Reviews? Chat?

This is the main reason why I don’t think I’ll write any reviews during the judging period. I simply don’t have the time. But if I find something especially remarkable (good or bad or just interesting) I’ll post it here.

Bob

Honestly, I think I would probably have more fun with the games – maybe even rank them higher – if I wasn’t trying to analyze them so much. I play past two hours (stopping to mark a score if so), so I can comment on the entire experience in the review (not just the first two hours of it – else, it’s really not a complete review). So that adds time. Then I write and re-write and revise and re-think and analyze and check transcripts and debate with myself about what’s good and bad, and spend probably four to six hours total just writing a review. With all else that’s going on, I seem to be averaging about one game and one review a day – just not the same day.

But if I played and didn’t review, I’d be missing the opportunity to explain and justify the score. I can see, though, why most reviews are so brief, and most reviewers don’t have the patience to play through a game they’re not enjoying. Doing this is a major project. [emote]Smile[/emote]

I miss the “good old days” when I was a lot easier to impress. Comparing my new reviews and scores to the ones I wrote for the 2004 competition (or even the mini-reviews I wrote for 1999 or 2000) shows that I’m getting crakier and harder to please. It’s not intentional. I guess I’ve played enough now, and put such work into my own few games, that I’m starting to see flaws more easily than before. Or else, the flaws are what sticks out more. Where I previously focused on the puzzles and the story and didn’t really care about how well things were implemented or how nicely written the text was, those things are starting to seem more important. It’s like, if a game fails on technical levels, it’s harder to appreciate the story or the spirit of the game itself. And it didn’t used to be that way for me.

You know, I played the graphic adventure Ankh some weeks ago with my four year old son watching (I only played less than 20 minutes, it’s not like I am irresponsible or something). So we had to go to the bazar or something in order to progress the story. I said “Juri, what do you think we should do next?” and he said “I want to go to the desert.” I said, “But Juri, you know, I think we should check out the bazar, don’t you think?” and when he answered “I’d rather see the desert. I like to see the sand blowing down the dunes” I thought that he is much better at playing computer games than I am. He is perfectly right: these things should be diversions, fun, nice just to play without just thinking about how to progress the story. Too often I sit there, trying to find the fastest way to finish the game like it was a kind of a disease I have to get rid of.

But then, too often the games really won’t let you do anything else. I just started to play an entry which has a built in “walkthrough” command, so you could play it from start to finish just using the enter key. Consequential, the game wouldn’t let you do anything, that would be incoherent to the story it wants to tell and it makes it impossible to put the game into an unwinnable state. I ask myself why the author just didn’t write a story? I recommend to read forums.somethingawful.com/showth … id=2622633 which is a forum in which the Infocom classic Sorcerer is being played. The people try all sorts of crazy stuff, just because they think it’s fun. They probably won’t sit through the whole thread, but they are just having some fun, like Juri was. There’s nothing wrong with story-driven IF of course, but the restrictions put upon the player sometimes lead to a lack of freedom just to mess around.

So what I initially wanted to say is, try just having some fun with the games, like you did in 2004. I remember having e-mailed you for some feedback to “Trading Punches” and although I don’t quite remember what you answered, I remember being very impressed by your positive perspective to the other entrys.

Bob

Yeah, 2004 was fun. I think I rated half the entries an “8” or higher (maybe more than that – I should go check) because I really had fun playing them. I don’t remember what mindset I was in exactly, but I was generally less critical. Or less discerning. I get the two confused. [emote]Smile[/emote]

You know, I think you’ve emailed me about each of my entries over the past three years (sometimes even after the comp has ended), and if I said “thanks” I probably didn’t stress it enough. It’s always nice to get feedback about a game, and especially nice when the person actually enjoyed it! So thanks!!

I’ve only emailed one author of the five I’ve played so far. Shame on me.

I’ve found that as well. I look at games I played years ago and really liked and know that if I were to play and review them now, my review would read like a shopping list of errors and problems. I sometimes look back at games I reviewed 4 - 5 years ago and wonder why I gave them such great reviews considering how buggy they were. The more games I play, the pickier I get.

Another 5 years and a single typo in a game will have me screaming blue murder…

Yikes! That might be a good, early warning to lighten up now before it’s too late! [emote]:)[/emote]

The same goes for me. Each year, I’ve revised my scoring criteria some. Each time, I’ve tried to better explain the differences between each score on a technical level. That means I’ve intentionally focused more on things like puzzle design, accuracy in writing, implementation (are too many things “not seen here” when they really are, are there any bugs or guess-the-verb situations, do standard and familiar IF commands work, such as transcripts and undo and “x me”), story consistency, and so forth.

If you compare my 2004 criteria to last year’s criteria, the differences really stand out. In 2004, there was a clear emphasis on how much fun I had with the game. How much did I enjoy the game. That resulted in a large number of high scores. The next year, and then again last year, I tried to expand on those things in a way that would give me a better distribution of scores and help me to more accurately figure out just what score an entry deserves.

But in doing so, “fun” seems to have become a smaller factor. It’s important, but because I’m trying to use those score definitions to figure out how each game should rank, I’m really focusing on all that’s bad and very little that’s good in every game. That’s really not what I intended. I just wanted a way to really lay out what guidelines I intended to follow, and stick to them. It’s flawed (as any strict criteria are bound to be) not only because I can’t possibly define every aspect that may or may not make a game worthwhile, but because I’ve made it pretty complicated just to figure out an opinion that might be better coming from gut instinct instead.

I think I’ll have to stick with it this year, and I’m not even sure I can see the games as optimistically as I did in 2004. But I think I should probably ease up on the negativity a bit. I’ve played five of them so far, varying from “okay” to “fairly good”, and unless the real gems are just lower in my list, I’m probably being too critical. Maybe next year I’ll drop the detailed ratings and just go with instinct. Well see. [emote]:)[/emote]

I have posted my reviews to:

shadowk.com/IFComp2007.htm

for those interested.

As an author, I am having to resist a fierce urge to take part in discussion. What was the reason for excluding authors? So that they wouldn’t canvass votes, or bias things in their direction?

I think so, yes. I guess the same thing could happen if a huge fan (or non-fan) were to get involved as well, but as a participant, you have the most interest in having your game rank highly and all others rank lowly (two $500 prizes on the line, for instance). Rather than have any author think that some other author was unfairly swaying voters in a certain direction, it’s just not allowed.

That’s my theory. I’m not the competition organizer and can’t give you the reasoning with any certainty. But that’s my guess. Sargent’s around from time to time. Maybe he’ll offer more insight.

Authors are welcome to email me about my comments and reviews in private, though. I haven’t been initiating it much (even though I should), because I worry that I’m being too negative. But I invite private discussion, as long as it’s a game I’ve already checked off my list (see the sticky-topic for play checklists, also in this forum).

As an author I’d love to take part in the discussions and even post a few reviews of mine… but at the same time, I don’t want my game to get disqualified because of this. So I have to keep quiet and just observe.

Kinda hard though. I keep heading for the Add Reply button before stopping myself [emote]Confused[/emote]

Hm. I think I enjoy the games about as much as ever, relative to their quality level.

On the other hand, this process of writing a blog entry for every game has meant that I tend to write longer reviews even for games I don’t like; and that means that I spend longer playing them so that I can review them justly; and that means I’m spending more time on the un-enjoyable bits of the comp. Hm. May need to revise this strategy for next year.