I would say if it’s the work of a famous poet, and you’re adapting/modifying/transforming/building off it, you don’t really have to worry about plagiarism in that sense. Taking the entire text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and publishing it unmodified under a new name was a silly, extreme example just to make a point, not something anyone would actually do.
I’d still stick the title and author somewhere (maybe after the end, so as not to affect the experience?) but it doesn’t sound like you’re trying to pass off someone else’s writing as your own.
Thank you for the thoughts. I edited the itch.io information to credit the author of the poem, but I have to go edit the game file to put the credit into the actual game at the end. I guess I just figured that anyone who finished the game would either know from the start or figure it out, in playing the game.
Well it is more of a … poetry experience? than a game. Very short, and there’s no win state or anything. I like poems, and Emily Dickinson, and I just had the idea to do it for the “room”* prompt during Enigmarch in 2023 because I was tryng to learn some of how to use Inform. It was good for that, plus I learned a bit more about Emily Dickinson too.
Since it hasn’t been played much it probably has other issues that foil even its very modest purposes, and I welcome suggestions.
One thing I couldn’t figure out is how to fix it so the Title and Headline etc. were not written across the cover art when the game opened. So I just deleted the cover art from the game, although it is still associated with the game on the itch.io entry.
I just played it – it’s a neat idea, and well implemented. The pacing is quite solid, which is usually very hard to nail in a parser game, so kudos for that! So if it hasn’t been played very much, I don’t think it’s down to quality, but rather marketing; I don’t know what makes text games stand out on itch (well, rather than romance, which seems to be a big draw) but in terms of getting more attention here, typically entering something in one of the regular competitions, jams, or other events will scare up at least a few reviews, albeit more so in the big, more competitive ones. Other than that putting it up on IFDB would also make it more visible, I think? But this is definitely not my area of expertise!
It’s so nice that you played it, thanks. I didn’t really even try to get more people to play it, it’s not like it’s a fun game. It was just a couple of people who were helping me with Inform and a friend who likes poems. I think the Venn diagram of people who like Emily Dickinson poems - about death - and interactive fiction without images - is pretty small.
Anyway thanks for responding to my panic about not giving credit and then playing it.
I will repeat what I said earlier and say that while this is certainly a small intersection as far as the world at large is concerned, I think it’s a fairly high percentage of the folks here
You do have to be careful because there can be layers of copyright. While Bach’s fugues are public domain and I can perform them in front of a paying audience and record that concert, that doesn’t mean someone can take that recording of my performance of a Bach fugue and use that in their independent film without my permission. Bach’s music is public domain, my performance/interpretation is not.
Publishing A Midsummer Night’s Dream as your own work would probably get you some raised eyebrows and I bet the copyright office would take issue if you wanted to re-copyright someone else’s work under your own name, but if you reinterpret A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a contemporary novel about millennials, that’s totally fine. West Side Story is transparently an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. You can perform R&J for free, but you have to pay the license to perform West Side Story because it’s still under copyright.
You’re probably okay. If your poem is not public domain, the most important thing is you’re not making money from interpreting this person’s work nor infringing on their potential market - you’re not trying to pass your IF as the original to fool people. There are different specific fanfiction rules where I can write a story in the world of Star Wars so long as I’m (basically) writing a non commercial work in the same universe that doesn’t plagiarize any other writing nor attempt to pass my story as a legitimate Star Wars franchise entry. It’s also always good to give credit and disclaim in that case. Fanfiction is its own ball of wax. It needn’t be on the title page if it’s meant to be a surprise - like suddenly you go “Oh, this is actually TS Eliot!” and that’s part of the appeal. Most IF works should have a separate standalone credits and acknowledgment in its own link anyway.
Thanks. The Dickinson poem I used is in the public domain, but I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to think I was trying to take credit for the quoted poetry. So I just added the credits to the story description at the outset.
Welcome, Jessica! Great minds (and Dickinson fangirls) write alike! I did a Dickinson-themed speed IF a few years ago:
There’s a modified version (Your death in Four Acts) that was what I originally wanted to do but didn’t have time for since you only have 4 hours to code a game for that comp. The modified version uses “I heard a fly buzz.” It’s amazing how that poem writes itself as an IF scene.
played it, and liked that after the first run there’s accessibility consideration for non-english-mothertongue (my category) and slow readers (NOT my category !)
Technically is really interesting (big timer + automatic backtracking thru passages selected at the end of the timer). So, I encourage you to formally release the .twee code under OS licences, there’s really interesting code trickery.
now, another thing: crediting fellow IF authors for borrowed code. being an OS taliban and pasdaran I always credited, source and binary, the author of nifty code I take, eventually adapted, in my works (this remind me that I still have to do the official post-comp release of The Portrait, whose source wasn’t released because need a serious editing out of too many spoilerish code (yea, I 'fess up, I have committed the sin of leaving unused code dangling around idly in the binary)
I can’t figure out how to paste a screenshot here (or is that even possible?) but actually your game was also part of what inspired my little “game”/experience with the Dickinson poem! I loved it and it gave me a new idea of a way to use inform to make a world that wasn’t really even a game just a sort of opened-up version of the poem or what the poem evokes in my mind.
I don’t know how I didn’t see your game?! Except that I guess I always seem to find some random smattering of games when I go on a little spurt of playing some. I see that Aster’s even mentions you? Anyway how cool that you like poems and IF too, it’s so nice to feel nestled within a narrow Venn diagram subset
Apparently Aster is planning another release in which after playing through once, you can adjust timing, but I think it’s part of the idea that some people experience less and that it doesn’t matter so much. It still could be annoying though.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to play it*. I downloaded it but it is “greyed” out on my computer when I try to open it with Inform. Maybe that’s why I didn’t play it before, Aster’s had the “play” button right on the itch page. I’m not very good at this stuff yet.
Should have said *them throughout since there are two versions
Are you trying to open it in the Inform application itself, where you write code (the IDE)? It can’t read compiled story files, so that’s probably the issue - to actually play games offline, you need to run them in an interpreter program. I like Gargoyle, though there are other popular ones like Lectrote.
I always credited, source and binary, the author of nifty code I take, eventually adapted, in my works (this remind me that I still have to do the official post-comp release of The Portrait, whose source wasn’t released because need a serious editing out of too many spoilerish code (yea, I 'fess up, I have committed the sin of leaving unused code dangling around idly in the binary)