Re: Gareth's competition comments


Wed, 25 Oct 95 20:38:35 PDT

On 23 Oct 1995 20:28:38 GMT,
Jon Drukman <jsd@cyborganic.com> wrote:

>when a game spits out a lot of paragraphs without spacing between them, i
>agree, it stinks. the infocoms were usually short and to the point,
>however, and rarely output more than one paragraph at a time. i think the
>verbosity of recent games is actually a strike against them. "brevity is
>the soul of wit" and all that.

It can go either way. If a game is poorly written, more writing is clearly
detrimental. But in Legend, for example, the world needed to be visceral
and consistent to get the story across. The thick description helped this
goal.

Yes, it's a different feel than Scott Adams, but it's also quite satisfying
to get a page of description about a location you've been trying to get to
for half the game.

>if that's true, it's unfortunate. i really like those short,
>less-than-24-line openings. guess i'm just a traditionalist.

Some of them work perfectly: Trinity, Wishbringer, Change in the Weather.
But in Wishbringer, the first few moves after the intro serve the same
purpose as the introductory text in Legend. It's not a paradigm shift,
just a different way of setting a game up. Had Wishbringer begun outside
the locked post office following a description of your altercation with Mr.
Crisp, it's unlikely the game would have played any worse.

How about a compromise? Thick description to set the scene in the first
location of a game section, then more modest text globs for the rest of the
scene? This sits well with my tastes. I admit, having to read two pages
for every location would be ridiculous. But I've never seen a game like
that, and most of those I've played have erred on the side of too little
description.

Matthew