I haven’t been privy to any arguments that may have gone on the author’s board, but I thought that Jeremy’s post was explicitly coming out against gatekeeping.
I don’t even know what this gatekeeping is that he keeps alluding to. [emote]:P[/emote] I’ve googled its definition on Wikipedia, but still can’t understand how it applies here.
I don’t think splitting the comp would be positive. For one thing, because there’s half a dozen axes that people decide to be partisans about (puzzles/no puzzles, game/story, etc, etc), and of course we can’t divide the comp into divisions based on all of them. For another, because it implicitly discourages games that don’t conventionally fit into one or the other half – including, I think, nontraditional parser games like CMG’s output which I suspect find a lot of fans in the “choice” audience.
I was responding to the specific statement I quoted, which I thought was really uncalled for; it echoes a sort of constant low-level defensiveness some people who identify with the parser end of things seem to present. Interestingly enough, no OG member of the old r*if that’s still around seems to do this, as far as I’m aware.
yep. i believe the winning entry this year (Brain Guzzlers) was roughly 50% parser-based (exploration) and 50% choice-based (all conversations and action scenes).
I’d thought about that, too. There have been several games in the last few years that were sort of a hybrid between the two and you’re right that they wouldn’t really fit into either category.
Have the number of parser games really been dropping recently or something? Like I said earlier, I’m relatively new here and don’t know much of the past history of the comp, but I’d thought that the number of parser games were basically holding steady, they were just losing their majority as choice grew?
Every year on the authors boards there’s always some bias conspiracy theories but I think the muzzle rule was what was debated the most. Probably because there were so many entries and then that whole business with Emily is Away being DQ’d got people talking. For a comparatively small comp there sure was some big drama, but that just shows how passionate people here are. I do other writing competitions and a lot of the time the authors just throw their hat in the ring and check back again at the deadline (usually because they have thousands of entries and noone actually expects to do well). I’ll be really interested to see how many people enter the comp next year. I won’t be surprised if it’s slightly less or it stays steady around 50.
Well, I thought that statement was supposed to be something like “That’s how I felt at first… but I reject that sentiment.” It was part of the “bitterness here and there that I didn’t like seeing.”
I definitely agree that there has in the past been too much gatekeeping (in the sense of trying to draw boundaries so as exclude stuff, Peter) against choice IF. But I didn’t think Jeremy was endorsing the gatekeeping. I do think that some parser fans may feel as though the parser won’t be preserved and developed if we don’t try to make a space for parser games; but I think, and I think Jeremy thought, the place to make that space is not IFComp but perhaps in parser-oriented events like ParserComp. Though one might fairly point out that the winner has always been a parser game.
By the way, Jeremy, the reason you hadn’t heard of ParserComp before was that it only has happened the one time! I think that it was a lot of work for Carolyn and that if someone wants to pick it up that’d be cool. I have a great idea for a theme: Terminators.
Tia–looking at the graph here (under the first spoiler) there was a huge peak in the number of parser entries in 2011, which dropped pretty rapidly in 2012-3 and held steady in 2014. I think this year the number of parser entries was back up, though.
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification. It does make sense and I see where he’s coming from.
As far as the hybrid thing goes… if we’re going to include dialog options, they’ve been part of IF for quite a while now. And yes, it was surprising to have that brought up - it is, indeed, a definite “choice” moment introduced at specific times where the parser is simply inadequate.
I’ve said as much in another thread and I’ll say it again, maybe the best thing really is a true hybrid, harnessing the best of both worlds. But it seems that parser IF has already condeded this and made some steps towards it. Mostly in conversation, but hey, that’s the ONE BIG THING that’s always been a hurdle in parser IF.
I guess? It’s not totally clear. Maybe I knee-jerked, but I also wish people would be more vehement about rejecting those narratives since it’s not really a given that they are.
You did knee-jerk, but I don’t blame you. What he said was he felt that way once, but now he has changed his mind and he feels the opposite.
I just want to say that, as the only author this year with both a parser game and a Twine game in the competition, I’m glad they were in the same category.
I’d characterize myself as sympathethic to the idea of categorization; I don’t know that I’d say I’m an advocate for it, but I see the potential value. From my personal perspective, the way things are working now is fine; the current voter pool tends to like and reward the same kinds of things as I like. But I’ve been seeing a lot of frustration that more experimental games aren’t being more recognized, and I don’t really see that situation changing under the current system until generation shift completely changes the voting population. (It would be interesting to see the average age of a comp voter over the years–is it primarily the same cohort that played Infocom back in in the day, or has there been overturn with new people who just tend to reflect similar preferences?)
I thought this article from Emily Short was a really interesting perspective:
and part of why I thought that was that my experience is so different from her–the works she’s describing here don’t create the feeling of involvement in me that she describes experiencing. They basically feel, to me, indistinguishable from reading a short story. It’s hard to quantify exactly where the line is, where a still effectively-linear work like Birdland crosses the line into having enough complexity and interaction to evoke the feeling of taking part in a story, rather than reading a story, but it’s a line that’s there (and probably in different places for different people). I wonder if this is part of why people have such wildly different reactions to what Emily terms ‘dynamic fiction’ here and why it feels so out-of-place in the competition to some and not to others.
Part of the reason I’m not keen on a split of categories is that “parser” and “choice” doesn’t seem to cleanly make the split. Parser can be just as experimental and weird as choice; choice can have as much a world environment as parser (we didn’t see any go all-out this year, but last year one of the choice games was a straight-up adventure game with a verb list and so forth).
Gameplay genre is more than interface. Scarlet Sails is straight up a different gameplay genre from, say, Capsule II. We could keep subdividing to try to get “comparable” stuff and not ever get there.
Also also, parser and choice are not the only options; see for example Aaron Reed’s recent stuff. If we fossilized categories I think we’ll short circuit some of the experimentalism and cross-pollination that can happen (see Laid Off from this competition for an instance of what I mean).
Experimentalism won’t always score high. The Gostak sure didn’t, but it still is far more remembered than many of the other entries from its year.
I’ve definitely seen social media posts from this year saying “I’m not going to play any parser games in IF Comp because I hate parsers” as well as “I’m going to subtract points for having less interactivity” (re: “dynamic fiction”-type pieces).
Anyway, it was about 50/50 this year, on a pure interface level and disregarding subtler game-design stuff (which matters to me because what I hate is clicking, and secondarily not being able to save; e.g. being able to press keys to advance in Forever Meow was awesome). I agree that experimentation or lack thereof aren’t interface-specific at all (and The Gostak is totally one of my favorite games ever and an inspiration to the poor parched unyielding barrens of my noncreation).
Fwiw, I got into IF at the time when Galatea had its own web page, Emily Short’s website wasn’t emshort.wordpress.com, Baf’s Guide was still being updated, and at least one 24 Hours of Inform jam had already wrapped up. I don’t remember when that was exactly, but I definitely never played an Infocom game in my life (and in fact did not exist during Infocom’s heyday, if I have remembered the timeline correctly).
This year I played a number of parser-based IF Comp entries but only one choice game which was Scarlet Sails. This is not because I do not enjoy choice-based interactive fiction, it is because, thanks to the increased popularity of Twine, most of the choice games were simply unplayable for me because I am visually impaired and use screen-reading software which just cannot cope with Twine. I am glad that so many players and authors enjoy Twine, but I can’t help but feel excluded from a medium which had previously been accessible to me. I know that visually-impaired players probably make up a very small percentage of the overall IF audience but I am still sad to see trends in choice-based IF apparently moving towards a disregard for accessibility, especially since one of IF’s main attractions is it’s lack of emphasis on visual elements. I discovered text games in the early 2000s when I was about ten, it meant that computer games, which I had always longed to play like my sighted friends, were suddenly and wonderfully available to me. I’m sorry to sound so bitter but it really brought it home to me, while playing this year’s competition entries, that the future of choice-based IF may not be very inclusive. I think it might be worth taking this factor into consideration when wondering why some people stick to parser games when playing and voting for competition games, it’s not always stubborn partisanship. I should also note that some choice games are accessible and that not all parser games are, so this is mainly a rant about the increased use of Twine rather than a vendetta against choice games. Just before I wind this rant up I would like to say that I find Choicescript games extremely user-friendly!
Sorry for the long rant, I just wanted to express my perspective on this years contest.
That’s a good point, and, as a not-very-technical person, I wonder if Twine’s incompatibility with screen readers is something fixable? It’s funny to me that they don’t work, since they’re mostly just text (I guess I can see how time-based stuff and click-to-vary text could be hard to deal with) and I wonder how hard it would be to make them readable. Maybe someone who knows more about the underlying guts could weigh in?
(Oh, and welcome to the board!)
Parser games aren’t off the hook either. As people start incorporating visual elements into parser games (like the map in “Map”), it’s important to keep in mind that not everyone is going to be working with the same setup – whether in terms of their computing device or their body – as you are. If a visual element is going to be central to the game, these technical issues should be given great consideration. I think in the excitement this often gets left behind, which, as Sarah says, is kind of disappointing in a medium whose text-based nature had previously made it relatively accessible on that front.
I looked into this while I was writing Birdland and it seems like Twine html is pretty unusual. It does a lot of stuff that screen readers just aren’t made to handle.
I’m curious, though. Are there any accessible choice based systems besides ChoiceScript? And do all ChoiceScript games work with screen readers?
Wade is working on a CYOA extension for Inform with screenreader-friendly options:
<a class=“postlink-local” href="'CYOA Framework for Glulx' extension - early tech demo
It looks like Squiffy may also be screenreader-friendly:
forum.textadventures.co.uk/viewt … 13&p=37656
Thanks, I’ve been lurking here for a few weeks so thought I’d better sign up to comment on what has been a brilliant competition (despite my complaining!)
I know nothing about programming, for all I know my laptop is kept running by the tiny fairies that live in it. All this means that although I can moan about Twine I have absolutely no useful suggestions to offer as to how it can be made more accessible! All I can say is that, while Choicescript’s check boxes work fine my screen-reader (which I believe is one of the most widely used) just can’t recognise any of the text in a Twine game, all it can usually read is the title although it will occasionally read an entire game including all the code as being on one page so you can read (rather than play) the game if you can slog through lines of code to get to the bits of game text which is not exactly an immersive experience!
Lux, I had played and finished ‘Map’ but hadn’t realised it contained a dynamic map, this would probably have helped cut out the large amount of aimless wandering which was necessary to find the new rooms. I can completely understand including graphics when they enhance the look or mood of the game, it’s just frustrating when the graphics are necessary or extremely helpful for finishing the game.
BPHennessy, thanks for clarifying the Twine thing a bit. I have played a few ChoiceScript games and they all seem fine which I think is because of the simple check box structure, my screen reader (Jaws) has no trouble with check boxes and as far as I have seen ChoiceScript doesn’t have any more complicated mechanics which is probably quite limiting for authors wanting to experiment with game formats but I do find it very user-friendly.
By the way, I was sorry not to be able to play ‘Birdland’, from the reviews I read it really sounds just my cup of tea!
The thing about the IFComp is that, if we’re going to have 50+ games in it with a really high average level of quality and a really diverse and deep gamut of approaches, the single ranked list starts to look kind of inadequate for representing and encouraging that. So while I do like the approach where everyone enters the Comp in the same footing – no categories or separations – I think that a move to a format with multiple awards given by different groups and through different methods might be positive, though I recognise that it is organisationally more taxing than the present format.
XYZZY helps with this somewhat. I think XYZZY is much more prestigious than IFComp. I plan on nominating Cape for a Best Story XYZZY. But there are several parser-specific categories in XYZZY; it would be nice to have some web-game-specific categories. Although web-based games have dominated best writing and best story for the last few years.