Why Text Games are Important

Authoring General Design Discussions
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Nothing in this post is a new idea certainly, but after a recent experience playing a few modern games I had to write something to get this off my chest.

Having recently purchased a new computer, I decided to see what modern games were like. Typically I have little interest in current games (beyond IF) but I wanted to see what the new GPU could do when it really rips.

I was massively disappointed. Take Star Trek Online (not a recent game, I know, but a coherent example.) The game tasks you early on with getting shuttle down to a planet to investigate a crash. On successfully piloting the shuttle from the ship to the planet, which required one keystroke on my part, the game promoted me from ensign to lieutenant. Clearly they’re hard up for competent officers in Starfleet these days…

So the story, which isn’t bad in itself, continues. The visuals are designed by expert artists, people who are very good at what they do and are paid to do it all day. Though the graphics ARE impressive, no-one would ever mistake them for being real. Even top tier games have some measure of polygonal scaffolding peeking through. At the end of the day, these games (like STO) are very simple, leading me from story point to story point with impressively textured origami to represent visually what’s going on.

And then there’s the characters. NPCs, in all AAA games I’ve seen, are inexcusably bad. It’s analogous to a high school student, realizing he needs to include something he knows the teacher will ding him on, puts in a reference to a key concept in an essay as an afterthought. NPCs scramble around your character, running like frenzied extras in a Benny Hill sketch, there only because it would be strange to have no other characters than the hero. ALL the games I’ve installed/uninstalled do this. Instead of being caught up in the story and the characters, my reaction is: “if this were real, I’d be wondering what in space was wrong with my away team.”

Sorry for the rambling introduction to my point, which is: the stories would be massively improved as text instead of represented with high-budget visuals and sound. Why? Because text is still the clearest and most expedient way to express authorial intent. It’s the reason we still have books when movies exist. Movies are fine, and can be very well made, but are stuck with as a visual medium. Books, harnessing the power of narrative, put you into the head of the main character with astonishing quickness and economy.

Bizarrely, I end up playing text-based games on my very powerful new computer. I respect that AAA titles are the result of thousands of hours of hard work… But I can’t get into them.

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What AAA games have you been playing?

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Forza, Star Trek Online, Flight Simulator, Rocket League, No Man’s Sky, Indiana Jones and the Whatever Whatever, just to name a few.

Indiana Jones is another salient example. It’s gorgeously realized, so much so that I really want to just stop and explore the environments. The game HATES ME DOING THIS. Marcus Brody doesn’t want me to look at all the detail that went into creating Marshall College. He won’t stop bugging me until I further the story to the next story point. As NPCs go, Marcus isn’t bad, but if you stop and watch him for a while, on no level does the model behave like a human being.

So I comply and get further into the game. After another beautifully rendered cutscene, I’m unceremoniously dumped into a castle at night, crawling with guards. (Video game guards are still IDIOTS by the way. No-one would succeed as a guard for any length of time if they can’t perceive a intruder beyond about 4 meters away.)

I want to look at the beautiful game world, but the game continues to get in my way. I have to manage an endless stockade of brain-damaged “bad guy” NPCs, usually with fists, or whatever prop happens to be lying around. Near as I can tell, there is no in-story reason for all these guards to be here; apparently, this random castle full of crates and furniture has tighter security than the Louvre. They’re here because they’re more unextraordinary fill-in-the-blanks video game enemies, descendants of those blippy little aliens in Space Invaders, whose sole purpose for existence is to be beaten up by the player.

This is all by design. I’m not knocking the skill of the developers, they did a fabulous job. The game accomplishes what it set out to do: you end re-creating the carnival of slapstick violence that is an Indiana Jones film.

Here’s the thing: I detest violence, even in fantasy. It’s not that I don’t realize the difference between fantasy and real life; I just want to choose a path whereby everybody lives. Obviously, in-character, Dr. Jones solves his problems by force, so that’s what the game wants me to do.

But why? I’m the player, ergo I control the PC. Theoretically that gives me some freedom of agency. Why do I have to beat up guards to further a strictly-by-the-numbers plot? Or sneak around them by the long-standing convention of crouching rather than walking? (I’ll bet if a leather-clad man in a fedora were right behind you in some hunched posture, you’d notice.) What if a few guards weren’t complete idiots and ran, or tried to bargain with Jones?

I don’t understand why games do this. Why can’t I experience the story–or explore the environments–at my own pace? What’s wrong with just enjoying the ambiance? Does there have to be enemies, or the threat of death, everywhere to hold the attention of the modern gamer?

IF does a MUCH better job at this. I’ve seldom played an IF game that nags you to keep furthering the story, even if you’re taking too long. (Some old games, like some of the Infocom stuff, had timers I suppose, but they had a lot of frustrating nonsense that modern authors wouldn’t even consider.)

As Adam Cadre said, characters are hard to code. NPCs in IF typically exist for a purpose, so they’re not usually just there for scenery. Because IF players tend to have high expectations, characters are often implemented with full conversations, actual dialogue, and sometimes even their own sense of agency. CHARACTERS are what make a story, not human-shaped signposts.

I’m not saying IF is perfect, not by a long shot. But how can a small community of hobbyist developers produce better characters and stories than, say, Bethsaida? Aren’t they getting paid to implement fantastic virtual worlds? Why are the graphics gorgeous but the characters dumber than a box ‘o rocks? Why can’t Ubisoft pause for just a second on excreting Generic Shooter #454 and give us something unique? Is the concept of a thinkpiece AAA game dead?

Sorry for long rant but this really bugs me. Thank you for letting me vent.

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Honestly, a lot of what you’re saying reflects a lot of stuff I’ve heard in more mainstream gaming circles for years, possibly decades and contributes to a lot of gamers having lost faith in Triple-A gaming and being annoyed that enough less discerning players keep buying in large enough numbers to keep the technically pretty but soulless games coming.

People have been complaining about games with technically good graphics but lousy gameplay pretty much as long as I’ve been on the Internet and have been complaining about overly long tutorials or excessive handholding pretty much since games stopped coming with printed manuals, if not longer.

I don’t think I’ve heard people complain about NPCs in the way you have, and most gamers are okay with the fact most games assume some kind of armed combat as the primary means of progressing the story, but non-combat games does seem to be another area where most turn to indies to get their fix.

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I play a lot of AAA games. And AA games. And text games, too! I wouldn’t say that text games are by their nature better at story or characterization. A lot of games, text or otherwise, are enjoyed for their mechanical satisfactions.

While I’m not surprised that the characterization in Rocket League is not very good, I have generally heard that the writing in the Indiana Jones game—I haven’t played it—is adequate for something that is ultimately inspired by pulp serial fare. I detest Bethesda games, so you won’t have any arguments from me there.

There is a wide gulf between the text games I’ve made and AAA, of course, and I think a lot of non-text games in that space between might be more to your liking. Though perhaps not!

If someone were to ask me why text games are important, I would say—quite selfishly, I admit—that they make it possible for me to tell interactive stories without a team of experts, something I very much love doing.

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AAA games are very expensive, of course, which is part of the explanation. Because of the huge cost, they try to cater to the lowest common denominator. They don’t want people to get stuck and hate their expensive game, so Marcus Brody ushers you on. Some AAA games are works of art, but that’s not usually what you’re buying a ticket to.

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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - If you want to play a beautiful game with an amazing world and overall fantastic game design. Might not be up your alley, based on what you’ve played, but it’s worth a shot.

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I don’t play a lot of AAA games these days, but I play a few. (In recent years: the Indiana Jones game, the Tomb Raider series, God of War.) As usual, “it’s complicated”.

This isn’t a failure of game writing. This is a convention of game pacing: the game leads you through an introduction to the world and mechanics, and then opens out into a wider realm that you can explore at your own pace.

(The Indiana Jones game alternates between tightly guided chapters and open, explorable chapters. In this case you get the college (tutorial), then the Nazi castle (narrow), then Vatican City (open). Etc.)

This idea is universal – every game genre that has a shred of narrative has adopted it as a standard which players expect and rely on. Text games do it. Planetfall does it, come on.

The balance between realism and giving the player a guided tour isn’t simple – it’s easy to screw it up – but it’s part of game design. Just like puzzles that are always solvable.

(In the case of Great Circle, the pacing is also meant to showcase Troy Baker and his entirely masterful performance of young Harrison Ford performing Indiana Jones. A third of the fun of the game is listening to him ramble on in a movie-like way. Another third is watching the character move – the motion acting is equally masterful.)

Here’s the thing: I detest violence, even in fantasy.

That is not a text-game thing either. :)

[Tobias] Because of the huge cost, they try to cater to the lowest common denominator.

That is not a helpful way of looking at this. It’s not lowest common denominator; it’s the best choice for the game they’re making.

Look, it is true that “AAA” games are very focused on violence. (Assuming that label means anything – I’ve seen arguments that Great Circle is “AA” instead – but let’s just say “high on the budget spectrum.”) That falls out of the intersection of what certain audiences want and what’s economically possible in games of certain scales. I am not thrilled with that sort of gameplay either, which is why I don’t play many of them.

And yes, this sometimes leaves a gap in the storytelling. See my review of Tomb Raider (2015). The storyline (lone vulnerable woman seeking help) does not fit well with the gameplay (mowing down hundreds of armed mercenaries with a bow). It sucks that it had to come out that way.

But, first, there is a very wide spectrum of games aside from those. Some of them are pretty fancy-ass with the budget, too. (Recently: Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a pretty mainstream game which is entirely focused on character and dialogue.)

And, second, the big games have narrative innovation as well. God of War (2018) has an absolutely brilliant storytelling system: when you get in a boat, the character starts telling a story to his kid. It uses a storylet-like model to select relevant topics, and it’s set up so that if you stop the boat and get out, the character interrupts the story with a natural dialogue transition. And picks it back up when you return to the boat. This is intensely designed, and it’s designed around the rhythm of a 3D explorable world. In a pure-text game the idea wouldn’t even come up, because it’s not a real-time game.

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Well, with the exception of Indiana Jones and maybe STO, none of these are really focused on character interactions. The characters are set-dressing, they’re secondary to the actual gameplay they’re trying to deliver.

Yes, the de facto standard in IF seems to be that any unimportant characters (and to an extent also unimportant objects and locations) are just quietly elided. This mostly works in text, but it would be be very odd if the locations in a graphical game were this empty.

All of these are options that someone needs to predict, write, and implement, and each of them roughly doubles the total number of paths that needs to be tested. (And it’s not like IF is any different in this regard.) Making a perfectly reactive game where you can solve any problem in any way you can think of is impossible, at least as long as you expect humans to write and implement these interactions.

There are games that focus on that (e.g. No Man’s Sky or Minecraft), but those games then don’t tend to have a story, and you already complained about the NPCs in No Man’s Sky being too shallow for your taste.

Overall, it sounds like you’re complaining that games tend to be either wide or deep, rarely (if ever) both. The reality is that it’s very expensive and takes forever to make a game that is both, and the ultimate uber-game that let’s you do anything you want at the drop of a hat isn’t a realistic goal. (Just look at Star Citizen if you need an example of what unchecked scope creep will do to a production.)

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I quite like No Man’s Sky. The NPC’s aren’t much, but the story is at least interesting, and it’s text instead of overly-melodramatic voice acting. I also like how you can do the story whenever or never and just wander around or build bases or whatever. I have about 1000 hours in the game and while a lot of the planets can feel very “samey” after awhile, every now and then I run into something new and interesting. I don’t visit coordinates found by other players and insist on finding everything myself. I have a sentinel interceptor unlike any other I’ve ever seen on youtube or anywhere. I document every system I visit and currently am doing a comprehensive planet-by-planet survey of a single region of space consisting of over 600 star systems. Why? Because it’s fun and relaxing.

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There’s some interesting points here. I highly respect all the viewpoints represented. I’d refer back to an old interview with David Lebling, first posted about 25 years ago on Adventure Classic Gaming:

Do you believe the adventure genre is dead or dying?

As a commercial proposition, yes. It is caught between the incredible advancements that have been made in graphics, and which continue to improve almost daily, and the stagnation of the advancements in actually communicating with your computer. Just to give an example, Everquest, which I am completely addicted to, is crammed with puzzles in the form of “quests.” But the interaction with the quest NPCs is at a level even below that of Colossal Cave. The “parser” just looks for slightly varied forms of the output text from the NPCs, text that they actually enclose in brackets to make it completely obvious what to say in reply.

Though I haven’t played the games zarf recommended, I suspect this is still very much the case with MOST games. NPC interaction in high budget titles is typically limited to very simple interactions, and player agency is often tightly restricted.

Thought experiment: what if there were more ways for a PC (Indiana Jones, in this case) to interact with enemies?

  1. Bribe guard with money. (Lazy, but common enough in most stories so as to be all but staggering to overlook.)
  2. Convince the guard that Nazis are evil, and change his worldview.
  3. Don’t go so far as convincing the guard that Nazis are evil, but convince him that peaceful alternatives are more effective than force.
  4. Show up at the castle in disguise, perhaps as some visiting Papal representative, or as another guard. The guards all willingly allow the PC passage. (As an aside: this was possible in the old Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game from LucasFilm Games.)
  5. Bring sufficient alcohol so that the guards are all now drunk. This is a variation of the “bribe guard” approach, but somewhat more intoxicating to consider.
  6. Create a distraction. Maybe a friend comes to the castle to draw the guards attention, allowing Jones to sneak around? This I suppose is somewhat possible in the game in some areas: I managed to distract on guard by throwing a glass bottle, which on breaking he went over to investigate.
  7. Find another path through the castle which isn’t guarded. I’d argue this is even story appropriate given the source material of the franchise. Isn’t Indiana Jones always finding cool secret passages?
  8. Convince a local whom the guards trust to explore the castle for you. This has the added advantage of no personal danger to the PC, and is a bribery-oriented path that is far cheaper and more efficient than forking over cash to every guard in the castle.
  9. Make friends with someone who is well-known at the castle, and convince them to offer the PC a tour of the grounds.
  10. Determine what is in the castle without actually visiting it, perhaps by interviewing the locals or research. This avoids any personal danger entirely, no guards are harmed, and is quite cheap. Certainly this is what I would do in real life, if indeed I were in the unlikely scenario of a castle overflowing with trigger-happy Nazis.

There are plenty more possible but as the comments have brought out, each branch increases production time (and cost) on the game.

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Blue Prince is also a great modern game much deeper than it first appears.

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Isn’t that a convention, not an inherent restriction on text-based games? And it’s not like being turn-based would completely rule out implementing a storytelling segment in a similar manner?

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Unsolicited game suggestions with potential peripheral appeal to IF fans

Journey
Overboard
Zork Grand Inquisitor
Outer Wilds
Thimbleweed Park
Subnautica
Blue Prince
The Secret of Monkey Island 2
What Remains of Edith Finch

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SOMA would be a good addition to that list. Reminds me of several common IF tropes.

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I always get that mixed up with Nauticrawl.

For that matter, I think @inventor200 came up with a game idea close to that at some point…

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Have you considered highly moddable games?

Something like Skyrim or Crusader Kings 2/3 can easily be played with 3,000 mods you downloaded from the internet or the Steam workshop. Some of them will give you some of the options you crave. And if you can’t find exactly what suits your fancy, you can always mod it in yourself.

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I liked Clair Obscur fine (although I wasn’t as taken with it as a lot of people seem to have been), but I think it’s actually an example of exactly the kind of thing @spaceflounder is talking about: it’s got nice graphics and what looks like a complex world, but the game doesn’t actually give the player much opportunity to interact with the world or the things in it. Like probably literally 90% of the interactions you’ll have with things in the world will be hitting monsters with swords (or the equivalent).

The NPCs are fine as characters by the standards of video game writing, but the overwhelming majority of your interactions with them will be just directing their actions in combat. Outside of combat almost all character interactions consist of viewing cutscenes. Only very occasionally are the player’s interactions with NPCs actually, you know, interactive. That is, only rarely does the player actually make choices in interactions with NPCs. The number of such interactions is carefully proscribed (they only happen at specific scripted moments) and they only very rarely have any effect on gameplay beyond choosing which of two snippets of cutscene are played following the interaction.

In terms of actual story consequences, the biggest decision the player can make with respect to NPCs is to seek out their NPC-specific loyalty mission and complete it. Which involves, of course, mostly whacking monsters.

This isn’t intended to be a list of grievances about Clair Obscure. Like I said I like the game fine. I’m just making the point that it seems to be an example of what the OP was talking about: gameworlds that look pretty but only offer superficial interactivity, usually very narrowly channeled into interactions mediated by a very small number of gameplay semantics (canonically combat-oriented).

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On the subject of violence, I’m reminded of the old show MacGyver which kind of made a point about being against guns and violence, and the more recent reboot, which seems to involve the main character beating up and torturing bad guys like a typical modern cop or action show (at least in the ten minutes of the show I watched before deciding it was dumb).

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This was actually supposed to be my first TADS 3 release, but then I Am Prey happened.

My first idea was an underwater mystery thriller! :grin:

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