lines... "This churlish syntax burns my English tongue" (spoken as a blank verse aside, but referring to an unpleasant prose interaction with a minor character). Another friend, Christine Heath, and my brother, John Jerz, were also regular contributors. I also remember contributions from Chris Park, Carol Johnson, Sarah McLeod... This was in the late 80s, and we did it all through snail mail. I still have several thick 3-ring binders, and I keep telling myself that some day I'll turn my corner of that universe into an interactive fiction game.

While our interactive literary work doesn't quite have the style of existing as tattoos or stickers, it really helped focus my writing energies in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do if I were merely writing for myself, without any sense of an audience or people who were sometimes writing against what I wanted to happen in our shared fictional universe. I kept an encyclopedia of technology and culture and a timeline; I think someone else created a map showing travel routes and distances. God, was I a geek... but I really loved it. My old files simply called this "MAIL Game."

The point of my nostalgic trip: I am so glad that, when I was young and frequently bored, I spent enough time away from the TV and the joystick to create something that meant something to me and my friends. I wouldn't have the time to start something like that today. Of course, I write all the time, in my blog, in e-mail, in the margins of student papers... but I've been feeling the draw of creative writing again. I'm kicking around an idea for a somewhat quirky academic paper, but I'm also hoping that I'll get back into writing interactive fiction.

Games Galore

Two interesting Slashdot threads... one is "Gaming Academia Gets More Mainstream Press", a response to the recent NY Times article on the upcoming Princeton conference, and another is discussion of Magic Words: Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century, a beautiful nine-part article on interactive fiction, featuring interviews with Emily Short, Stephen Granade, Andrew Plotkin, Adam Cadre, and IF Competition winners Dan Rapivinto & Star Foster.

Update: I just noticed that The Onion has a favorable review of Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. (The link will expire soon.)

--Technovelgy: Inventions from Science Fiction Novels and Books

There's no good blurb on this site, but it features news of technological advances that have been predicted in science-fiction. For instance, here's the listing of real inventions first mentioned in Fahrenheit 451. Pretty cool.

Leadholder can be broadly defined as any durable instrument that is designed to hold and be refillable with consumable pieces of graphite so that the graphite can be conveniently used for drawing or writing. Within this definition there are subsets such as porte-crayons, mechanical pencils, and drafting leadholders. This website is primarily concerned with drafting leadholders, which are commonly called by draftsmen in the US as simply leadholders. (From "What is a Leadholder?") --The Drafting Pencil Museum (Leadholder.com)

Okay, maybe I'm not quite that geeky, but I still enjoyed the site.

A 40-plus-year-old A-list actor pondering whether or not to appear in a game? Heck, even Roger Moore would have been loathe to actively participate in what was once the perceived domain of momma's boys.

"Traditionally, Hollywood signed away rights without any expertise or any idea of the plot lines," said industry analyst P.J. McNealy.

Several factors helped change Hollywood's mind. Technology advanced exponentially, making it possible to accurately recreate the voice, looks and movements of real people. Another factor was the Sony PlayStation 2. Or to be more exact, 60 million PS2s, GameCubes and Xboxes sold in the United States alone.

As games became synonymous with mass entertainment, Hollywood got it. The movie executives who chanted "cross-branding" and "synergy" at power lunches got it. Game developers got it. Even the actors got it. Soon Electronic Arts was convincing not only Brosnan, but Bond regulars John Cleese ('Q') and Judi Dench ('M') as well as William Dafoe, Heidi Klum and Mya to join "Everything or Nothing." --Tom Loftus

--Stars seek more control over video games (M$ NBC)

Via Terra Nova, which features some thoughtful musings about digital rights and the creative freedom of game designers.

More than 150 Lego builders and collectors converged on Portland over the Presidents Day weekend for BrickFest PDX, a celebration of all things Lego. While plenty of individual work is on display, the big draw is the chance to interact with like-minded folks.... In one of the smaller conference rooms, a team of 10 guys, mostly young men and two preteens, attempt a speed record for assembling an Imperial Star Destroyer, a 3,000-piece Star Wars monstrosity that usually takes a single builder about a week of spare time to construct. The team wants to do it in less than an hour, but the record is 13 minutes more than that. --Marty Cortinas

--If You Come, They Will Build It  (Wired)

Sorry, the title just doesn't... click.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

--Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (Project Gutenberg)

Note... Wilde doesn't offer any pithy judgements on those who find beautiful meanings in ugly things (according to Wilde, they would be corrupt but charming) or who find ugly meanings in ugly things (I assume Wilde finds them uncultivated, but does that make them barbarians or simply pragmatists?).

I've been involved in the discussion of a proposed new design for Seton Hill University's website, so I've turned to Oscar Wilde to help me understand the mindset of those who prefer their designs beautiful but useless. While it's possible to test a design for useability, it's not possible to test it for beauty.

Ancient catapults were state-of-the-art weapons of unequalled power?but how powerful were the military engineers who created them?... The fearsome machines terrorized battlefields and sieges until the proliferation of gunpowder. Their power was impressive and terrifying. Roman catapults could hurl 60-pound (27-kilogram) boulders some 500 feet (150 meters). Archimedes' machines were said to have been able to throw stones three times as heavy. --Brian Handwerk --Catapult Makers: Rock Stars of Antiquity (National Geographic News)

[I recently received the following e-mail... --DGJ]

Dear Sir:

I am presently working on a science fair project for my school. I found your article, Instructions: How to Write for Busy, Grouchy People. I was hoping you could expand on that a little more for me.

I am in the 7th grade. My project this year is attempting to prove that 99% of people fail to read the following directions after being told and read to do so. I was wondering if you could help me document as to why people think they are above having to read instructions? Truly most of the people I have tested have come straight out and said instructions are for idiots, or fools with too much time. Needless to say these fools did not pass the simple task laid out before them.

One of my questions because of the failure rate of this test is: are people so transfixed or gullible to believe they can do anything without reading the how to's first?

I would like to thank you up front for any advice or help you can offer towards my Science fair project. I look forward to hearing your answers to questions and any other responses that may help my research.

Sincerely,

Heather
7th grade

Why people think they are above having to read instructionsJerz's Literacy Weblog)

I was so impressed with the professionalism of Heather's request that (after asking her permission, and after she checked with her parents) I'm posting her question along with my response.

Most of us probably remember more vividly the time we wasted reading instructions that don't help, than the time that we save by reading instructions that really do help. Think about it -- if you are late for an appointment and you are stuck in traffic, you will probably dwell on the miserable experience you are having (because there is nothing else to do). When things are going well, you are free to daydream -- and time flies when you're having fun. While there are some optimists who prefer to accentuate the positive, people who turn to instruction manuals are already having a problem of some sort, so they tend to be grouchy and stressed (and they probably associate those feelings of stress with the action of consulting instructions, making them even more reluctant to consult instructions in the future).

Even though I have taught hundreds of students in technical writing (the kind of professional writing that emphasizes instructions, manuals, and other documents that help people get work done), and I should probably know better, I myself usually try to avoid reading instructions, for all the usual reasons:

1. stopping to get help seems like it will take up more time than it will save
2. I'm too proud and stubborn to admit I don't know what I'm doing
3. I've already put so much time into this that I don't want to give up until I try just one more thing... and one more... and one more.

Researchers call this the "Paradox of the Active User." Even when timed experiments show that people usually save time when they read the instructions first, we tend to get anxious unless we are doing something. Reading instructions feels like doing nothing -- especially when the clock is ticking.

My wife, who is not fond of computers, can't for the life of her remember the three-step procedure that connects her to the Internet (turn on the computer, click the little telephone icon, and click the blue "e" icon). Rather than spend precious mental energy on these steps (or finding the piece of paper on which I wrote them), she prefers to ask me to carry out her online business. Likewise, I have no idea where she keeps stack of bills to be paid or the extra toothpaste. Our specialized behavior works for us, because we know we can rely on each other.

Women typically have more complex and more powerful social networks than men, which may explain why women are more likely to ask for help -- those who work harder on a daily basis maintaining their social networks (by talking on the phone, chatting online, or even passing notes in class) are more likely to be able to depend on that network being there the next time they need help.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I suspect that our brains are hard-wired so that, if we don't feel the source of help will always be around whenever we need it, we prefer to solve problems on our own. Students who are trained to rely on step-by-step instructions can feel lost when they enter college (or the real world) and realize that few problems are as neatly laid out, and few answers are as clear or as universally accepted, as their middle-school or high school textbooks might have suggested. It's well-accepted that people remember things longer, understand them more fully, and feel a greater sense of satisfaction about the work they accomplish when they work things out by themselves. So perhaps generations of human experience has trained us that, in the long run, we really are better off when we solve problems on our own.

While it is annoying not to be able to set the VCR or fix a plumbing problem the right way the first time, truth be told, the consequences of our daily failures don't mount up to much in modern society. The average person is surrounded by a lot of very complex gadgets that consume a great deal of our time -- which is bothersome, but the inconvenience level is low enough that most of us aren't motivated to change our behavior.

Imagine, for a moment, that we lived in a bizarre world where large packs of robotic dogs would appear randomly and bite out all our car tires, unless we performed a special ceremonial dance that put the robot-dogs in a trance. Since a car with four chewed-out tires is a serious inconvenience, people would probably learn how to perform that dance pretty quickly.

Soldiers are trained to follow orders. Firefighters know their equipment inside and out. Lawyers choose their words very carefully and pay close attention to the fine print in contracts. When the stakes are high, people are much better at noticing details and following instructions.

We only really notice instructions, manuals, guidebooks or maps when we are already frustrated and angry. Too often, we'll find ourselves sifting through registration cards, tossing away advertisements for related products, scanning diagrams of doohickeys and whatsits, none of which seems relevant to solving the immediate problem: the gear thingy on our gizmo is stuck and we don't know why.

If, on the other hand, the manual is clearly written and well-organized, we can grab it off the shelf, find the info we need, and put it away again in half a minute -- so perhaps we are likely to forget how helpful the manual really was.

We cannot change human nature -- the fact remains that people are generally very impatient when it comes to following instructions or reading manuals. But equally at fault are the people who design objects that are too complex for their intended users. Some objects with complex functions simply have to be complex -- but there's plenty of needless complexity in our daily lives.

At the left is a picture I took in a game room in a hotel in Wisconsin. Elsewhere in the game room were vending machines that took money, and arcade games that took only tokens.

The picture shows a typical change machine. Well above eye level is a large decorative sign that reads "PURCHASE GAME TOKENS HERE." On the left front of the machine, someone has taped a piece of paper that reads "This machine gives out tokens, not quarters."

Sherlock Holmes would confidently conclude that the hotel guests regularly ignored the large wall-mounted sign, thus leading a hotel employee to print out and post a clarification right on the machine.

"Why do we get so many stupid customers who don't read signs?" the hotel worker was probably thinking. But posting yet another sign for the customer to read (or ignore) merely added to the problem.

Put yourself in the flip-flops of a poolside hotel guest with a caffeine craving. You spot the soda machine, near a familiar brown box with a huge label that reads "CHANGE." Why should you expect it do dispense anything but change? You approach the machine, fishing in your wallet or purse for bills, and you notice the official-looking sign with the green, yellow and red boxes. Some safety inspector probably figured it was a good idea to place this important sign at eye level, but it has nothing to do with change or tokens, so you ignore it. The little brown machine also includes signs and labels bearing additional instructions on how to insert bills, a safety warning, and the telephone number and address of the company that services the machine.

You've already identified a familiar machine, and you expect it to act in a familiar way. That's perfectly reasonable behavior, and not remotely idiotic or foolish. Most of the signs on and around this particular machine are not in the least helpful in getting you the change you want. So you ignore them.

Why didn't the hotel management simply cover over the word "CHANGE" and replace it with "TOKENS"? A smaller line of type underneath it could supply directions to the nearest change machine. I bet few people would have trouble following those instructions!

You can't change human nature. You can't expect people to read every word in the instruction manual and study every diagram before they do anything, because that's simply not the way people work in the real world. But you can change the way you write, in order to make the most of your reader's limited attention span.

For more about writing technical reports, see "Short Reports: How To Write Routine Technical Documents." For an excellent case study that describes how to offer criticism in a way that won't enrage your reader, see "Ask Tog: How to Deliver a Report Without Getting Lynched."

[A]t least two transformations appear to distinguish the production of new-media news from the typical case of print and broadcast media: The news seems to be shaped by greater and more varied groups of actors, and this places a premium on the practices that coordinate productive activities across these groups.

This, in turn, seems to influence the content and form of online news in three ways. The news moves from being mostly journalist-centered, communicated as a monologue, and primarily local, to also being increasingly audience-centered, part of multiple conversations, and micro-local.

In the online environment, a greater variety of groups of actors appear to be involved in, and have a more direct impact on, the production process than what is typically accounted for in studies of print and broadcast newsrooms. These studies have tended to focus on the work of editors and reporters. Based on the analysis presented in the previous chapters, it is reasonable to speculate that at least four additional groups of players may be having a growing degree of agency in new-media news production. --Pablo J. Boczkowski --Redefining the News Online  (OJR)

The "news world" is an interesting concept. I can't help but think of virtual worlds...

Warning... if you are one of those whose eyes glaze over whenever a geek starts blathering about Star Trek, you might want to skip to next paragraph. Okay, are they gone now? Good. I always wondered why Star Trek: The Next Generation didn't feature the Holodeck as a communications medium... Picard is being honored at a ceremony back on Earth, at which he is holographically present... perhaps a witness to a crime is prohibited from leaving her homeworld... or perhaps a race of aliens use facial expressions so different from ours that we can't understand them without the holodeck's mediation (though that would require the creation of alien physiognomy more complex than forehead bumps and splotches). I believe I saw an episode of Deep Space 9 in which Dax turned the captain's image into an alien of some sort, but there it was presented as a clever trick (and of course was never again mentioned in any other episode when a similar deception would have helped).

We're taught not to believe everything we hear, but it's hard not to have intense emotional responses to complex multi-sensory stimuli -- even when, intellectually, we know that what we're seeing has been manipulated or even completely manufactured.

I'm thinking of this topic more than usual because the student paper which I advise has published its first online edition: Setonian Online.

Brian McCollum designed the site as part of an independent study. I'm sure he'll welcome constructive comments.

Original	Rewritten	Comments
At the bottom of this form you can choose to leave your name, address and telephone number. If you leave your name and number you may be contacted in the future to participate in a survey to help us improve this site.	[Removed]	42 words reduced to 0. Instructions/information should not be given in advance.
If you have comments or concerns that require a response, please contact Customer Service.	Do not use this form for customer service enquiries. Contact Customer Service instead.	14 words reduced to 13. More directly stated. Also added a direct link to contact customer service.

--Writing for the Web (Monash University ITS)

Hmm... I don't think I agree with the general statement "Instructions/information should not be given in advance." Perhaps in some cases the instructions are given too far in advance, and should therefore be delayed until when the user might actually need them... and certainly if a web interface is so complex that it requires instructions, it would make more sense to revise the website so that it follows standard online conventions (which would reduce the user's cognitive burden when faced with a new system).

And while it's true that the revised customer service text is shorter and adding the link to the instructions is very helpful, the revision is also blunt. I try to state instructions in positive terms -- emphasizing what the user should do: "We don't check these survey results on a regular basis, so if you want to talk to somebody, use the customer service form instead." But the revision depends heavily on context.

Which leads me to another problem... I recognize some of the content on this website as being copied and pasted from other source, but there are few outbound links -- if I like what I saw in the excerpt from Jakob Nielsen's page, I'd like to be able to link to it directly. (Yes, there are links at the bottom of the page, but as a college writing instrutor I cringe at writers who don't take the time to cite properly, in the body of their text, precisely when they are using borrowed material, and to identify from where they borrowed it. (If the author simply numbered the end notes and inserted those numbers in brackets in the body of the text, I would be satisfied, though there's really no good reason why the online material couldn't be directly linked.)

I presume that the screen grabs that show various forms of microcontent is original, since it uses examples from Monash University, but there's no way to link directly to those original examples; the page also does not identify an author or a date. (I had to hack the URL to learn about the site where this page was posted.) My guess is that somebody threw these links up to use during a workshop, but there's no way to be sure.

Link found via Crawford Kilian's blog, "Writing for the Web." (I've used Kilian's elegant book of the same name in several courses, most recently in "Writing for the Internet.")

True or false? Technical writers?

A. Write about technology.
B. Translate specialized knowledge in a manner that is adapted to readers? needs, level of understanding, and background.
C. Present information that helps readers to solve a particular problem.
D. Persuade readers to see things, ideas, and events as the writers see them.
E. ?Set the agenda? and shape day-to-day reality by choosing what gets written and for whom. --Leah A. Zuidema --Technical Writing: An Overview (Michigan State University)

I've blogged a link to Google's HTML conversion of the original PDF version.

I found this document extremely interesting becuase it was produced by an educator for an audience of secondary school teachers. (Adding to the "fun" factor is the fact that I and a former colleague of mine at UWEC are cited.)