I wonder if this is just because the two communities have different attitudes towards the Xyzzies - that the ChoiceScript community is thinking of it more as a popularity contest, whereas the IF community has a (mostly unspoken) tradition of treating the Xyzzy Awards as Serious Business. They do get described as the Oscars of IF fairly regularly, after all. It’s not an accurate description, but it seems to me to indicate an expectation or desire that the voters will attempt to be “objective” and the results will reflect some some sort of critical consensus.
Funnily enough, there have been concerns in the past that people don’t vote because they haven’t played all the games and don’t feel they can make an objective decision. The organisers have even encouraged people not to worry too much about it. But now we’ve got voters who don’t worry about it, we don’t much like the result! [emote]:P[/emote]
In any case, I don’t see that Dan Fabulich did anything wrong. I certainly don’t read his posts as canvassing for votes.
That’s fine. Arguments about connotations are rarely resolvable.
I’ve spoilered the rest of this, since it’s long and a bit of a distraction from the main thread:
[spoiler]
Wait, though. A handful of stats is not a world model, and dialogue and interaction with characters, in gamebooks old or new, have very rarely been tied directly to dialogue. Put another way: just because CYOA-style games can use stats to model detailed interaction doesn’t mean that they do. (The Play may well be an exception; I didn’t play through it enough times to get a sense of how interactions were modeled. But it would be an exception that proves the rule.)
My argument was about the contexts and expectations of each genre, and the connotations of “PC” and “NPC”.
No, but my argument was that, in the context of parser IF–and CYOA games are very recent newcomers to the XYZZYs, I believe–that is what this category has generally meant, simply because that is what creating an NPC in parser IF generally means. This may or may not reflect other folks’ perceptions.
(It’s worth noting, though, that parser IF probably has one of the highest author/author manqué to consumer ratios in all of media, and a consideration of what’s under the hood is rarely far from most “readers”’ minds. This certainly influences my feelings.)
Rameses is rather an edge case, isn’t it? What about Anchorhead, say, or Galatea? Or, on the PC side, Savoir Faire?
In any case, though, if Rameses’s characters aren’t modeled then, in the terms I described, the vividness of the writing makes them memorable as characters,, not as NPCs.
Exactly my point (one of them, anyway).
In a typical CYOA, are you “programming” NPCs, or writing exactly the same kinds of branching structures you’re writing everywhere else?
It may well be that I just have an idiosyncratic understanding of “PC” and “NPC”. My understanding of those terms is derived from parser IF, and maybe if I’d first encountered them in role-playing games, for example, I’d see them differently. Either way, I guess I think that less gamer-y terminology would be more welcoming to outsiders.[/spoiler]
If they’re not a PC, they’re an NPC, surely? “Character” is the set, “PC” and “NPC” are the subsets. Hardly matters if it’s a CYOA, parser game, RPG, storytelling game, action-videogame, etc.
I’m worried about this, too. I know, for example, that Robb worked on Cryptozookeeper for at least three years. He deserves an solid shot at winning an award.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that, without any interventions, Zombie Exodus is already more popular than any of the other games on the Best Game list.
I have two hypotheses about why that is:
Of the four Best Game finalists, only Zombie Exodus can be played online, at least according to IFDB links. Cryptozookeeper’s installer is almost 600 megs. MM:A and Six are distributed as gblorbs. (“Go download an interpreter.” “What’s that?”)
Zombie Exodus is CYOA, and CYOA is more “accessible.”
The problem is that XYZZY is not intended to be a measure of popularity; it’s intended to be the Oscars of IF. But the actual Academy Awards are not decided by a first-past-the-post vote of moviegoers; they’re decided by the Academy, people who make movies. Zombie Exodus might not have been nominated if the competition were decided by a panel of expert judges.
As long as the IF community stays insulated from outsiders, the effect is the same, but I think we’re seeing a big influx of newbies, and that’s going to fundamentally change the dynamics of competitions like XYZZY and IntroComp (which was also swept by ChoiceScript games) which allow public anonymous judging.
The specific, non-hypothetical reason is: in the first round there were two sets of voters, the ChoiceScript voters and Everyone Else. They voted very differently. They don’t overlap. The ChoiceScript community are somewhat fewer, but very loyal: in the first round, they voted exclusively for ChoiceScript games, and (since there aren’t very many of those) they mostly voted for the same three games. I’m guessing that they have a very different set of expectations out of a game. It’s likely that a great deal of this lack of overlap is down to the structural difficulties of parser IF, of course: but accessibility issues alone don’t explain why ChoiceScript voters appear equally uninterested in other CYOA. Nor do they really explain why Everyone Else didn’t vote for any ChoiceScript games.
I really don’t think that this is about a big influx of newbies into the IF community. I think that this is about the emergence of the ChoiceScript community, which is its own thing and not really all that interested in the IF community, but (as yet) lacks its own distinct institutions.
In the late 80s, text adventures were driven off the shelves - and off the charts - by graphics. Now I fear a second storm approaching in the form of mass-played CYOA. What are the chances of a 600Mb download against a game for the iPhone?
I’m not saying that this is wrong. I actually enjoyed Doom II far more than Zork.
I should probably reiterate: whatever the larger trends in the IF world, this, this thing right here, is not about IF vs. CYOA. I fear it may end up being turned into that, which (as someone rather fond of CYOA, and writing in it) I really would like to avoid.
Yes. And ‘best whatever’ should not mean ‘more downloaded’. That’s what I meant. Doom II was better than Zork, imo. But many of the ‘best games’ in the last 20 years’ top ten were not n
In the AGS forums, there was also a yearly competition.
Authors were encouraged to post a thread in the Gen-Gen (General) board, if they so wished, saying “For your consideration: GAMENAMEHERE for CATHEGORYHERE”.
This was mainly done because some games might simply escape the big parade come the competition, and the authors felt their game was in danger of losing itself to obscurity simply because it was released right next to that huge whopper of a game that dwarfed all opposition.
It was also done so people would remember other games in other cathegories, like the one that rewarded best documentation.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. I do see something wrong with “Go vote for it because it’s CYOA”, or, as it happened in one particular italian blog last IFComp, “Go vote for it because it’s by an Italian author”.
Maybe if people could start drawing attention to their games in a more orderly fashion, and they knew they could, they’d stop doing it so facetously in other places?
Totally unrelated steam-venting below.
[rant]Incidently: I hate with a passion every game that is online only. I’m already detesting Zombie Exodus because of this. I also foresee that if that doesn’t change, this will be one XYZZY nominee that will eventually get lost in the ravages of time and web, unlike most other nominees/winners which are still available for perusal, if not on the web then on someone’s hard drive (hopefully mine). I wish I could boycott ZE simply because of this. I won’t, because I don’t do that, but I sure would like to.[/rant]
I don’t really see the XYZZY awards as being particularly significant - some winners have stood the test of time, but just as many are forgotten today. And I rarely play enough recent works to vote, so I don’t. I couldn’t vote for the one I have played if I haven’t played at least most of the others. I hope the awards don’t turn into a sham, but then the Oscars are a sham so it might be inevitable… [emote]:([/emote]
Indeed it was a shame. I personally thought it was like cheating and sure hoped it didn’t work. It didn’t, so you can all be relieved.
I know that particular post was going to - as it did - turn a lot of bad attention on me, and many ill thoughts. It was involving the double sin of doing crowdsourcing AND arguing with Miss Congeniality Emily Short. But let me underscore it was not ME. It NEVER was me. So I think I can frankly state it was NOT my fault.
Read above.
Anyway, this is interesting. Being myself a complete noob in If authoring, I lack all of the major proficiencies. How would you draw attention to a game, other than posting it in IFComp, releasing in IFDB and pointing to it in the super-major forum about if?
I’m sure there are better ways, but I know of none so any suggestion is appreciated. [emote]:)[/emote]
Ofc, a 60" spot during the Superbowl is not allowed by my finances.
Back on topic: to make myself clear. I don’t think it is unfair or wrong a famous CYOA wins the Xyzzies. I was just foreseeing what is going to happen. That’s all. If people don’t want this to happen (parser game being lost, again) they have to do something about it.
And, btw, I’m SURE it attracted bad attention. I can FEEL peeps looking at me whispering “here’s the italian. The CHEATER.”
Too bad I think that is due to the common beliefs about Italians, everywhere. After that I’m forced to publish game with a french pseudonym. Everybody loves frech people.
I really think you’re worrying too much. People can tell the difference between a game author who just wants to make a polished game (proven by all the times you went back and made it a little better) and a blogger who’s maybe a bit too patriotic for his own good. You’re in the clear.
What? That couldn’t possibly resolve the issues at play here. Either CYOA needs its own set of competitions exclusive from those of parser IF, or they should be eligible for all the categories. Shoving them into their own special ghetto just feels like sour grapes.
If the structures already in place can’t handle an influx of new players, that’s a problem with them, not the players or the authors.
What maga says makes sense to me too. I was hanging out on the MUD when he posted the finalist list, and the common reaction was “There’s a game called Zombie Exodus? What?”
If we have two pools of people playing (and discussing, and reacting to) different games, then they can’t meaningfully rate their games against each other. The fact that the two groups are of different sizes (or different enthusiasm levels or habits or internet notabilities or whatever) will by itself throw off the outcome of the competition – with no regard to the qualities of the games themselves.
Indirectly it is, because you can’t talk about the difference between “intfiction.org regulars” and “choicescript forum regulars” without talking about what games they like, what they expect of games, etc.
But in this case, we have a good counternote: Deirdra entered “The Play” in the 2011 IFComp. IF players played it and it got discussed in IF circles. (And rated against other IF games, obviously.) The fact that (according to what maga said) the choicescript voters didn’t vote for it either tends to underscore that we’re talking about a division of communities, not a distinction of game design.