Yes, Peter. I dug up my own hole. And, just like you, merely by keeping coming back to it. It’s impossible to discuss things on the internet, especially with people driven by rage, anger and suffering. Who doesn’t want to listen, simply doesn’t. The most verbal people in a thread get used as a champion for a subject even if they were against that subject from the beginning. And now I’m a champion of something, hated from here to Facebook and beyond for no reason at all apart trying and have a discussion on a topic.
So, who cares. This is what people tend to end up saying: who cares. Do what you think it’s right. I don’t care anymore. I vote on locking this thread, if it helps. Guess Dannii was right from the beginning.
Peter: I didn’t mean to say you are a misogynist. Sorry for phrasing it so badly. What I meant was: “In case you are one - which I don’t think - would speeding you away solve a problem?”. Another lesson: never argue in a language which is not yours.
There’s precedent. A few years ago, a non-parser game was in the XYZZY awards and the rules were changed afterwards to move such games into their own category. This strikes me as the same kind of thing. And, though I wasn’t part of the IF community back in the olden days, didn’t the IFComp have separate categories for Inform and TADS games at one time? To me that sounds quite a strange approach but it must have made sense at the time, so why not a separate category for parser and non-parser games?
Really, though, it was just an off the cuff suggestion. I don’t have much interest in the IFComp these days and won’t while the updates rule remains so whether parser and non-parsers remain in one category or split into several different categories won’t really affect me. But judging from this thread it certainly affects a lot of people who do care about the IFComp.
AFAIK the XYZZY Awards rules weren’t changed, and they definitely weren’t changed to introduce categories. The problem was that one game was voted on by a bloc. That’s less likely to happen with the Comp because all judges need to rate at least five entries.
In 2011, Choice of Games fans swarmed the XYZZY awards to vote for Zombie Exodus. It was easy to recognize their ballots because they voted for Zombie Exodus to receive every award. If those votes had not been disqualified, Zombie Exodus would have taken all 10 XYZZYs for which it was nominated - including Best Puzzles, which (as far as I know) it flat-out didn’t have.
After long and hard debate, maga created the Special Recognition award to recognize the Choice of Games fans, while preserving the XYZZY awards for those voters who had actually played some of the other games.
However, choice-based games have repeatedly received XYZZY awards. In 2014, Alan deNiro’s “Solarium” (Twine) received Best Story, Porpentine’s “their angelical understanding” (Twine) received Best Writing, and Simon Christiansen’s “Trapped in Time” (PDF) received Best Implementation, as well as Twine itself receiving Best Technological Development.
Okay, fair point. But TADS and Inform games did use to be in separate categories, right? So it wouldn’t be completely out of this world if parser and non-parser games were in their own categories.
Only in the comp’s first year, presumably because people immediately realised there was no earthly reason for it. (I wasn’t around the community then either, though. I was like 7 years old. I thought Enid Blyton was really cool.)
Just because something has been done before does not make it right.
Regarding the Xyzzy’s, I do think there is room for a Best Use of a Parser category. Authors of parser fiction put hours of work into making sure the parser reacts just right. Crafting pages and pages of refusals. Seamlessly integrating hints into those refusals. Building a character out of the parser, with a unique voice and a personality. Twine authors are able to create Great Works without all this, but it’s par for the course with parser fiction.
It would be nice to recognize an author for this effort, and I think it would add an incentive for IF authors to consider learning and creating parser fiction themselves.
And otherwise a Good Use of Hyperlinks (or whatever is suitable as a name). I think that something can be (and has been) rendered impressively in Web-based games, something one couldn’t achieve with a parser.
This said, I’d like to understand why separating the two contenders (parser/non-parser) would be negative in terms of actually exalting one kind’s pros.
Apart from the “apartheid” motives, why judging web-based and parser in different sections would spoil the game? I understand this is NOT Xyzzy, and we have just ONE kind of winner… but sometimes I really feel like I’m trying to compare apples and unicorns. Music and Movies, they are both conceptual, artistic forms of giving emotions and telling a story, but I wouldn’t try and judge them in a single category. This example is a bit too much, I understand, but consider this: WB are usually short, fast, strongly emotional; PB are usually longer (at least to fully navigate, if not for the content itself), and the atmosphere is built step-by-step. The kind of involvement/way-of-play are pretty much very different. TADs and Inform were just two different platform delivering identical results. Here we are talking two completely different languages, in terms of experience.
Don’t know. I don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t want anybody to feel like I want to segregate them. Just my two cents.
Ps: now that I think of it, segregation would maybe be automatic, in the sense that WB enthusiast would probably skip all the PB and viceversa. If this is not happening now, maybe having just one pool may render it a little bit harder to accomplish. Don’t know. What do you think?
I don’t think they should be separated, since Interactive Fiction slants more toward story-telling than mechanics. That said, maybe there should be an XYZZY or separate award, just for mechanics. A game with good mechanics and a bad story can still be fun to play, and most (if not all) old-school graphical games fall into this category. The way I see it, a non-parser game is a story, and must live or die on the strength of the writing. A parser game has to have good writing, because that’s the way the mechanics are presented, but making those mechanics that exist behind the story bug-free and fun-to-play is a challenge. The challenges to make a coherent parser game can go unnoticed – but maybe shouldn’t be, in the realm of competition.
Your brush is too broad. But to stay with your examples:
Rap and Country are both kinds of music, but only one wins best album.
Drama and Comedy are both kinds of movies, but only one wins best picture.
Hyperlink Fiction and Parser Fiction are both kinds of IF games, but only one wins IF Comp.
Yes, this is a good answer, to me.
Acknowledging the PB difficulties solved should be a prize, too.
Yes, I was aware of it.
But your example doesn’t work anyway: you narrowed yours too much
PB or WB can both be comedy/drama or rap/country but they still are “used” in a very different way. As we can have horoor music and films, or romance music and films. I still wouldn’t judge them together. But this is nitpicking, I know.
Romance/Comedy/Horror - those are all movies and the audience participates by sitting and watching. In a way, it is a fascist art form. You see and experience only what the director wants.
Interactive Fiction can be separated because the audience interacts with it differently between WB and PB. PB requires players know/guess certain specific actions whereas you simply mash choices in WB.
I don’t think it’s nitpicking. There’s country music and rap music. There are country music awards, and there are rap awards, and there’s also one big best-album award. So I’d be interested in hearing pros/cons of having one award/competition versus two, because really, I don’t want the inclusion to have the practical result that people give certain games an automatic 1-rating. Most people, being rational and decent, won’t. But it still happens. (Also, I can’t think of any compelling arguments either way.)
