FWIW, it’s not that I wanted to pile on; I brought it up because I did go through the thought cycle you describe when I saw that specific review (“man, that seems mean. Hm, do I comment on this? Post something on my own blog? Probably not useful.”)
This would certainly be nice. Revising not-quite-fluent English is seriously hard work, though. We are in need of better editorial services in the IF world, but my impression is that what’s lacking right now is incentive for people to take on these difficult and generally unrewarded, glory-free tasks.
Otherwise, I’m not quite sure what to suggest about the complaint that novices get help right up to the moment when they release their games. I get what people are saying, but I don’t think it would be helpful (to authors in general, to the community’s connection with the wider world) if we made reviews less critical across the board; we do still need thoughtful critique of the top-end work, and we still need ways to signal to people on the periphery of the community, “this is one of our best works – you should definitely try it out.”
So perhaps we need to add a mechanism for cheerleading/grading on effort/acknowledging novice contributions that doesn’t go through the same channels?
I remember someone saying a long time ago that the reason why ADRIFT games are generally of lesser quality than games made with other systems is not because ADRIFT as a system would somehow inherently cause this but because the culture within ADRIFTers rewards for just finishing a game, not for making quality games. When you get the same cheers and pats on the back for just about anything you produce there’s not much incentive to put in extra effort and really try the best you can. (I don’t know how accurately this describes the ADRIFT community, but I find it an interesting theory.)
It seems like there’s a delicate balance to be struck: sugarcoating and avoiding any negative criticism leads to stagnation and even more crappy games, while overly harsh criticism discourages experimentation and drives away authors and newcomers who get bashed for their well meaning efforts.
On the other hand people write reviews as they like and there’s not much to be done about it, so all this speculation is rather academical. Not even the Cabal can dictate what kind of reviews people write and publish.
Yeah, I also find Pissy Little Sausages to be the most amusing out of the two.
I agree with this. My Hallow Eve game got some very bad things pointed out by the reviewers. From the beginning with it, I had a “It is what it is” attitude about it. I didn’t expect my first IF release to be a masterpiece, and also figured that the story itself wouldn’t be enjoyed by the masses. As long as some people really enjoyed what I’ve done, it makes the harsh criticism easy to handle. The surprise of how many bugs or lack of features the game contained though was motivation for me to make things right, not give up entirely.
Without any criticism, I would probably continue to make “hard old-school IF” because I wouldn’t fully understand what not to do for my next game. Learning is a big part of the process, and you can’t learn without criticism. My Ju-Jitsu professor used to tell our class “Pain is the best lesson”; you can’t properly execute techniques without knowing what it feels like to be on the losing side.
With this said, I think that a “cheerleading mechanism for novices” would be a good idea. Others may not get the few people like I did that actually really appreciate elements of the game to sort of pep them along. I think most of us would agree that we have plenty of channels for discovering what’s wrong with a newbie’s game, but perhaps not enough for telling them what is right.
I agree. I’ve been one of those people that is only too keen to point out the faults in a game, but I really like the idea of a “cheerleading mechanism for novices”. I really do think it’s something that’s sorely missing at the moment.
I like this idea. I may even run with it in this years IFcomp, thereby changing track entirely with regards my usual reviews.
Possibly by more honest reviews, if there is such an amount of inordinate back-tapping.
Also, I’ve read somewhere recently that the ADRIFT community seems to be a community of AUTHORS rather than PLAYERS. If that’s true, then it’s a big problem right there, especially if they don’t play games other than ADRIFT games.
I suppose the best solution would be for ADRIFT to be regarded/criticised/praised on the same level as TADS and Inform and so on. That way, it would all contribute towards IF in general, and not just “IF the ADRIFT way”, just as there was a lot of “IF the Quest way” in the past I’m hoping to see changed.
As we all know, the ADRIFT community’s view of the rest of the IF community has a lot to do with the rest of the IF community automatically shrugging or shirking away from ADRIFT, because it’s had some well-known parser issues (which I’ve seen ADRIFTers even refuse to acknowledge, hardly a helpful stance). I sincerely hope/believe that ADRIFT 5 will correct/has corrected those issues, and the stigma will fall from ADRIFT; the communities will become closer; and the overall quality of IF, regardless of design system, will rise.
I already boosted this once on the thread, but I really think the JayIsGames competition did a great job with this. The specific format was that each game had a page with a “play now!” link (every game was playable through Parchment) and a walkthrough, and there was a comment thread below it. As problems/bugs were pointed out, the authors could upload new versions and bugfixes. This meant, I think, that comments tended to be more “This could be fixed” than “This sucks” (also hint requests).
Also, the obligatory walkthrough helped, I think. One thing that can be incredibly frustrating about IF – and frustration leads to nasty reviews – is that if usually you hit a puzzle you can’t solve, you’re just stuck. There’s nothing more for you to do. You can’t practice the way you can practice levels in, say, a platformer (most of the time). Including a working walkthrough at least lets the player play through, and most walkthroughs will let you scan until you get to the solution of the puzzle from hell.
So, what I’d suggest is running a comp or just a game board, maybe geared to newish or less polished authors, where there was a running comment thread attached to the game, where authors were allowed to do rolling updates, and where there was an explanation that problems would be fixed to encourage constructive criticism. And maybe this forum would be a good place to do it – it has comment threads (and spoiler tags), and I suspect people who register for this forum will be less likely to be mean to each other in general.
I don’t think the Mean IF Reviews guy is actually a terrible person. I left a comment on his review of my game saying “Sorry it wasn’t your cup of tea!” and he responded almost apologetically, saying “Keep in mind that nothing has been my cup of tea since I started reviewing. In fact, I don’t even consider the ChoiceScript entries to be even tea, or fit for human consumption.” I get the impression that actual critical analysis is secondary to just having a vehicle for his snarkiness. I don’t find that particularly clever or useful, but that’s the schtick, so those reviews should probably not be taken very seriously.
(It does annoy me that that review is drastically lowering the game’s average rating on ifdb, though. [emote]:x[/emote] )
Rather than just using this board, I think it would be great to have a special-purpose demoing site. I’ve suggested in the past an “IF Manifestos” site, where authors could post short gamelets that illustrate a point, try out a new UI idea, field-test a writing style–whatever. The same model would work really nicely for the kind of authors’ salon you’re talking about here, where finished games (or betas) could be put up for iterative development and discussion. To quickly spell out where I’m coming from:
The games would be served out by Parchment, Quixe, or any other cleanly embeddable client-side terp, and a comments section below would allow posters to submit comments without leaving the page (that is, webapp-style–you can submit a comment without interrupting your play). Multiple comments submissions during the same session would be wrapped up in a single “essay”. An alternate view might allow you to see those comments alongside the transcript produced; i.e. a running annotation of game play.
It seems to me that in the non-ADRIFT community the general consensus is that ADRIFT is an inferior system and ADRIFT games are generally of low quality (whether actually true or not) and in the ADRIFT community the general consensus is that in comps voters give lower scores to ADRIFT games just because they’re made with ADRIFT (whether actually true or not). So they rather have their own forums and own comps free of such prejudice and since there’s little overlap the standard of what is a good game gets set to different levels.
The best solution would be if an ADRIFT game would win the IFComp (easier said than done, right?) That would set the standards higher, reduce the stigma, and encourage ADRIFT authors to participate more in the open for all comps.
Here’s a more radical although perhaps implausible suggestion: Bring the communities together by merging the ADRIFT forum with the intfiction.org forum.
I think that’s certainly true of v3.9/v4, hence the 6 years work making v5. I would love to hear what the non-ADRIFT community thinks of the new version.
Well that’s a really good point. I thinks it’s fair to retain some ADRIFT-only comps, but it would be good to see more 'drifters join in the wider community. I’ll do my best to encourage that.
Nice idea. Difficult in practice tho as the ADRIFT forum drives the whole website. But it is a big problem; users here for the most part talk about Inform and to a lesser degree TADS with a smattering of the other systems, which I believe gives the impression for new users that these are the only systems in mainstream use today. Perhaps the mods here could add links to the other main forums (ADRIFT, Quest etc) in the ‘Other Development Systems’ forum header?
Well… I’ve just checked the IF Comp 2011 web site and it looks very “dead” No donors, no nothing…
Is this normal? I mean, there’s only two short months to the dead line.
Anyway… I’m planning on submitting a game… and yes, I’m a serious writer [emote]:lol:[/emote]
There are still a few of us who make a point of wearing red on May Day, but Trumgottist is correct that in the standard US calendar Labor Day is the first Monday in September. In the past couple of decades, it has lost much of its significance as a day of honoring those who work for a living, and now survives more as a symbol of the unofficial end of the summer season.
I don’t wish to pull this thread too far off-topic (perhaps a new thread might be called for?), but I do recall expressing a similar, if not actually identical, sentiment to Juhana at PAX East-- perhaps this means I am the mysterious “someone!” Part of the same problem, too, has to do with what Mr. Pears has pointed out: by many accounts, the majority of 'DRIFTers seem to classify themselves as authors rather than players, a position that has never made sense to me. This has meant games released on the ADRIFT site can expect to be played by at most about 4 people, plus or minus 3, usually without any feedback. Some of the more prodigious ADRIFT comps sometimes do better (e.g., Ectocomp or OddComp). Perhaps this is part of why I still feel like I’m in IF Outreach Mode.
As for what the ADRIFT community can do to change that-- I don’t know, but I can say what I’ve done to try changing it. By getting on Planet IF and posting more frequently on IFDB, I hope to allow ADRIFT to reach a wider audience than it might otherwise confined to its own site. By reviewing games on the ADRIFT site, I hope to encourage others to play and review (it’s curious to note that some reviews do get written on the ADRIFT Forum, where they tend to remain invisible to the IF Community at large). I hope to post more ADRIFT reviews on IFDB, as well, to help cull the good from the bad, but my opinions can only do so much. I admit I’ve frequented intfiction.org less than I probably should… personally, I think my involvement with the community would be made a lot easier if the ADRIFT Forum were to merge with it. The more voices, the better. Social connections are overall the most important part of the equation, and that’s the one thing that ADRIFT cuts itself off from when it operates solely as a gated community.
Probably one of the biggest obstacles to this sort of outreach (once games do get outside of the ADRIFT bubble) is, yes, that perception that ADRIFT in general isn’t worth a player’s time. I recall a Russian IFComp reviewer expressing this sentiment in 2009 when he referred to ADRIFT as something like “squalor” and “a pancake” (if Google Translate is to be believed). While it is certainly true that some games come out that are filthy pancakes, it’s an obvious overgeneralization to apply it to the whole development environment, one that prevents people from trying out some experiences they might actually enjoy. In particular, I admit I felt hurt when one prominent reviewer seemed not to touch my 2009 IFComp entries (or at least review them) because of their platform. It was really too bad because I was very much looking forward to that person’s erudite opinions. Water under the bridge, now, I suppose.
At any rate, the ADRIFT canon is actually quite sizeable; I think players are bound to find something in there that they might enjoy.
Pancakes? I don’t get it. Is this a Russian idiom that just doesn’t work in literal translation (perhaps suggesting that a (physical) book is so devoid of intellectual content that you might as well derive some value out of it by eating it, presumably after first adding some sour cream and caviar)?
bowsmand, your Comp09 games were the first ADRIFT games I’d played, and I think they were worthy ambassadors. But, yeah, I don’t tend to play games unless they show up with recommendations on Planet IF or this forum (or highly-starred on IFDB), and not a lot of ADRIFT games are doing that. (Though if you started a thread in Game Discussion with some ADRIFT favorites, that would catch my attention, at least, and probably others’…)