I agree with this. And i’m sad that if my “i’m sad if parser dies” has been taken as “i think parser will die due to too much WB”.
Fortunately, of the things you have listed I can (arguably) check all but one: my efforts only spawned 4 games. So far. 
(<-- this is not condescending, but just a smiley)
I was the person who donated the $100 special prize for parser-based games. I’m rather shocked by some of the content of this thread so wanted to say a few words about my motivation for doing so.
I was introduced to IF in the 90s, long after Infocom but in the “Silver Age” of parser-based masterpieces like Spider and Web, Christminster, Anchorhead, So Far, Curses, the Mulldoon games, etc. There has been some fantastic work since then, including by authors in this thread, but I still consider these early classics to be the pinnacle of the Art. And I admit this may be largely due to nostalgia on my part, rather than any objective or even articulable notion of quality – the games certainly had their issues, including frustrations with the parser and unfair puzzles.
Unless they are superbly executed, I don’t enjoy the “analyzing the human condition”-type games nearly as much as I do the classic crawl or puzzler. I want the awe of exploring more rooms of the mansion, deeper areas of the secret government base, of slowly discovering my way around alien worlds and learning its rules. I want the rush of that “aha!” moment when I finally solve a puzzle that has been barring my progress (Spider and Web still has my vote for best puzzle of all time). I want the slow buildup of tension as I slowly learn more about my past, about the history of the place I’m exploring, and realize that my actions will have import far beyond what I was expecting.
And while it’s true that one shouldn’t confuse the genre with the medium, I’ve observed that parser-based games are more likely to be the kind that I enjoy, rather than CYOA-type games (but this is not universally true; I very much liked Solarium in the last comp, for instance). There are still people making high-quality parser-based games of the type I enjoy; Jon Ingold’s “Make it Good” and Emily Short’s “Counterfeit Monkey” are two recent(ish) examples. On the whole, though, I feel that building parser-based games, especially of the puzzle- and exploration-heavy genre that I enjoy, is becoming a dying art, and I offered the prize in the hopes that it might show some people who might otherwise sit out the comp that these kinds of games are still appreciated, and encourage them to take another crack at creating one. It wasn’t intended to antagonize authors of CYOA games, and I’m in no way in favor of excluding CYOA from the comp or rating them all 1.
[Finally, I want to thank Emily for clarifying the situation that I did indeed find bewildering: aversion to choice-based games somehow being tied misogyny. It goes without saying that increasing the diversity of people creating IF benefits everyone. That said, I come to the IF community to find the kinds of games I enjoy to play, and I want to encourage people to make more of these kind of games. If women are making games I enjoy, that’s awesome. It they’re making games I don’t enjoy, there’s nothing wrong with that and they shouldn’t be excluded from the IF comp or the community – but there’s also nothing wrong or misogynistic about me encouraging people (of all genders and identities) to create more parser-based games. I won’t dwell on this point, but for what it’s worth I was taken aback by the comments early in this thread, and found the suggestion that my disliking CYOA games somehow reflects my prejudice or sexism a bit disgusting.]
This was discussed in private a little before the comp, and the decision was reached:
a) it’s totally cool for someone only to be interested in parser games, and to want to motivate people to make more of 'em, but
b) having just a prize for parser, when there weren’t equivalents for choice, could look pretty bad.
So a donor was found willing to match the donation for choice-based games. Problem solved.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving parser in particular, and wanting to promote it in a positive manner. If your best idea for promoting parser is to loudly declare that CYOA is awful and should go away, that’s a problem.
Ah, I hadn’t noticed there was a matching donor. That’s totally fine by me: let people support the kinds of games they want to support.
For future reference, it was not necessary to scramble the Cabal. An email saying, “you may not be aware, but some people will interpret your donation as an endorsement of gamer gate. Would you be interested in chatting a bit about alternative ways you could support parser-based games?” would have been courteous and effective.
GG… wasn’t even the issue, really. There’s pre-existing parser/choice tension that merited some care in handling.
And part of that care is that we shouldn’t be telling people that they can’t support parser, or slapping down good-faith efforts to promote it! There are people in the community who are only really interested in certain kinds of games. That should be OK. Nobody wants to make you swear a loyalty oath to love parser and choice equally. There’s some talk about having a parser-specific minicomp some time next year - again, that’s fine. We just shouldn’t be putting up GO AWAY signs on the biggest community events.
Haven’t been here in a long while and just read this whole thread.
The level of spirited and intelligent discussion in these 15 pages is proof enough that the thread title is false.
My only concern is that passerbys or recent returns (like me) will take the thread title at face value and move on, as I almost did.
The thread title says: nothing to see here, we’re not worth your time.
Also read the whole of it, agree with teefal. In my country message-board arguments on tricky topics are nothing you would want to experience even as a lurker. I’m consistently delighted to find that here that’s not the case. (Even if it may well have been for the first couple of pages, from your point of view.)
Let me just say that it’s a bit unfortunate maybe that most people equate Twine with the sort of stories that, say, Porpentine writes. (Through no fault of her own or of other people that write that way, of course. By the way, her stories in particular are textbook-worthy for what interactive fiction can be, in the truest sense of the phrase.)
I believe that within Twine’s community itself there’s much room for development of the more gamey sort of stuff (including talking about it, instead of only straight-out javascript/CSS hacks, as is often the case at twinery.org), and the tool most certainly allows it; for example porting legitimate game development data-structures and AI algorithms with nothing but Twine’s native functionality (disclaimer: I’m using Sugarcube) and a smidgen of knowledge of what a javascript object is and how you eat it. I’m saying this as a Creative Writing Major who got it in the space of a few days. Apart from the more extreme game-dev stuff, emulating rooms, a (very) dynamic game-state and world-object manipulation are really not that much of a challenge.
Theoretically, there’s the curious and discussion-worthy question of how to engage the interactor’s attention through links, be they outright choices or just clickable words, and avoid the spam-click issue. (I’ve found that proper formatting of the text helps me A LOT with paying attention and not ADD-ing in the middle of a sentence.) A typology of CYOA-style choices and hyperlink possibilities of sorts, something equivalent to the undoubtedly many discussions you’ve had on the role and function of the parser.
Anyway, my general point is that I see the issue of PB/WB games as an issue of interface manipulation, with its attendant aesthetic variations of course, but definitely not as an issue of genre/depth of world simulation or interaction/game-like mechanics. So no point in either bemoaning the death of IF (which from the OP’s other posts I took to finally mean "death of the more game-like, puzzle-like, world-simulation-like text-games and the Coming of the Personal-Narrative-Masked-As-A-“Game” Plague of Apocalyptic Doom), or of segregating the two types of games in a move equivalent to segregating first-person/isometric RPG’s.
How many of you crying about the dearth of parser games in the comp have submitted a parser game to this year’s comp? Because that’s your starting block for changing things.
I’m reminded of the people who applaud street art but loathe taggers, yet seemingly not having the mental capacity to deduce that the former often develops from the latter.
If you really want IF to die, I can’t think of a better way of achieving it than repelling newcomers to the genre for not living up to the standards and expectations of the pros.
“How many of you crying about the dearth of parser games in the comp have submitted a parser game to this year’s comp? Because that’s your starting block for changing things.”
Not everyone on this forum or playing games in IF Comp can write a game, or even want to. They just enjoy playing them. I don’t see anything wrong with urging authors to write more of a favored platform or genre without contributing themselves. Raising awareness and writing reviews can play a role in change, too.
Neil
I’ve decided - quite late in the day - to review comp entries. Mostly because I like the sound of my own voice. I’m actually relieved that there aren’t 40+ Parser marathons I have to wade through. Besides, variety is the spice of life.
Yes, I’ve never understood that argument. “If you like oil so much more than watercolor, why don’t you quit your job and become an oil painter? If you think television is killing the radio star, why aren’t you producing your own radio show? If you think Windows is so buggy, why don’t you write your own OS?”
The unstated major premise seems to be that the pool of people with the ability to appreciate and promote an art form is no deeper than the pool of people with the skill, talent, passion, and time to create quality work of that form. Which (fortunately for the artists!) is completely untrue.
Fair point. However I would argue that creating an IF work is a lot easier/accessible than the examples you provided. That’s the beauty of it. Get to grips with a platform and let your imagination take you wherever. It’s open to everyone. That’s why it seems a bit mean minded to try and reduce it to specific styles and platforms. Besides, none of us individually - or in a little clique - can claim to represent the REAL IF. How arrogant is that?
Compared to the OS, yes. But make a radio show? There are many podcasts that prove that the barrier to entry is lower for that than writing IF. Painting? I’d say that it’s about equal. Anyone can create a painting of some kind, but to make a masterpiece you have to develop your skills regardless of artform. That goes for Twine and Inform just as a paintbrush or a trumpet. (And as a trumpet teacher, I am 100% confident in saying that anyone can learn to play the trumpet, if they want, and work enough on it. I suspect that to be true of other art forms as well.)
Or am I completely missing the point?
Well for starters, talking about radio and then conflating it with podcasts is a bit mischievous. It takes slightly more equipment (and also legal manoeuvres) to broadcast radio than it does plugging a USB mic into a PC and talking crap into it. Radio shows have a lot of planning, some are loosely scripted. Don’t play the art down.
If you are indeed a trumpet teacher one would hope that you didn’t disregard certain music styles or run other instruments down in your line of work. And presumably you encourage budding musicians rather than exclude them?
In terms of art b3ta have long held competitions based around Photoshop and I’ve never seen an argument about what software isn’t allowable and that people who are crap at it should be excluded. The talented work will always rise to prominence whilst giving others a benchmark to aim for. They understand that people who are crap like their work to be seen. And everyone is crap before they become good.
It isn’t rocket science. Even rocket scientists were crap at one point.
I wasn’t trying to. I was playing the podcast up. It is (or can be) essentially the same thing. If the sound get to the speakers though FM radio or through the internet is irrelevant. I know of professional radio people who have made podcasts of the same standard as their programmes broadcast on national radio.
Yes, it’s technically easy to create a podcast, just as it’s technically easy to make something with Twine. That doesn’t automatically make those creations have less worth. Yes, someone could just plug in their mic and talk crap, or plug in their keyboard and type crap, and plenty of crap exists, but crap is not the only possibility here.
Absolutely. I was not implying that one thing is more valuable than another. I was trying - unsuccessfully - to state the opposite, actually. I basically agree with you.
I was trying to say that all artistic tools - a trumpet, a brush, Inform or Twine - can be put to good use. They all require that you learn the craft in order to make something great, but that doesn’t mean that people who haven’t mastered their craft should stop what they’re doing. Without practice, how could they become better? Also, I have had stronger experiences of Music with beginning students than some concerts I’ve been to with professional musicians. Art doesn’t have to be perfect to be valuable. But improving your craft is never a bad thing either. Any good artist is always working on becoming a better artist.
Does that make sense, or am I just being even more confusing? (I’m better at this kind of discussion when talking face to face with people in a small group, maybe three or four people.)
Yes it makes sense. I think we were arguing over the analogies (and still are, apparently) whilst ignoring the fact that we basically agree (well you acknowledged it, I’m coming round to the idea…)
…
Ah, Sweden. I know musicians from there. Or used to. Actually I seldom argued with them on technical points as they tended to be right. Lol 
apologies…I have not read the 16(!) pages of comments - which, to my mind, would indicate that the hypothetical death is, at least, not imminent!
As for me, I have adored IF since the first time I put Wishbringer into my Apple //e and was immediately sucked into a simultaneously exhilarating and frustrating (and thoroughly engaging) game. While I have gone through long periods where my RL did not permit me to be active in the IF community, I have always come back. I’m back again - and I am guessing with the explosion of devices such as Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other tablets, we have a new opportunity to engage yet another generation of gamers. Rather than frustrated, I’m hopeful!
We just need to remember to set settings to VERBOSE.
just saying.
Yeah, this entire tangent is pretty much why in 95% of cases I hate this argument. (To be clear, I mean in most cases I agree with the sentiment.)
That said, I find it a little hard to believe that everyone – every last person – upset that there aren’t more parser games in the comp is either incapable of learning how to make one or unable to at this time. Surely someone can be the change they wish to see in the world.
oh my
too bad I was not around 
wut
srsly, what has misogyny to do with downvoting hypertext?
I admit some twine hypertext are pretty good, even some of your less puke-inducing ones. They are just not games.
And the problem here is that text adventure games adopted the ambitious interactive fiction moniker and are now facing competition from other forms of interactive fiction that truly are more engaging as fiction to be read than parser-based text adventures could ever hope for. Because there’s agency, exploration and puzzle solving in text adventures and that puts limits to plot and character development. Focus changes from reading what the author has intended for the protagonist to typing what the protagonist should be doing (and that usually being manipulating objects) and then watching the author doing his backstage juggling to keep everything reasonably consistent. At the end of every choice-based games turn the player is presented one from several objects to be picked: two or more tokens leading into what shall happen next. That’s not true for parser-based IF, which is not merely about taking one from several roads, but also giving and combining things and routes. And yet, even being richer from a playing perspective, from the outside it’s not as exciting as fiction because the objects you pick along the way are all boring physical stuff, while choice-based games’ are usually links with text describing exciting actions a parser-based IF would have a hard time to come by. Couple that with the ease of just tapping or clicking a link and you can understand the appeal of such “games”.
That said, books are not dead, nor is theater, radio, TV… you simply don’t kill ideas, they just taste funny when old.
Please read emshort’s reply later in the thread. It’s a very good, clear-cut explanation.
Begscape is totally a game. ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III is totally a game. Just in the last three months, we also had Krypteia, Missive, It is Pitch Black, and Eclosion, which are all inarguably games. Icepunk even had world exploration via a clickable map, and Zest had achievements. Achievements! (The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo also kept track of endings the reader had experienced.) If those aren’t enough, even with my sketchy skills I suppose I could whip up a Twine implementation of Concentration or Simon for you if you’d like and we could just be done with this argument forever.