NEW: Italian IF Forums now online.

It seems Italians may do it better, but they surely do it LAST. :slight_smile:

Anyway: there is this new forum for anyone interested and speaking italian. You can find it here. It’s just embrional as I’m the second to post there after the admin, but I sure hope it grows.

Think about it: if the community gets big enough you may get rid of me and my inglisc! Wouldn’t it be kewl?

Members of the IF community aren’t disposable, plus we might just hear a hollow voice say “Fool!” if we do that! :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, io non capisco Italiano. Which is a shame, because I see that you have a specific forum dedicated to la scuola vecchia – and as a dedicated Neanderthal, I would love to see something like that in English!

Robert Rothman

There’s a lot to be said about Old Style Games in Italy.
Although Infocom doesn’t sound too “new” style, it involved a kind of parser hardly seen in Italy. Infocom games were hard to find and–during the “pirate era”, where every game was out of a copied cassette–there was not that large share of IF.

Some magazines started publishing IF monthly, 3 or 4 a month, during the late 80s. They had the Scott Adams kind of parser, so nothing particularly forgiving. The games were absolutely hard, with a lot of GtV and unfair puzzles. This is why, I think, Italians are more suited for that kind of game and not, i.e., for Photopia look-alikes.

I can tell more, if anyone is interested.

A short comparative history of interactive fiction in Italy would be interesting and educational: do proceed.

There’s Francesco Cordella’s History of Italian IF in the IF Theory Reader, but it’s always useful to have multiple accounts of something.

Such a thing exists in the IF Theory Reader, and you can read an HTML version here.

UPDATE: Maga beat me to it. But, yes, please do feel free to give your own view, Marco.

-Kevin

Congratulations! Don’t stop hanging out here, though.

No need to be afraid. 1) It is NOT my forum, but somebody else did it (so: gratz o him!). 2) I’m not leaving you.

Impressive how this may sound, I never read Francesco’s history of italian IF up to now. Thanks for pointing me in that direction.

Some of the names in that recap are legends to me. As much as those at Infocom.


I don’t think I have much to add on italian IF apart from personal feels and things that are interesting to a whole lotta no-one. IF was a part of my young years more that all of the rest put together (yes, I did play Ghosts’n Goblins, but c’mon. IF was INTELLIGENT. You playing INTELLIGENT games proved you were INTELLIGENT too).
I’m sorta ashamed for having never published a game in italian, not even trying. There are 2 main reasons for this, and I think this deserves being told.

Reason One. I used to make adventure games (yes, no IF: adventure games) in CBM BASIC back in the 80s. The were like:

10 ? "WHAT DO YOU DO NOW", GET A$ 20 IF A$="FUCK STIFFY" THEN GOTO 90 90 PRINT "YOU FUCK STIFFY"
They weren’t much forgiving, but what the hell. It was '84, I had no notion of coding (as I have none today: if not for I7 I still would be a full-time player), and what the hell, again.

Writing games in italian makes me feel like I’m still doing the “PRINT A$” thing. It’s not the language. It is a sort of trauma, you know. What the hell.
Also: games in English sound better. I pretend I am a pro hired at Magnetic Scrolls or Adventure International. You may say my english suck, but I don’t know. I can’t feel the difference. So, who cares? And: what the HELL?!

Reason Two. What happened with Andromeda Etc is… well, incredible. For you all it’s common. But to me. God. 800 players. Maybe more. A dozen REVIEWS of my game. Great God.
Really. No offense to Italians (me included, ofc), but it’s like making a movie for the people in Cyprus only when you have the chance at Universal Studios distributing it. And producing it. And casting Tom-Smiling-Cruise.

Yesterday–I’m not joking–I actually twitted Adam-F***ing-Cadre.

Try and understand.

I don’t know about that. I have to think that, for example, a game in which you explore the various levels of hell could be pretty cool in the language of Dante. Or perhaps a game involving the court intrigues of the Borgias or the Medicis–I would think that such a thing would work better in their own tongue than rendered into English.

Unfortunately, of course, I would be unable to play such a game, but I like the idea anyway.

Robert Rothman

Yay, a new bookmark for me to check every day for new releases. :slight_smile:

Untrue. And I know what I’m talking about - I play English, French, Spanish and Italian IF. When it’s properly done, it’s always good.

How does this relate to groups.google.com/group/it.comp … pics?hl=en ?

Probably the same way this forum relates to RAIF, although a cursory glance doesn’t reveal the spam-riddled mess that RAIF became.