From: xeno@iastate.edu (Gary L Snethen)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Re: The trend in adventure games
Date: 28 Sep 92 05:55:59 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA

In <1a5ndvINNedk@pollux.usc.edu> jdevlin@pollux.usc.edu (Joseph T. Devlin) writes:


>>I'm starting this thread to talk about the type of game that seems
>>to be the norm today. You know the type... big on graphics, big on
>>disk space, short on puzzles, short on executable commands.

>[Long discussion deleted]

>  Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that we're all familiar with these
>types of games.  I've got to agree with Jonathon on this.  I can't begin
>to express how much enjoyment I got out of the original Infocom games
>and even the classics like adventure.  When the emphasis was on clever
>puzzles and snazzy command interfaces such that you didn't have to blindly
>find the completely obscure word that meant "jump" - that's when life
>was fun.


Here here!

I agree [almost] entirely!

Never have a seen a better graphic representation in a game than the one
I envisioned while manipulating the panels of the sliding room in Zork 3, and
no graphic adventure could ever portray me more accurately than Enchanter
and Sorcerer did...  (In each of them, I actually interacted with myself!
And the visual portrayal was correct down to the last detail!  And the shiver
that ran up my spine could not have come without the incredible animation
that added feature after feature until at last, I could doubt it no more --
I was staring into my own face.)

But these graphic adventures have their place...  Few six year-olds will
sit and play text adventures, and fewer yet will be patient enough to deal
with difficult english parsers that won't tolerate flawed English such as
"Give the troll the axe."  (This isn't to say that they SHOULD...  God forbid
the parsers forgive too many grammatical errors, "l at alumin key" is JUST
right... ;)  The graphics and sounds are fun...  and the interface, although
cryptic and limiting, is somewhat intuitive, and can get people feeling
comfortable with GUIs...  (yes, things can be cryptic and intuitive at the
same time... ;)

These people, who prefer these games, are not our breed.  I am a computer
hobbyist...  a hacker in the original, unmolested sense.  I far prefer
Unix to any other operating system.  I prefer DOS, with it's intolerable
limitations to Windows, with its intolerable and intolerably slow limitations.
In fact, as a side note...  How many of you wish that Microsoft would make
a command line version of windows so that we could run windows applications
without having to use the program manager or even see the Windows logo?

But there are the others...  the new 'generation'...  although I feel
silly calling them that...  I am only 23.  These people prefer mindless
games, with repetitive thinking skills...  like 'mine sweeper' and 'tetris'
hours and hours on end, and cannot tolerate having to think.  Or the
other group, the strategists... who like complicated simulation software
that has no real goal other than to consume weeks of your life at a time.

I pray we aren't forgotten in this new age of computers...  Where common
computer illiterate high school students have humming 486/50s and Quadras
sitting on their desks so that they can 'type a paper once in a while.'

I like Sierra games, and I would not wish any harm befall them.  In my mind,
they are quite orthogonal to Infocom's line of games, and could not possibly
replace them...  They offer a different appeal to a different side of me.

Well, off to solve Lurking Horror...  Thank goodness there are still two or
three Infocoms I haven't solved yet...  Someone think up a solution QUICK!

;)

---Xeno

Hey, think I'll use the signature of my 'youth'...

Zorker --I=======-
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction