All games, from Starcraft to Scrabble to Angry Birds and beyond, provide players with complex problem spaces to explore in ways that are both fun and challenging. These spaces might take on the tone and texture of an ancient civilization, horror film, intergalactic space station, or mafia headquarters. When designed well, games can evoke a…
A touching, nostalgic look at “Colossal Cave Adventure.” Books are words on a page, sure. We follow along and visualize our own version of things, as much as the author’s descriptions will allow us the freedom to do so. But even the movies can change those, though. Whether we like it or not. And long…
When my son was young, I noticed that videgames had taught him that problems are surmountable, so long as you have enough tries. That’s not always true, of course, or practical. We had a chat about things dying, and as I struggled to lightly broach the subject with him I ended up talking about the…
Crates and barrels are 3-D versions of the dots that PAC-Man eats. They’re features of the gaming genre, not only because they are easy to generate, but because we already know what they do. As gamers, many of us roll our eyes at the clichés that have sprung up within the industry. Every red barrel…
A long held-belief about Crowther’s Adventure was that it was designed as a “cave simulation” and it was Woods who came along added magic and treasures and turned it from interactive simulation into interactive fiction. We know, from the hard work of Dennis Jerz locating the original source (before Don Woods started modifying it) that…
I’ve just gotten around to playing “Fine-Tuned,” a 2001 work of interactive fiction by Dennis Jerz. It’s a fun piece about a 1920s dandy with an automobile and an opera singer given a strange job. I’m about halfway through, and the game reportedly ends in a cliffhanger (which is disappointing), but so far I’m impressed…
Epic IF discussion thread. You can also see some marketing here. « Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling. Similar:A Matter of Perspective (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 13) Multiple-POV Courtroom …Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EthicsOne of the benefits of teaching at a small college, with small classes…In a final reflection video for a freshm…AcademiaInteractive Adventure SongIt…
The next time I introduce interactive storytelling, I might use this very accessible overview. But all of these efforts were eclipsed by the bedtime story Edward Packard told his two daughters in 1969.While telling his daughters their story, Packard, then a lawyer who was “never comfortable with the law,” asked them what happened next. They…
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While there’s an instrumental theme from Civilization III that’s even catchier, I was happy to run into an old friend. For the first time ever, a music score from a video game has won a Grammy Award, as Christopher Tin’s “Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV won the Grammy for “Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)”. While…
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Is Amy Chua a tiger mother, for forcing her daughters to practice music four hours a day, and denying them sleepovers? David Brooks thinks not: “Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls.” Chua is applying to her own…
(First published 27 May 2020, when I found it in my “drafts” folder.) In an article on consumerism in role-playing computer games, Garrelts explores a history that leads back to Adventure and Zork: “At this stage, while there were objects that could be manipulated that had use-value, there were no developed economies; in fact, there…
I first watched it on an iPod, so I didn’t see the translations, but I actually kind of liked it better when I couldn’t understand what the kids were saying in French. That left me feeling as isolated from them as they feel from the gadgets they are investigating, which in turn made the uncanny…
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Great little story from robohara.com. This morning for Christmas, I got a box from Dad. Inside the box was a treasure chest. The treasure chest was wrapped twice with a chain, and the chain was fastened with a combination lock that uses letters instead of numbers. Also inside the box was this: A map. Similar:Principal…
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I give this article an 8/10. Oh, look over there, an explosion! Cool! “Well, personally I feel that gaming journalism needs a big shake up,” Walton said. “Much of the current ‘journalism’ consists of re-worded press releases. Essentially, the publishers have most of the power and control the flow of information to the press. Given…
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Recently I noticed a cluster of student blogs on interactive fiction. Interactive Fiction: Literature or Not? My Experiences with Interactive Fiction IF Can Be Quite the Process Similar:Why Is Othello Black?To us today, the word “black” carries wi…CultureA Beginner's Guide to HTML & CSSFiling this wonderful resource for the n…CybercultureHow 15 minutes I spent with…