Then my job, as a scion of the Institution, is the care and feeding of that delicate illusion. No?
I certainly have no objection to that interpretation [emote]:)[/emote]
All right. So what would a first, brainstorm-fodder kind of category list from you look like?
Well, I’ve already indicated that I think the community is, in this sense, fictional … so I’d default to categories designed around my personal tastes, with no attempt to serve the actual ideal (despite the fact that I think it’s a fine ideal and that someone enjoying the warm depths of the “delicate illusion” should get right on that).
But for my own tastes, I’d probably (for starters) drop the general “Best Writing” in favor of a short stack of specifically writing-oriented categories … “Most Evocative Descriptions,” for example, would serve the goal of focusing on things that IF has that not-IF doesn’t have or has less of … while “Most Satisfying Ending(s)” would fail to serve that goal (but I still think it would be a sweet category on a selfish level, because one of my frustrations with some IF is that some IF just sort of stops … and I’d love it if the XYZZYs pointed me toward games with a real payoff).
And frankly, I’d love to see a “Leanest Most Badass Killer Lean Prose Which is Very Lean And Not all Frickin’ Wordy And Flabby And On-And-On But Just Gets Right to the GOOD STUFF Like Only Good Writing Can” category, both because that’s something I value, and because I love ironic titles for things.
Okay, can we talk for a little bit about this point? Something along these lines is almost certainly going to happen, but a lot will rely on how strong it is, how it’s worded and how we make voters aware of it, so
a) Forbid authors from campaigning: would mean that many, many people couldn’t talk about the XYZZYs in the first round. So perhaps only second-round. But you could still do dangerously effective campaigning from late in the second round.
b) Forbid anyone from campaigning. But this probably contributes to low turnout already.
c), d thoroughly impractical.
e) Allow people to self-police on campaigning/discussion, but set a clear standard for when the organisers can throw out votes. How exactly should that standard be worded? I’d be inclined to make it a standard largely about consequences rather than intent, but in any case, we need something pretty memorable and clear.
f) As with e), but allow for the throwing-out of games. Flamewar waiting to happen.
g) Ask second-round voters not to vote in categories where they haven’t played N games, for some value of N between 2 and ‘all of them’.
There is no way to effectively police this, so at most it’s going to be a suggestion. So I think that, e.g., adding checkboxes for voters to confirm which games they’ve played wouldn’t help much.
I think that ‘all of them’ is probably way too restrictive unless we give people a lot more warning on what those games are going to be – whether that’s some kind of 0th-round nomination, a big extension of the 2nd-round deadline, or whatever. It also creates a skewing problem if one of the games is only available commercially and/or for particular devices/operating systems; both will be true for Hadean Lands, for example, and we definitely don’t want to end up saying ‘buy Zarf’s game, and an iPhone to run it on, or you can’t vote in any of these categories.’
h) Some kind of statement about the expected attitude to voting. What precisely should that be? ‘Don’t vote for a game primarily to support your friend or your preferred platform’ might be a good start.
The idea sounds fair and reasonable, and I would appreciate this rule as a prospective voter. It would eliminate the hesitancy as to whether or not I should vote this year, since there would be a clear standard. However, the problems you raise are valid, and I don’t have a solution to them.
Maybe tie this in with g, above. Since it’s impossible to enforce a requirement of having played a certain number or a percentage of the nominees before voting in the final round, why not make it a strong suggestion? As a suggestion, it could be worded in such a way as to leave room for the voters’ judgment is situations such as commercial games, etc. “You should only vote for categories where you believe you can legitimately compare the merits of the nominated games in that category. We recommend that you play at least half of the games [for instance]. However, if you have played fewer than that and really believe that the game you want to vote for should stand out among its peers based on its merits, we aren’t telling you not to vote.”
The solution would clearly be to drop the expectation for having played all/most of the games in a category when there are commercial games in a category. Seems simple enough.
Something along these lines seems reasonable enough. I’m not saying it’s going to solve the problem of inadvertent ballot-stuffing, but it’s a good step towards making voter expectations clearer.
I don’t think discussion about the xyzzys should be curtailed before or during the nomination period. I’ve got faith that dealing with matters on a occasion by occasion basis, with clearer expectations set out, is the path to take.
(It looks like “h” was omitted from the main list?)
Of these, the only one I really like is G, where N=2, with check boxes. (I’m assuming there will still be 3-4 nominees per category.)
I also like another related idea that I think someone in another thread suggested: ranked choice voting, where you can only rank the games that you claim to have played. For example, the ranked pairs method could support this. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs
I like G because I believe that this year’s ChoiceScript voters were essentially honest people. They weren’t intending to corrupt the competition; they thought it was a popularity contest and voted for their favorite guy, without playing the other games.
If all of those ChoiceScript voters had been required to play at least one of the other nominees, I think almost none of them would have lied about it. Most of them would have not voted; those who did play at least one other game would have been exposed to more games (yay!) and would have made a prima facie informed decision (yay!).
I think this could be tied together with a stated (but unenforceable?) rule that requires anyone discussing XYZZY to tell people to play the other nominees. “Try some of the other nominees, then vote for me” is, I think, an acceptable statement to make in public. Because once players have tried the other nominees, they can make up their own minds.
I think there are further hardening steps possible against a flood of dishonest voters. But I don’t think those steps are necessary; if Anonymous carpet-bombs the XYZZYs, I think it’ll be OK for the organizers to take extraordinary actions, as they did this year.
BTW, there are other ideas in this thread that I also like and want to emphasize:
- Allowing comments, without requiring them, or adding weight to commenting voters. I don’t think it would solve any of the problems raised this year, but it just seems like a good idea.
- Emailing people to let them know that the voting deadline is coming up.
- Some kind of “Best CYOA” category, where nominees for Best CYOA would be eligible for Best Game.
I agree that this might make it harder to win the top spot. My wish is for a ChoiceScript game to earn the “Best Game” award.
(I kinda like calling it “Best Point-and-Click,” though I’m curious to hear more about why Ghalev doesn’t like that name.)
I once tried to pin down what “point and click” referred to, in common usage: gameshelf.jmac.org/2010/01/point … and-click/
Opinions varied.
I have always associated “point-and-click” with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.
Yeah, ditto. Point-and-click means Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Broken Sword to me.
I see your point. But Colder Light is IMO pretty clearly a point-and-click text adventure.
Indeed, I predict that once Erik and Jon make their code more widely available, “point-and-click text adventures” will become one of the major types of IF. If that happens, I can’t really think of anything better to call them.
I think it will for honest voters, and for dishonest ones a whole different cannon is needed anyway.
Instead of “which have you played” it should say something like “on which of these games have you spent at least an hour of serious playing, or which have you played to the end” (some native speaker reformulate this, please). And then, as I proposed, only those games are affected by the vote.
This also solves the problem of the conscientious non-voter: the person who is afraid of being unfair by voting based on incomplete information.
I have always associated “point-and-click” with graphical adventure games. It never even crossed my mind that it could be used for any other types of games.
Yeah, ditto. Point-and-click means Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer and Broken Sword to me.
Point-and-click is an interface mechanism, not a game genre, or if it is one, it need be one that includes Windows Solitaire, Whac-A-Mole clones, SimCity, and mouselook FPSes. Point-and-click became the standard way of interacting with adventure games of both flavours, 3rd-person and 1-person Myst-style (and subsequently hidden object and escape-the-room) games in the same way that it became the standard interface mechanism for all non-power-users.
[i]I see your point. But Colder Light is IMO pretty clearly a point-and-click text adventure.
Indeed, I predict that once Erik and Jon make their code more widely available, “point-and-click text adventures” will become one of the major types of IF. If that happens, I can’t really think of anything better to call them.[/i]
Are these point and click text adventures anything more than hyperfiction with unusually a lot going on under the hood? In any case, virtually from the death of Infocom on, everyone and their dog tried (and failed) to sex up text adventures by throwing a mouse in the mix, typically also with a more or less static room view window stinking up the main part of the screen much as it had since Mystery House. Numerous early Legend games could be conspicuously played this way, ostensibly without a keyboard at all (OR exclusively using the keyboard, if the player preferred) … others tried to further muddle things up by showing icons for inventory items, the compass rose, etc. such as Magnetic Scrolls’ Wonderland, Icom’s MacVentures, Interplay’s Borrowed Time and Tass Times in Tone Town, Last Half of Darkness and, well, plenty of others. Some of these had a text input/output window, others just had text output.
What we’re looking at as a new kind of adventure game is most akin to that latter without the picture window – mouse-only input, primarily-text output barring spot art and general thematic “skinning” of the game, and (the advantage we have over our predecessors) an adherence to now-ubiquitous universally understood webpage hypertext conventions (== the underlined blue text is a link). I don’t know that we’re striking on anything so radically new here, just that we’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what did and didn’t work and have come to terms with removing the play-extending filler and taking it easy on the cruelty scale in favor of… telling more interesting stories. Oh yes, we also don’t expect to get paid to make these games, which perhaps frees us from pandering to the genre limitations of what we think will sell to the biggest audience.
Hiding the text input parser is a great hand-holding mechanism to say “yes, there are 999 things you COULD try here, but only one of them would advance the story, so here it is click on it.” Has the double advantage of being mouse/touchpad-playable AND saving the author having to write 998 ways of saying “It does nothing.”
Anyhow, I appreciate that this was all obvious.
I like the idea of letting the voters determine that themselves. Something like a Uservoice-style system, where people have a certain number of votes, and can spend them either on their own ideas or existing, established ones.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. If we go “point-and-click means pointing and clicking” we’ll find out that every game is an RPG because it involves some roleplaying.
I always like to see some discussion on it for intellectual purposes, and for stimulation, but let’s not lose track here: we’re using terms that emerged to differentiate emerging forms of gaming. P&Cs emerged to differentiate them from sierra-style AGI games, like King’s Quest 1-4. It automatically meant “adventure game” because that was the only sort of game where, at the time, a P&C interface still made any sense. That’s it. And in that way P&C actually did become a genre, in its most common use.
That’s what P&C means. What the words can apply to and accurately describe, in this modern world, is another matter - but then, isn’t that always how it happens with cathegories.
I quote you in full. With these sofisms we will end up saying that internet porn is Point&Click.
As Peter and others have said, the term “point-and-click” is a little too closely tied to a certain genre of graphic adventure game for this to be precisely the right term, even if the input method is similar to some of the examples that TheUnwashedMass called out.
This name stuff is tricky. I made the mistake of calling Colder Light “hyperlink-only parser IF” on my blog, and got responses from people who read that as “hyperlink fiction”. Which it definitely is not.
I don’t plan to make my code available, because it’s just too hacky; I’d hate to see anyone use it as the basis for their own project. I think Jon’s code should be much better, because he was able to design the game for this interface; I believe that he has mentioned potentially releasing it as an extension. But even so, we need to see a bit more advance in technology before this particular I7-based approach is ready for wide usage. Your prediction has a better chance of coming true once the new Glulx style system is completed and implemented widely across interpreters. (I don’t actually have an opinion on the prediction itself.)
So the term was coined to differentiate between certain superficially similar games nearly three decades ago? King’s Quest was first released before I was even born. Is that term really still needed today in its original context? I mean, how many people still refer to “Doom clones”?
I’m not saying the term doesn’t need revamping - we see examples of terms being revamped all the time, because they became obsolete.
But trying to get the term to fit something else, or working one’s way into the core of the term, won’t work, because of the circumstances in which it appeared.
It would be best to either use the term as it is for what it was meant, or to come up with new terms, discarding the old completely because it’s obsolete.
I just think it’s a bit ridiculous to try and dig so deep into “What’s a P&C” when it’s pretty obvious that if we had to choose today, we’d have chosen some other name for it, because it’s so incomplete - but it wasn’t back when it was coined, and furthermore, there are plenty of people around who WERE around when King’s Quest 1 was released and use the term naturally to mean graphic adventures (another obsolete term, yes - but when I say it, you immediately know what I mean).
I think we’re still too close to it, chronographically. We’d need another decade or so before we start reinventing those terms, because that’s only necessary when they lose meaning.