Games: July 2006 Archive Page

--Wintergreen ''When I Wake Up'' (KeithSchofield.com)

Is this for real?

I'm not so sure the song goes with the images, but it's still awesome.

Infocom, king of the text adventure and the first behemoth of American computer game development, began not with a bang, but with an internet meme. --Lara Crigger --The Short, Happy Life of Infocom (The Escapist)

There are some details about Infocom culture that are nicely placed.

I like what Jeremy Douglass wrote about the genre of the interactive fiction magazine article.

To be fair, there is a fairly constrained set of talking points about IF that most features feel they need to include:

1. Remember IF? I loved them. IF...
2. ...started the computer game industry
3. ...were killed by graphics cards
4. ...are still being made!
5. ...are still fun!
6. ...are being sold by 1-2 individuals/companies
7. ...are being created by a vibrant indie community
8. ...are available on any computer imaginable
9. ...might have some future in the cell/ipod/pda convergence
10. ...can be downloaded like this

I haven.t yet written an IF Article Generator, but the code is, I feel, strongly implied by copious example outputs to be found in periodicals. I personally enjoy the 2-4-7-8 articles, and the 4-7-8-10s. I am indifferent to the 1-3-4-5s, and thoughtful about the 4-5-6-9s.

Qui ne se souvient pas du SPACE INVADERS, lun des premiers jeux vidéo -- Aux commandes d'un vaisseau, il s'agissait de défendre la Terre contre des escadrilles d'envahisseurs venus de l'espace... Et bien, la plus grande partie de SPACE INVADERS de la planète a eu lieu le 24 juin 2006 au festival Belluard.

--Space Invaders (notsonoisy.com)

A beautiful film project, that challenges our notions of spectatorship by reversing the gaze of the video screen, turning each pixel into a human being who gazes back at us, all of them powerless in their participation in the enactment of a space battle simulation that always ends in destruction.

Or I don't know... maybe it's just cool.

Looking at the last two semesters taught by the author before the text adventure game and the most recent two semesters, every measure of student satisfaction is better. The only measure that might be troubling is perceived student workload.

This project is very large. Even with high-level architectural design and many useful snippets of code presented in class lectures, students work very hard in this course. The amount of work and new material requires a considerable time commitment from the instructor for office hours and other outside-class contact time. It also requires the selection of a good teaching assistant to provide additional time for questions to be answered. We are examining using a Wiki or similar shared editing space to assist students in asking, answering, and finding previous answers of questions; the efficacy of such a system is pure speculation at this point.

The integration of writing, oral presentation, program design, and coding makes this course a fantastic introduction to software engineering. This helps to overcome students? tendency to compartmentalize, thinking writing is for English class, coding is for computer science, and never the twain shall meet. --Brian C. Ladd --The Curse of Monkey Island: Holding the Attention of Students Weaned on Computer Games (Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges)

Fascinating article on a computer science course that uses a text-adventure project as a way of meeting liberal arts curriculum demands.

The interactive fiction concept might be spreading. Next year, HarperCollins plans to release Pretty Little Mistakes, a 600-page Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-type novel for adults by Heather McElhatton. Depending on the decisions made by the reader, the main character's options include becoming an actress, an art thief, a cult member, or a murderer. --Aman Batheja --Choose-your-own-adventure novels making a comeback (Star-Telegram)

Well, that's not how I use the term "interactive fiction," but I still enjoyed this author's take on the series.

I was a huge fan of Lucasarts' adventure games (Loom, The Monkey Islands and so on), and the fact that they were primarily word driven. There were graphics - and what graphics! - but for the most part they presented the player with an interesting dichotomy - nothing ever really happened, but you were responsible for it all. You would chat to somebody who would tell you that they wanted a compass, for example, and it was up to you to get that compass. Only, they would never just say "Get me the compass". Instead, it would be a conversation that could take up to twenty minutes, where you found out about the character's history, family, likes and dislikes, and, above all, the reason for them wanting the compass in the first place. --The Encyclopedia Frobozzica (Progression: Following Myself)

A well-done personal reflection on the graphical adventure genre.