This is a problem I have with a lot of choice-based IF. I chatted to a new Twine author last night at the London Meet-Up, and what she said seemed to confirm something that I’d long suspected; that many authors approach IF with one story in mind that they’d like to tell, and consider the choices and alternative paths to be something of a nuisance. If that’s the case, then why write Interactive Fiction? Why not just write that one story? I see IF as a sort of cloud of possible stories, and endeavour to give them all equal weight and equal love. That’s the challenge and the beauty of IF.
Ehh, this is hardly a problem that parser-based IF is inherently inured against. I’m sure many implementors bitterly curse having to implement all the false paths garlanded around their own one true story path.
There are reasons to write IF to tell a particular linear story. The ability to write story branches is not the only point of IF.
Can you expound on this at all?
There’s the issue of reflective choice, which is gaining a lot of attention in recent days. Take a look a this ChoiceScript game, which has no alternate branches whatsoever, and gains most of its effect by the different choices you choose.
Many, if not most, works of IF do not have significant branching. Anchorhead, Spider & Web, Photopia, Violet, Lost Pig: they only really have one conclusion. (And there are just as many games where the branching is a very minor aspect of the work, coming right at the end; I don’t think that Savoir Faire would be a significantly lesser work if you took out the special ending for the LLP.)
Interaction allows for many effects. Branching plots are only one of them. Saying that the sole justifying purpose of IF is to allow many different stories to be told seems, to me, to be as naive and limiting as saying that it’s necessary to allow the player to pretend that they are the hero of the story (and that therefore all PCs should be AFGNCAAPs or fully customisable).
Certainly there are some people working in IF for the wrong reasons - because they really want to make a movie or AAA videogame but don’t have the skills, connections or budget, or because they really want to write straight prose fiction but don’t know of a good venue for their work. But this was true long, long before Twine was a thing.
I would have to disagree with this – I think this is a very good reason to make an IF game, because its easy for one person to bring a vision from idea to implementation, and actually release it. There are limitations to IF, but it’s better to adhere to limitations, then never release anything at all.
Interaction allows chiefly for a feeling of agency; the sense that your actions count for something. There’s a satisfaction that comes from having worked something out or having made a decision. ‘The Trial’ seems to have set out deliberately to confound that, which is an interesting idea, but not an idea that you’d want applying to every story. It’s not just a matter of multiple endings; even if the story has just one ending, branching allows the player to explore the story world in the order of his or her choosing, selecting or rejecting branches as they see fit. That’s interactivity. Otherwise, to quote from The Trial, “whatever you do goes ignored in the end”.
I agree with this up to a point, because I like games that give me full control. However, I think the main thing is to follow-through with what is promised during the course of the game. When Mass Effect 3 came out, people said the ending ruined all of the freedom of choice made in the 150+ hours of gameplay that came before it. People expected to have a unique ending, but were delivered something uniform. So, if your game is about freedom of choice and branching, it has to feel that way throughout. If your game is an adventure game, for example, that has one ending, then the game is more about playing through the mechanics and solving puzzles, but the story not branching in the middle or the end doesn’t create as much dissonance for the player, because it’s not expected.
Okay, let me rephrase: it may be the right choice for them, given the circumstances. But it usually does not make for the best games.
I don’t want to watch movies by people who would really prefer to be making videogame action sequences. I don’t want to play videogames by people who really want to be making movies. I don’t want to read novels by people who are thinking about the movie deal, or play boardgames that really want to be RTS. (Sure, weird hybrids can be fruitful, and some ideas just don’t have a natural medium available yet. And people should absolutely experiment to determine what their best fit is. Nonetheless.)
I want to play IF by people for whom IF is their first choice, not a sad compromise. And I want authors to choose the best medium for the work they want to make, not stick with a particular tool out of inertia or some weird sense of community loyalty.
I think that this is right. I also think that ‘agency’ is far a more complicated and various thing than is usually acknowledged in this kind of conversation.
Ah, I see. I agree with that. If the vision is compromised to fit the medium, then that isn’t good. And you could fit most Michael Bay movies into the “prefer to be making videogame action sequences” drawer. I guess the main difference between what is considered to be a AAA game and a text game is the medium itself: text! If you like writing, and are good at it, there’s no reason not to make IF.
true and it’s as much an illusion as the freedom the parser supposedly allows
good stories are inherently linear, there’s no way around it. If you give the choice for Juliet to just grief for Romeo for awhile and then go on with another boyfriend, it just lacks sufficient drama punch…
the best IF (and narrative-based games in general) are very linear. and yet they feel like you’re in absolute control and plot development really progresses from your actions…
this
I assume you’re pointing to the idea that IF requires puzzles to be IF. Choice is a form of mental puzzle, and it can be a moral or ethical choice that’s completed mentally. A puzzle doesn’t have to mean pulling lever A vs. B. Interactivity and agency is about choice, and can exist in a mostly linear format – mentally.
no, I was just pointing to the fine text by maga, not to my signature
though, surely enough, I vastly prefer puzzle-solving to making moral choices for characters I don’t really feel connected to enough. And I don’t feel connected enough because I’m only reading text and moving forward to the next page: I can’t just hang around in a scene, touch and feel things and move them about, sometimes to minor surprising psycological effect. I can’t even examine stuff, only read whatever scrap of text comes up next, as in static fiction. I really believe this is important to create a bond between reader and the protagonist.
In this case, I even prefer some twine hypertexts to choice-based CYOA.
That’s fine, to each their own. Everybody has their own opinion about what they like. If someone wants to argue against something being created, because of their opinion, I feel that’s wrong – but that’s my opinion, so maybe I’m wrong, (in your opinion.) 
Late last night I found that Pippin Barr has a work on the Fear of Twine exhibition: Drosophilia. I confess I’m really fond of his pieces (do take a peep at his Pong variations: http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/pongs/Pongs.html!). Drosophilia turned out as conceptual as always, but quite a bit more artsy than usual.
Will check out the Exhibition.
The problem with all Twine (and ChoiceScript) games I have seen so far is that they are so railroaded. They play like some early 80’s gamebooks (or indeed, like the CYOA books). At least for ChoiceScript I think part of the problem is that the format used strongly suggests writing stories that go from start to finish, with some temporary branches to explore. I think it would be very difficult to use a format like that to recreate some of the more complex gamebooks like the Fabled Lands books (from the mid- late-90’s) that have large open worlds you can explore, rather than just some pre-written branching text. Once you get used to that style of gamebook imo it is difficult to go back to just branching sets of choices. Frustrating to go north, then not being allowed to go back south because the story just moves on and you have to just follow the rails to the next section of text to read.