Looking up the cruelty scale, I noticed that “Zarfian” appears as a word in some online dictionaries. I wonder what other interactive fiction words have achieved this lofty status.
Of or relating to Andrew Plotkin (“Zarf”, born 1970), a writer and critic of interactive fiction.
1997, “Kory Heath”, So Far - One Lousy Point (on newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction)
This “game” is obviously an elaborate Rorschach test administered to the unsuspecting denizens of rec.*.if, whose reactions have no doubt been tabulated and incorporated into some sinister Zarfian plot - to what dark end, I shudder to imagine.
1998, “Jake Wildstrom”, [COMP '98] Reviews (Feel free to hate me for them…) (on newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction)
2.Zarfian* surrealism without Zarfian skill or subtlety. Beats reader over the head a bit with emotions.
2007, Jeremy Douglass, Command Lines (page 88)
The “Zarfian Cruelty Scale” rates games as Merciful, Polite, Tough, Nasty, or Cruel. The scale describes how works of IF become unwinnable, especially how and when the interactor (here a player, and one trying to win) learns this.
Dictionary entries
Entries where “Zarfian” occurs:
IF: …of interactive fiction 2007, Jeremy Douglass, Command Lines (page 88) The “Zarfian Cruelty Scale” rates games as Merciful, Polite, Tough, Nasty, or Cruel. The scale…
unwinnable: …Unable to be won. 2007, Jeremy Douglass, Command Lines (page 88) The “Zarfian Cruelty Scale” rates games as Merciful, Polite, Tough, Nasty, or Cruel. The scale…
Sometime in the Usenet era, we started using “terp” as shorthand for “interpreter”. Wiktionary found @Marvin as the earliest use, but I have a dim memory of making it up. But I might be wrong. Or several of us might have done it indepedently.
(As it happens, I went to high school near the University of Maryland, so I was aware of Terp - Wiktionary, the free dictionary when I used the term on Usenet. But I figured it wouldn’t be too confusing.)
Hahaha, I’m quoted in Wiktionary?! I wonder who decided to use that quote and why they’d pick it (mine certainly wasn’t first, and it doesn’t seem like a famous post by any metric.)
These terms should definitely have pages in IFWiki if they don’t already.
I’ve also been surprised how often IF gets mentioned on TV Tropes which is a popular site that discusses tropes in all media, not just television, and links tropes and media together in a way that you can go down the rabbit-clickhole and browse for hours. They have a dedicated interactive fiction page.
I was surprised that someone made a page for one of my games a decade ago and actually has updated it with the info that it’s not available anymore and that I’ve teased a remake/sequel.
The site is quite popular so it could be a good way to stealth-promote games and IF in general if you vibe with how the site works.
Funnily enough, I learned of the cruelty scale from TVTropes, likely from one of Unwinnable by design, Unwinnable by Mistake, or Unwinnable by Insanity and only learned it had origins in IF after joining this forum.
If you’re wondering, if memory serves, the distinction between the types of unwinnable goes something like
Unwinnable by design: The game is deliberately designed with situations where the player finds themselves in a situation where beating the game is impossible.
Unwinnable by Mistake: There are glitches in the game that can put the player in an unwinnable situation and which have a reasonable chance of happening in normal game play.
Unwinnable by Insanity: It’s possible to get the game into an unwinnable state, but it requires deliberate action on the player’s part that no sane player would do unless they were trying to ruin their save file.
And well, TVTropes is so thorough in what media they catalog examples from that I typically spend more time skipping over examples from stuff I’ve never heard of than I do reading examples from stuff I’m familiar of… Plus, they have dedicated media catagories for fanworks, web comics, and Visual novels, not just the big meida empires of television, movies, and video games.
Yeah, it’s really good to Venn-diagram your way into discovering new media and literature you might have never thought to be interested in, or summing it up if you’d rather read about it deconstructed.
