Trying to Understand Appeal of Text Adventures (I Really Am)

You dug up a 9-year-old thread just to say that? :wink:

2 Likes

I dug up the thread to read it.

And then I thought I’d earned the right to succinctly share my thoughts. :wink:

5 Likes

Wow. There sure is a lot of writing in this thread for nothing actually being said. I got to about post 45 before I stopped, but the closest answer the OP was given was “because I suck at action games” from what I could see.

I mean, there isn’t really even an answer to be given. It’s all a matter of preference and not a sales pitch you can give. Just like I’m not going to convince you why I enjoy metal, EDM, and Asian pop music better than classical, country, rap, etc or why I like horror movies best of all genres and why can’t stomach dramas or comedies.

However, without scouring the rest of the thread, I see one large reason that everyone ignores is that text games are easy as hell to create. There aren’t any graphics or collision detection or AI coding or real time combat mechanics, etc. It’s just text, which is something people new to coding or without manpower can easily create. For better or worse, parser games have barely evolved in the last 40 or whatever years, so developers don’t even have to worry about the constant need to push the envelope like the rest of the gaming world; they just have to emulate the same stuff that’s come before them to be successful.

I think that’s a big draw. The IF community is a lot more like a writing circle than it is a gaming community. I think things would be a lot different if IF was only created by big studios and not individuals.

5 Likes

It may not be “I suck at action games” so much as “I don’t care for action games.” (Like you said.) Many people find games where people are shooting and you’re trying to survive stressful and not fun. Some people like gaming in real-time, some people like turn-based.

There’s always the “If I want to read, I’d rather pick up a book” argument, but that can be said for anything - why toil through an 8-hour shooter when I can just watch a 2-hour action movie without needing to work at it to get my adrenaline fix? Some people like to interact with media, some people do not. You can enjoy riding rollercoasters but that doesn’t imply you will enjoy building your own in a simulation like Planet Coaster. Some people don’t like games period.

Similarly, some don’t get the appeal of IF at all. I personally don’t like sports games like football or hockey, but I don’t need to have it explained why some people love them. We don’t all have to like everything.

2 Likes

My impression from back then was that the original poster was kind of troll-ish. I felt that they had no intention of being satisfied with any answer at all. So the discussion just went in circles.

1 Like

This is literally my internal conflict with story focused RPGs (like JRPGs or Mass Effect, etc). 40 - 60 hour RPG, about 4 hours of story at best. But I still love them, even though I sometimes feel my time would be better spent watching movies or a TV show.

1 Like

There are other types of turn-based games (computer or otherwise). I go through phases of playing Nethack (badly, but I enjoy it anyway).

There is that. It applies to Nethack too. The gameplay is mind-bogglingly complicated because, with no graphics to speak of, it’s relatively very easy to add stuff. I discover something new nearly every time I play it.

1 Like