Re: Gareth's competition comments


16 Oct 1995 16:16:27 GMT

In article <45rouh$kq6@phakt.usc.edu> jweinste@phakt.usc.edu
(Jacob Solomon Weinstein) writes:
>london@ERE.UMontreal.CA (London David) writes:
>
>>What IF is *not* is highbrow art. I do not expect to gain any insights
>>into the human condition through IF. It is therefore inappropriate to
>>analyse IF in the same terms that one would use to analyse serious
>>fiction, films, etc. This is what annoyed me about Gareth's comments.
>>I felt that he was criticizing the games (Zebulon in particular) using
>>criteria (i.e. the quality of the prose) which is of minor importance
>>to IF.
>
>It seems to me that this is like a movie-goer of the late 19th century
>walking out of one of the first films and deciding, on the basis of what
>he's seen, that movies aren't higbrow art. He'd probably be right about
>the movie he actually saw--early motion pictures were often about such
>exciting things as waves lapping against the shore--but he'd have
>absolutely no basis on which to draw conclusions about what movies could be.
>
>Somebody (Neil Gaiman? Alan Moore?) responded to the claim that comic
>books can't be art by saying, "Comic books are just combinations of words
>and pictures. There's no limit to how good those words can be, and no
>limit to how good the pictures can be. If words and pictures can be art
>separately, why can't they be art together?" (I'm paraphrasing rather
>poorly, by the way.) IF is either just words or a combination of words
>and pictures. Is there any particular reason that you feel IF can't be
>"highbrow art," or is it just that you've never seen IF that is?

As I said in another post, if the writer has a point he/she wants to make
(a la "art"), it seems to me that the fact that there is interaction between
writer and reader inevitably gets in the way of what the writer wants to say.
It interrupts the flow of thoughts and the development of ideas. It turns it
into a game. IF is *not* "either just words or a combination of words and
pictures" -- that's what 'F' is. You've overlooked the 'I'. As to your
question, I certainly have never seen IF that I would consider "art"
(although I now regret having introduced this term). But I simply don't see
how it could work. So I'll just repeat a question I asked elsewhere - what can
you do with IF that you can't do with 'F'?

BTW, I agree with your comic book analogy. Comic books will probably never
be considered art. But that's more a function of the "art establishment"
than of the medium itself. To be honest, there are some comic books that
are held in high regard - "Maus", "Mafalda", for example. (These are more
political comic books.) But that gets us way off topic...

>
>I want to stress that I'm not saying all IF should be highbrow, anymore
>than all movies and books ought to be highbrow. There's a place in IF for
>the equivalents of Die Hard and Sleepless in Seattle, just as there's a
>place for the equivalents of Citizen Kane and Howard's End.
>
>> I don't think one has to be a good
>>writer to "write" a good IF game. Indeed, a number of IF authors have
>>said that they don't consider themselves good prose writers.
>> It doesn't detract one whit from their games.
>
>I agree that one doesn't have to be a good prose writer to write good IF.
>But what does that prove? You don't have to be a good prose
>writer to write an entertaining book. John Grisham's prose is pretty
>mediocre, but his books are hard to put down. That doesn't mean that
>books aren't highbrow art--just that some of them aren't.
>

Absolutely. But one doesn't read Grisham for the prose. And any critic who
judged Grisham on his prose rather than on the entertainment value would
be using the wrong criteria. That was my only point. I would apply the
same argument to critiques of IF games.

David London

>-Jacob
>