[Dreamhold] Yet another review, this one not favourable (b..

[Guest]

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"Sophie Fruehling" <sfruehling@LOVELY-SPAM.aon.at> escreveu na mensagem
news:b22s1111ii9u8tldjbpj349rqfctvnkjkn@4ax.com...
> "Jess Knoch" <jessicaknoch@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>When fantasy is lazy, it doesn't stick together cohesively. It doesn't
>>build
>>a complete world. When fantasy does build a consistent world, it is not
>>lazy, and in fact can be quite enjoyable for people who, well, like good
>>fantasy.
>
> [...]
>
>>Tolkien's works are very, very low fantasy. The most "magical" thing was
>>the
>>fact that different races shared the same earth. Have you enjoyed any
>>works
>>where high fantasy was done *well*?
>
> This is a little off topic, but:
> People in this newsgroup keep talking about good fantasy. Personally,
> I'm not very fond of fantasy, but that may well be because I don't
> know anything decent. Can you (anyone) recommend any books/authors?
>
> --
> Sophie Frühling
>
> "El arte no viste pantalones."
> -- Rubén Darío

I for one enjoyed very much the anual series of "Year's Best Fantasy" Edited
by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer.

So far i only got hold of editions 1 (2001), 2 (2002) and 3 (2003).

Number 4 (2004) I havent found it yet for sale... (at least on Portugal).

More details can be found at their website www.eosbooks.com, and for
information about the "Year's Best Fiction" books go to
http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/search/search.asp?a=&b=best+fantasy&c=&d=&e=&f=&g=&h=&category=Title&sortby=date

There's also another series called "Year's Best Science Fiction" which is
also quite good (details also on the site).

Every book is on sale in ebook format at the site.

Anyway, enough of good publicity 😉

Kind Regards,
RootShell

 

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"Andrew Plotkin"

> I see you're trying to be subtle again.
>
> Note for other readers: this guy always lies about his name and
> only posts to insult whatever game is prominent at the moment.

You must be the only person on the face of this planet who flames
people for *liking* his games. You are indeed a strange man, Andrew
Plotkin.

For the record, I *didn't* like The Dreamhold, but I also don't think
the prose was as bad as most people seem to think.

 

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"eforsx@hotmail.com"

> Frankly, I don't see why people who critisize Dreamhold feel the need
> to pay lip service to the author's earlier work. Personally, I found
> Spider and Web just as dreary and pompous as Dreamhold. Dreamhold is
> pretty much the quintessential Plotkin: an incoherent story set in a
> cliched setting and punctuated by contrived puzzles.

I thought Shade was rather good.

 

[Max]

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samwyse wrote:

> Second, Dreamhold explicitly states that it is a game for beginners. As
> such, it deliberately doesn't try to introduce anything subtle in the
> way of puzzles. Much of your review reads like someone bashing a
> children's book because it doesn't have the emotional depth of "War and
> Peace".
>

Never read _War and Peace_. Once had a girlfriend who had, but I'm only
17 and I'm impatient. But I *do* on occasion bash children's books
without emotional (or some other) depth. _Le Petit Prince_ and
_Goodnight Moon_ are examples of what I consider good children's books.
It must be said that many (the majority?) of actual *children* disagree.

--Max

 

[Giles]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

The bit with the sheep saying 'Let's all catch Scrapies and Diiieeeee'
was pretty funny.

As someone for whom it was all over a year ago (I read the actual
issues when they came out, out of some sense of intertia or something)
the last part of Cerebus was road accident watchable. The grim
fascination of watching somebody with serious talent vanish into the
grip of monomania - still with flashes of brilliance, but ultimately
buried in his own mental effluvium and no longer with sufficient mental
faculty to realise the blatant flaws in his 'reasoning', but apparently
functioning well enough to avoid incarceration.

I understand if you keep him off the topic of gender, religion or
politics he's a nice enough chap who still does good work for the CBDLF
etc, and I'd rather wish him wellness than self-inflicted death (though
I can understand the sentiment). But then, as they say in 'The
Invisibles', I'm the kind of person who finds mental illness funny. As
long as it's not chasing me around with an axe.

-Giles

 

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ggrant@europe.com (Graham Grant) writes:

> What I found most objectionable about Dreamhold was not its
> overwrought prose style or the dreary and cliched setting, but the
> tone of flippancy: "Amnesia. Yes, it's a cliché, but it'll do for a
> tutorial." Why should I care if the author doesn't?

That's kind of what bothered me about Dreamhold as well. Not the
amnesia part, actually, since it's pretty much explained later, but the
lack of initial motivation; the player is supposed to explore and solve
puzzles for the sake of exploring and solving puzzles (and because the
tutorial voice says so), and that may very well discourage people who
play Dreamhold as their first game. This wouldn't even be very hard to
fix, as the game could point out that the PC will eventually starve to
death; of course this need not happen, and probably better not, but a
message like "Once again you find yourself wondering whether you will be
able to escape this place alive" every few hundred turns would keep up
some tension.

Another thing that might turn off some players is that parts of the game
world neither serve any perceptible purpose nor are plausible as natural
formations (the catwalk in the cistern, for example); likewise, the
setup of some of the puzzles seems unlikely (no apparent reason why the
masks ended up where they are found, either intentionally or
accidentally).

On a more technical note, a tutorial game should try not to confuse the
player with unintelligible messages. For example, if the description of
a location mentions a doorway but "examine doorway" replies "You can't
see any such thing", the player (who is assumed to know nothing of how
the parser works) most likely will think that the game doesn't work
properly. Or, when "take all from cabinet" says "They are unfortunately
closed", even an experienced player may not immediately realize that
"they" refers to the two doors of the cabinet.

Finally, I think that a tutorial game should explain the consept of wide
versus tall inventory (just like brief versus verbose descriptions). It
would also be nice if "i tall" and "i wide" were parsed properly.

--
Esa Peuha
student of mathematics at the University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/~peuha/

 

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Here, Esa A E Peuha <esa.peuha@helsinki.fi> wrote:
>
> That's kind of what bothered me about Dreamhold as well. Not the
> amnesia part, actually, since it's pretty much explained later, but the
> lack of initial motivation; the player is supposed to explore and solve
> puzzles for the sake of exploring and solving puzzles (and because the
> tutorial voice says so), and that may very well discourage people who
> play Dreamhold as their first game.

Well, it's a cliche because so many games *did* it -- both the amnesia
and the motivation of exploration -- so I don't think you can conclude
that they doesn't work.

I realize it's something of a trap to assume that the people who might
be interested in IF today are the same kind of people who were
interested in 1980. But it's also a trap to assume that pure
exploration and an open, richly interactive world are dead game forms.
I wanted to get back to the old skool, and then layer in story ideas
as extras to uncover here and there.

> This wouldn't even be very hard to fix, as the game could point out
> that the PC will eventually starve to death; of course this need not
> happen, and probably better not, but a message like "Once again you
> find yourself wondering whether you will be able to escape this
> place alive" every few hundred turns would keep up some tension.

I'd think that would be the worst of both worlds. It doesn't add
anything to the game mechanics, but it also conveys that the
interesting and odd corners of the game should be ignored, since they
aren't food.

> On a more technical note, a tutorial game should try not to confuse the
> player with unintelligible messages. For example, if the description of
> a location mentions a doorway but "examine doorway" replies "You can't
> see any such thing", the player (who is assumed to know nothing of how
> the parser works) most likely will think that the game doesn't work
> properly.

I had to walk a fine line between leaving the player confused, and
leaving the player insufficiently educated to play any other IF game.
In this case, "You can't see any such thing" is a standard library
message. The library is set up that way because the alternatives have
their own drawbacks; I think it's the best choice for the general
library. I want the player to interact with the general library, not a
mutation of it.

(Saying "you should have implemented the doorway" is not a useful
suggestion -- I did implement a lot of things, but I also wanted to
actually finish the game. Also, unimplemented irrelevent scenery is
*another* thing the player has to learn.)

An alternate possibility would be to add a tutorial message to that
error, at least in a few cases. I didn't think of this when I was
writing the game, and neither did my playtesters. Do you think it
would be a good idea? How would you set it up -- cheat and look at the
game dict? Deliberately put in implemented "unimplemented" objects?

> Finally, I think that a tutorial game should explain the consept of wide
> versus tall inventory (just like brief versus verbose descriptions).

I can't imagine how that would be worthwhile. It's an obscure corner
of the Inform library which very few people use.

> It would also be nice if "i tall" and "i wide" were parsed
> properly.

That's a bug. You're the first person to report it. I'll add it to the
list.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.

 

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Elsewhere in this winding thread, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> Looked like a review to me. I thank Emiliano for posting it.
>
> As per my charming and invariable habit, I won't comment on matters of
> interpretation and storyline.

There were a few reasons I was somewhat disappointed with 'The
Dreamhold,' but I think this is my biggest bone to pick with the concept
of 'The Dreamhold' as an introduction game to IF.

Each piece and puzzle is, individually, sturdy and solid. However, the
overall story is extremely vague, to the point of frustration. There's
always a sense of "What the heck is supposed to be going on here? What's
happening? What's this all *about*?", and I believe the answers to these
questions are hidden deliberately and never fully resolved. Now,
refusing to resolve issues and masking the meanings of a story are not
(necessarily) bad fiction. But it's also not ideal for drawing people
in. The vaunted satisfaction and sense of accomplishment gained by
solving the individual puzzle is denied to the player when it comes to
the biggest puzzle in the game.

This may be an excellent introduction to Zarfian IF (which, make no
mistake, I admire greatly). But, as the moniker indicates, Zarfian IF is
unique, far from being the standard, nonrepresentative. It's also not
everybody's cup of tea, which is less than ideal for an introduction game.

The idea of a tutorial voice is a good one, but for a better intro game,
should probably be pinned on a game that's more straightforward, more
acessible, with a lower common denominator. I'm wondering if
'Varicella', for example, might be ideal - I could easily imagine a
tutorial voice leading me to first explore the castle and get it's basic
layout, then advising me to solve each one of the puzzles individually,
then help me put all the solutions together (or possibly leave that bit
up to me, for the most part). It's a much more exciting and immediate
game, which I think would appeal more to newcomers. It's wonderfully
written in a manner which is amusing to pretty much anybody who reads
it. Of course, I'm using Varicella as an example only; but those are the
kind of qualities I think I would look for.

--Ziv

 

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Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@eblong.com> writes:

> I had to walk a fine line between leaving the player confused, and
> leaving the player insufficiently educated to play any other IF game.

I don't quite see how these are mutually exclusive.

> In this case, "You can't see any such thing" is a standard library
> message. The library is set up that way because the alternatives have
> their own drawbacks; I think it's the best choice for the general
> library. I want the player to interact with the general library, not a
> mutation of it.

I'm not arguing that.

> (Saying "you should have implemented the doorway" is not a useful
> suggestion -- I did implement a lot of things, but I also wanted to
> actually finish the game. Also, unimplemented irrelevent scenery is
> *another* thing the player has to learn.)

Not arguing that either.

> An alternate possibility would be to add a tutorial message to that
> error, at least in a few cases. I didn't think of this when I was
> writing the game, and neither did my playtesters. Do you think it
> would be a good idea? How would you set it up -- cheat and look at the
> game dict? Deliberately put in implemented "unimplemented" objects?

That's what I had in mind. I think the best way would be to hack the
library so that whenever a standard message is printed, it's followed by
"[If you don't know what this message means, type "help messages"]", and
"help messages" then explains them. That might even be part of the
library itself, so that any game would have the same help available.

> > Finally, I think that a tutorial game should explain the consept of wide
> > versus tall inventory (just like brief versus verbose descriptions).
>
> I can't imagine how that would be worthwhile. It's an obscure corner
> of the Inform library which very few people use.

Do you mean players or authors? I don't know about authors, but I think
this is a player preference (I prefer tall), so new players should be
made aware of it. Then they can ignore it if they don't care about it.

--
Esa Peuha
student of mathematics at the University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/~peuha/

 

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Well, I haven't actually played Dreamhold, but while we're on the
subject of books... I don't read a whole lot of fantasy, but I found
"The Dark Lord of Derkholm" by Diana Wynne Jones to be an excellent
book; it's funny, but not outrageously so, and it's easy to get
involved with the characters even though the plot itself is almost a
spoof of conventional fantasy.

For a more serious read, "The Hero and the Crown" by Robin McKinley is
an old favorite of mine. (Though I haven't read it in years and I
suppose there's a chance this is just nostalgia talking...)

 

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lumin_orb@hotmail.com wrote:
> Well, I haven't actually played Dreamhold, but while we're on the
> subject of books... I don't read a whole lot of fantasy, but I found
> "The Dark Lord of Derkholm" by Diana Wynne Jones to be an excellent
> book; it's funny, but not outrageously so, and it's easy to get
> involved with the characters even though the plot itself is almost a
> spoof of conventional fantasy.
>
> For a more serious read, "The Hero and the Crown" by Robin McKinley
is
> an old favorite of mine. (Though I haven't read it in years and I
> suppose there's a chance this is just nostalgia talking...)

For people into IF, I'd think that Gene Wolfe would be a natural.
Reading his books can be like solving IF puzzles, except expanded out
into more dimensions, including puzzles about characters' motivation
and goals. His stories can linger in your mind for years, little time
bombs of insight detonating at random as some connection or explanation
suddenly occurs to you.

Reading him requires the same combination of cerebral analysis and
intuitive insight which I guess most of us found pleasure in, when we
first encountered Zork or whatever. (Lebling is a frequent contributor
on the Gene Wolfe mailing list, FWIW.)

Plus his writing is just beautiful, and masterful. People who like it
tend to re-read the books over and over, because they are designed for
it, so that on each re-reading you discover some new connection or
dimension, but also just for the pleasure of experiencing the prose
once more.

(On the other hand, a lot of people find him pretentious and needlessly
obscure.)

Perhaps the easiest entry point is "Fifth Head of Cerberus", which is
beautifully written, vastly complex once you start thinking deeply
about it, and fairly short.

 

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samwyse <dejanews@email.com> wrote in message:

> I mention this because you seem to have fallen into a common trap. "I
> like stuff that has feature X; this doesn't have that feature; therefore
> this stinks." No, the proper conclusion is that you don't like it, not
> that no one should like it. The paragraph that I've quoted above is one
> of the few places where you haven't fallen into the trap.

Understandable. I re-read what I've written and, argh, a harsh tone
indeed. It was a rant as I said, as if I was kind of blaming the
author for not having liked the game, which "I should have". But I
didn't mean to imply that no one should like it, as it was obvious
from the amount of discussion that many did.

I also overgeneralized when I said that "it's all machines and
mechanical things", when in fact there is only one machine proper and
several objects and puzzles that are not "mechanical". I think it was
sort of an overall final impression by the lack of people; obviously I
was mainly thinking of the two major areas, to the sw and ne.
Emiliano.

 

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"Jess Knoch" <jessicaknoch@mindspring.com> wrote:

(earlier message)
> Have you enjoyed any works where high fantasy was done *well*?

> Oh, I've read it; I know the Silmarillion and the Histories of Middle Earth,
> the unfinished tales, etc. But when most people read just the trilogy (or
> just The Hobbit), they don't see all of that. They see Gandalf as just a
> wizard who casts spells, and there's some other spell-casting, and that's
> about it. I wasn't sure what the OP thought the "fantasy" elements were in
> Tolkein's work -- I assumed they meant the Lord of the Rings and that's it.
>
> Sorry if I made it seem less than it really is -- I admit I was a bit vexed
> by the fact that the poster really didn't seem to like the fantasy genre
> much, and that Tolkein was the one he pulled out to prove that he did.

Yes, I admit I haven't read much of fantasy, but I like it, or at
least I'm not adverse to it (I loved The Silmarillion, it's a
fantastic one-man-made mithology, as I am fascinated by mithologies,
greek, roman, south american, etc).

But you're are right, not much beyond Tolkien. I came across and read
some of Terry Pratchett's books but found his style and word uses more
interesting than the stories per se (I can't forget "She came only
wearing a smile"), but maybe I read the not-so-good ones. I read other
minor novels and tried some of the
dragons-swords-elfs-and-exotic-races Tolkien-clones, but didn't find
anything worthwhile.
EMiliano.

 

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(very late, but..)

Quintin Stone <stone@rps.net> wrote:

> 'tutorial'?" Because if you take the comparison of Dreamhold with Myst
> seriously, then judging by the evidence of Myst's sales to the general
> public, the answer is a resounding 'Yes'.

Not in text, that was my point.
Also, see my reply to samwyse: I overgeneralized when I said it's only
"machines and mechanical things". There is more than that in The
Dreamhold, but somehow it still feels very Myst-like to me (probably
because there's no one around).

Emiliano.

 

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(very late, but...)

"Ornithopter" <ornithopter@gmail.com> wrote in message:



> Surely, you don't deny that emotion can be experienced in the absence

> of other people? I would argue that the "emotional adjectivizing" is

> the PC projecting emotions on to his surroundings to compensate for

> his own loneliness.

>

> Consider: [...]



Interesting! I admit that I didn´t get that at all...



> In some of the other phrases you have listed I can't understand what

> you saw wrong with them at all. "Sprays of dried leaves, flowers, and

> seed pods" for example seems like a very straight forward description



I forgot to say that I´m not a native English speaker, so take my
reservations regarding word usage with reservation! 'Spray' in this
context (not in a liquid/gas sense) was the one case I particularly
thought was a bit too much of a stretch, but maybe it´s just that I´ve
never found it used this way before. "Sprays of leaves and flowers"
seems kinda strange to me, maybe because the objects are not MOVING,
they are static.



> of a bouquet. ""Stalactites are the ones on the ceiling. Stalagmites

> are the ones on the floor. You don't know how you know this" (which

> you seem to find especially aesthetically offensive) seems to me to be

> perfectly natural, especially given the PC's amnesia.



Yes, the "you don´t know..." makes perfect sense in face of the
amnesia, but I just thought at first it was such a trivial thing to
know (stalactites and stalagmites), much like sky and walls, that
wouldn´t warrant this sort of reflection. But yeah, there´s nothing
wrong with the sentence.



> The game does tell a story, it is simply one that does not involve

> other people. This doesn't make it a not-story, just as removing

> trees from a painting doesn't make it a not-landscape. Furthermore,

> it is a tutorial for all types new players of IF. Perhaps you have

> forgotten you first experiences with IF, but the interface was not as

> obvious as it seems to you now.



I think I was kind of advocating that newbies (anyone actually) would
find it easier to play a game which would set out a clear motivation
at the beginning, with people and events occurring from time to time
in the game that would guide them where to go and what to do. For
example, the tutorial voice could be an NPC, your friend, that would
follow you and (proactively) say, "Hey, we have to solve this!", "We
have to go to xxx", "This doesn't seem useful", etc. Just a different
idea, and of course it's all easier to say than to do.



> > In text, I want to see (but maybe that's just ME of course!!) at

> least some

> > story, plot, characterization and people, besides objects.

>

> So you're bringing standards you use to judge works of one medium to

> bear on another.



Maybe. Many other games have that already. But yes, it was sort of
unfair to imply that "hey, this game should've been this way, with
story, people, etc" as if all IF should be this way, or should have
this standard.


> > It has a vague static backstory that is left

> > intentionally unexplained so that players (the fans) can have endless

> > speculations as to the secret "symbolisms" and "meanings" behind it.

> > Which the author probably never bothered to come up with, or in any

> case

> > is likely to be wildly divergent and simpler than the discussion it

> > generates.

>

> Possible, though cynical.



Sure. This is the risk you run with a profound story that is left
unexplained for interpretation. Either you "connect" to it and trust
it, or you get more and more disbelieving and end up saying cynically
it's a load of "mumbo jumbo".



> It seems to be that puzzles in a fantasy setting need to take special

> care to remain understandable. Because there need be no logical

> explanation for the workings of a puzzle, it would be quite simple to

> make a totally irrational or even random puzzle, chalk it up to magic

> and wash your hands of the matter.



Ah, but this is much easier than coming up with "real-life" stories
and puzzles. There are many more pitfalls there: the story was
contrived, "people would never do that", "things cannot be this way",
etc. You can always explain why things are how they are in a fantasy
setting.

But I was not complaining of the game in this aspect, my rant about
fantasy was in general, to the sort of: exotica is always more
interesting, or at least, it's always easier to make something
interesting. And of course, it IS certainly more interesting than "my
own apartment"-, or "my workplace"-games.


> I think you have forgotten how awkward learning to play interactive

> fiction can be. Help with such "cosmetic, interface features" that

> new players need the most help. Motivation is provided by wanting to

> discover your (the PC's) identity, and the story is the how you go

> about doing so. Easier puzzles on the other hand would do almost

> nothing to help new players, and is an issue almost totally unrelated

> to introducing new players to IF, especially in this case since the

> required puzzles are all fairy simple.



(not related to The Dreamhold anymore, as it's a tutorial)
Hum, I don't think the main problem in playing IF games is in lerning
the commands, not even in the syntax in general, as modern games have
become very user-friendly and tend to cover plenty of possibilities.
The main problem in many games, I think (IMO), is that much too
frequently, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO anymore, generally because you
missed something, or you didn't know how to solve a puzzle that
advances the story or opens up another branch of the story (one thing
I forgot to say previously, I was always using "puzzle" in the ample
sense of "obstacles to advance the story", the "i-story" if you like:
the interactive story the PC is making). It's at those times that you
go for the hints or the solution.

The suggestion I can think of and was kind of hammering in that post
to make things easier for beginners (and veterans alike) to the point
that they can really be satisfied to have reached the end of a game
without hints or other help (and without concerning myself in how
DIFFICULT it is ) is to HEDGE the player, almost but not quite to
the point of being spoonfed, with MORE information, more story,
motivation, characterization, more people around saying "we should do
this, etc" (subtler of course!), events happening from time to time
advancing something of the story in order to make things clearer (if,
say, it's something that was going to happen anyway), even if it makes
things clearer for the player that she didn't do something that she
ought to, etc.

This is nothing new, in fact many games are moving in this direction.


> Good luck with the move!



Thanks, 'twas smooth despite going from snow to heat...

Emiliano.

 

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In article <c92243a.0503071503.2c7432bb@posting.google.com>,
Emiliano Padilha <emiliano@inf.ufrgs.br> wrote:
>"Ornithopter" <ornithopter@gmail.com> wrote in message:
>> In some of the other phrases you have listed I can't understand what
>> you saw wrong with them at all. "Sprays of dried leaves, flowers, and
>> seed pods" for example seems like a very straight forward description
>
>I forgot to say that I´m not a native English speaker, so take my
>reservations regarding word usage with reservation! 'Spray' in this
>context (not in a liquid/gas sense) was the one case I particularly
>thought was a bit too much of a stretch, but maybe it´s just that I´ve
>never found it used this way before. "Sprays of leaves and flowers"
>seems kinda strange to me, maybe because the objects are not MOVING,
>they are static.

I had figured out from that and some other hints that English wasn't
your native language. Anyway, please take our assurances that this
usage of "spray" is commonplace in English, and not Zarf's invention
at all. (I'm pretty sure that this is the only such phrase out
of the ones you didn't like, though.)

--
David Goldfarb |"Come on, characters with super-strength don't
goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu | *do* inertia! Or leverage."
goldfarb@csua.berkeley.edu | -- Dani Zweig

 

[samwyse]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On or about 3/7/2005 5:03 PM, Emiliano Padilha did proclaim:

> I forgot to say that I´m not a native English speaker, so take my
> reservations regarding word usage with reservation! 'Spray' in this
> context (not in a liquid/gas sense) was the one case I particularly
> thought was a bit too much of a stretch, but maybe it´s just that I´ve
> never found it used this way before. "Sprays of leaves and flowers"
> seems kinda strange to me, maybe because the objects are not MOVING,
> they are static.

Having worked in a florist's shop, I assure you that this is very common
usage. I'll concede, though, that I can't think of any other non-fluid
that I'd describe with 'spray'. Ah-ha! The two meanings derive from
different sources: http://www.answers.com/spray&r=67

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

You wanna see truly bad prose? Check out Regina's Song by David and
Leigh Eddings.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=dK8ExZ6BRe&isbn=0345448987&itm=3

This features a rewiew I wrote when I was still livid from reading the
book. I didn't dream they would actually put it up, as I later felt I
was a little too personal.

 

[samwyse]

Archived from groups: rec.games.int-fiction (More info?)

On or about 3/13/2005 2:57 PM, JohnnyMrNinja did proclaim:

> And as far as IF, part of any video game, or book, is escapism. The
> further you can get from who you normally are the better. Who wants to
> play a game called "Make Sure to File You Taxes!" or "Ow, My Back!" If
> you want your very own text adventure based on the real world, try
> e-mail. It's mutiplayer, too.

Obviously, you've never played Douglas Adams' game Bureaucracy, in which
you have to file a change-of-address notice.

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/Tslspr87.html#bureaucracy