From: librik@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David Librik)
Subject: Re: Searching for a sense of wonder
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 01:28:47 GMT

djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:

>>>Can do with a lot less of this, thank you.  To me, and hopefully
>>>a lot of other people, frustration does not correlate with fun.
>>
>>I wholeheartedly disagree.
>>
>>The more frustrating a puzzle, or any undertaking in life, the more
>>rewarding it is to find the solution.

>Well, I guess for some people it is ok then.  Generally, rather than
>finding the solution, I will just stop playing the game.  I'm talking
>about the common case of sitting down and playing for 2 or 3 hours,
>and get no further in the game and quit in disgust.  Eventually if the
>solution is ever discovered it tends to be something stupid (give
>jalapeno to grue) or something that can't be solved because you messed
>up weeks ago and don't know it (ie, rescuing the baby hungus
>prematurely).  I've never felt anything rewarding about figuring
>things out after days of staring blankly at the screen ...

HURRAH!  I'm not the only person who feels that way.  I don't like
frustration at all!  I realize that puzzles are the only way we have to
keep people from discovering the whole game, and giving some point to gameplay,
but I don't play Adventures in order to bang my head against really tough
problems.  That's why the Babel Fish puzzle was fun -- you made progress,
you went somewhere.  Just trying things over and over and having nothing work
for hours isn't fun at all.  (And yeah, Russ, I feel the same way in real
life: I like to be doing things.  Remember that, in Physics, just pushing
against a wall isn't considered "Work" unless you're moving the wall.  Same
principle for Adventures.)  What I like in an Adventure game is the setting,
and the way you can work with stuff and get results.  You cause interesting
things to happen by manipulating objects in locations: what I tend to think
of as "Adventure Physics".  Cause and effect.  (You have an axe, there's a
tree, you can chop down the tree.  The tree falls across the street, a car
smashes into it.  Now you can cross the street in safety.)

I don't know about you all, but I loved ZORK 1, and hated ZORK 2.  The first
one was incredibly cool to explore, and was full of neat objects -- the Dam,
floating down the river, the grate covered by leaves, the whole geography.
The second was where all the "oo, you think you're such a great Adventurer,
solve this!  ha ha ha!" puzzles went.  The Bank of Zork, the Baseball maze,
the Carousel room -- they weren't fun, they were just Real Tough.

I'll be heretical here and say: I like mazes.  I know how to map a maze,
and so it's just a matter of time and making progress before you discover
the maze's secrets.  It makes you feel like you are doing something --
methodically exploring somewhere.  I used to play these TRS-80 games called
"Asylum" or "Labyrinth", which were Adventures set in huge, complex mazes.
Most of the game consisted of mapping and exploring these gigantic and unreal
networks of passages.  It was loads of fun and I still have the several-page
maps I painstakingly assembled.  (What you found in the mazes was just as cool,
of course: the Hall of Twenty Doors, a drag strip, an axe murderer, falling
pianos, and some very odd games with the nature of Time and Space.)  There
were plenty of puzzles, but they didn't count on the puzzles to make the game
worth the price (which, at $15, guaranteed you at least three weeks of
continuous play.)

Argumentatively,
David Librik
librik@cory.Berkeley.edu