From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik)
Subject: Re: Length of Descriptions in Adventure Game
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 02:35:33 GMT

dmb@case.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett) writes:

>In article <1992Sep30.142417.1716@netcom.com> jrs@netcom.com (John Switzer) writes:
>>In article <37210@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> let@insect.cis.ufl.edu (Luis E. Torres) writes:
>>>The problem is, the few friends I've shown the test version to say the
>>>descriptions are too long. Each description is, on average, about 16 to 20
>>>lines on an 80-character PC screen. This is also true of most person
>>>descriptions.
>>
>>Consider it this way - you're writing an interactive novel, which means 
>>that there is the added dimension of the gamers' involvement. The gamer
>>wants to explore and do things, and these people 
>>think the descriptions are too long, then they are.

>I don't think it's so simple.  You're answer assumes the original
>poster is a poor writer, and that that's the reason for the "excessive"
>length.  This may not be the case.

>The game I'm currently working on has a similar "problem."  It all
>depends on how much you want to pander to the "weekend gamer" versus
>trying something new with the genre.  The game universe I'm creating
>right now is complex, because I'm trying to create as realistic a world
>as possible *within the context of the game*.  This may be interpreted
>as "information overload" but the fact is that some interactions in the
>game setting are complex enough that not giving the player at least a
>few screens of test would leave things incredibly vauge and confusing.
>I think that would be unfair and amazingly frustrating.

But that's not what the original poster was saying; he said that he had
written it so that _each description_ was _on average_ SIXTEEN TO TWENTY
LINES.  That sounds like way too much wordiness to me, especially for an
adventure game.  If you are creating "as realistic a world as possible,"
then you may have complex descriptions, but you're more likely to want
complex _behavior_.

I remember this from the time I was writing Dog Star.  There is a terrible
temptation to just blather on and on.  The user can't "use his imagination"
to picture the scene when he's drowning in a sea of pointless detail.
Sure, you don't want to just see "You're in a shack.  There's a table here."
but if someone can get 16-20 lines of 80-character description out of
the table -- you have to wonder if all that description is properly supported:
can you "examine" the features described in the table?  And how relevant
is most of that to the game?  Since a major technique in playing Adventures
is picking up on things in the descriptions, I think I'd get frustrated
with all that verbiage.  (This is a problem that arises on MUD-like
games: everyone can build rooms full of description, but there's no
substance behind it.)

It's so tempting to create an item, then sit down and say "okay!  let's
come up with a description for it!" and then be witty and descriptive
for half-a-dozen lines.  Except in the case of real humor -- one of
the best features about the Unnkuulian series is that the descriptions
are hilarious even if they're often irrelevant -- it's usually better
to try to keep things in a consistent style.  Despite what we'd like to
think, our players aren't playing the games to read all the nifty descriptions.

>                                              Almost everyone who's
>played Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave remembers the letters written
>in fire.  Not coincidentally, this was one of the longest scene
>descritptions in the game, and it methodically address every sense --
>the bright light and the lava below, the heat, the rumbling, etc.

This was one of the more subtle ironies in that game: with all that
wonderful description, that room had nothing at all to do with the rest
of the game.  There wasn't even anything you could do with all the
things mentioned in there but gaze on it.  You wouldn't want the whole
game to be like that.

- David Librik
librik@cory.Berkeley.edu