From: goodridg@husc8.harvard.edu (Andrew Goodridge)
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction
Subject: Interactive Fiction and TinyGames
Date: 28 Sep 92 09:52:54 GMT
Distribution: rec.games.int-fiction
Organization: TinyTIM, Inc.


Well, first I wanted to say that the thread involving the recent (5-7 yrs.)
trend in the microcomputer adventure genre is excellent, and after too many
hours wasted typing (c)atch up in a newgroup because NO message seemed to
be saying anything new, it's a nice change to see an intelligent discussion
that matters to me.

It matters to me because I run one of the longest-running TinyGames, TinyTIM,
and I've been enamored as of late with Infocom's history/philosophy/decline.

Here is a company that grew out of a school project gone mad, taken to the
most wild of extremes, and turned into a product that was so far ahead in
quality and ease of use in the "32k is a big deal, take the machine to a
qualified technician" late 70's/early 80's, that I don't think many     
companies now in existence and supposedly the big progressors in technology
and user interface can comparatively match up. 

They started with a great idea; make an adventure game that functioned like
the Colossal Cave adventure, but was bigger and more challenging to play.
The different between Adventure and Zork is the difference between a match
and a flamethrower. Do we see this kind of leaping in technology and more
importantly accessibility in today's market?

TinyTIM is huge; it has over 9,000 "locations" and nearly 20,000 "objects"
within it, yet from the adventure standpoint, there's very little "challenge"
in it. There's several important reasons why this is so. One main one is that
MUDs and their later derivatives were originally built to be, "Multi-User
Dungeons", adventure games that several people could play at once. This 
ideal, this goal, on the whole, has failed miserably. What they HAVE become
are chat lines, conferencing setups, and social clubs. Is this a bad thing?
No. People who use MUSHes and MUCKs and MUSEs are people who in some way
are comfortable with using computers, and therefore it's just another 
extention of themselves on these games. What this led to, over time, is that
when people "build" on TIM, that is, add locations and objects and exits,
we see the vast majority of people are building ENVIRONMENTS for themselves
to function in. Thinking off the top of my head, we have a city, a church,
a park, a hotel, and a host of other PLACES. Very few of these places have
a "goal" in mind. TinyTIM as a complete place has traditionally never had
a "goal", other to "meet people and have fun". I don't think that's ever
going to change, and I don't think it should. But I think that there is a 
pseudo-heratige inherent in the MUD programs that are being sorely ignored.

I get on kicks; I'll suddenly immerse myself into a subject with no rhyme
or reason, and try to find everything on that subject, especially if that
subject is especially compelling. Let me say that I find nothing as 
compelling right now as Infocom's approach and story.

I'd like to propose myself a discussion regarding the field of Tinygames
as a testing ground/area for an adventure in the original sense; you are 
in a location and you have to do something, and there are things to stop
you from doing that thing and you must overcome them. I would like to see,
if nothing else, a discussion of what the possibities are when you decide
to make an adventure on a Tinygame that requires more than one person to
solve it.

I'm not asking for an indepth discussion on MUSH or MUCK or MUSE programming
code, but of the IDEAS and CONCEPTS one comes up with when one has the 
ability to have several people play a game at once, and maybe some discussion
of what sort of puzzles/adventures would be things to add to a game. I've
made it a goal to design and build a reasonably difficult and challenging
game on TinyTIM; but I'd like to be doing it with forethought.

Somehow, a small group of individuals at MIT went from the inspiration of a
game that allowed two-word sentences and a certain number of rooms and 
puzzles, to a game that could understand full sentences and contained
puzzles of a level of complexity and, even more importantly, "LITERARY
VALUE" powers better than the game that preceded it. I'd like to make that
jump again with Tinygames.

 - Sketch
Newsgroups: rec.games.int-fiction