[Theorybook] Not dead; and a brief request.

[Guest]

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

Despite a long dormancy, the IF Theory Book project
(http://www.iftheory.com) is still going on: over the last few weeks I
have been weeding out the articles that are definitely never going to
be finished and getting things organized again.

To that end, we could use a few more volunteer commenters who each have
time over the next week or two to review an article about the craft of
writing IF. Any input you might have on the presentation or content, I
would pass back (anonymously) to the authors.

Email me if you're interested.

 

[Guest]

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

Well, no. Grand Text Auto is a blog, not a book; it touches informally
on issues that its contributors decide they would like to talk about,
rather than including an assortment of edited articles; it covers many
types of games and new media, whereas the theorybook is specifically
focused on the type of interactive fiction generally discussed here.
And (despite the working title) the book is concerned with craft as
well as academic approaches to IF.

So, while I hope the end results may be of interest to some of the
people who contribute to Grand Text Auto, the contents of the book are
fairly unlike the contents of the blog.

Thanks for the link update.

 

[samwyse]

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

On or about 2/5/2005 8:27 PM, emshort@mindspring.com did proclaim:

> Despite a long dormancy, the IF Theory Book project
> (http://www.iftheory.com) is still going on: over the last few weeks I
> have been weeding out the articles that are definitely never going to
> be finished and getting things organized again.
>
> To that end, we could use a few more volunteer commenters who each have
> time over the next week or two to review an article about the craft of
> writing IF. Any input you might have on the presentation or content, I
> would pass back (anonymously) to the authors.

On http://www.iftheory.com/topics2.html, the link to "Crimes against
Mimesis" is dead. Here's a link that doesn't trigger lots of pop-ups:
http://www.tela.bc.ca/tads/authoring/discussion/general/mimesis-2.html

My search for that link triggers another thought. Grand Text Auto
(http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/) seems in places to conceptually
overlap quite a bit with this project. Is the IF Theory Book simply
Grand Text Auto on a diet? What do you see as diferentiators between
the two?

 

[nm]

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

emshort@mindspring.com wrote:
> Well, no. Grand Text Auto is a blog, not a book; it touches
> informally on issues that its contributors decide they would like
> to talk about, rather than including an assortment of edited
> articles; it covers many types of games and new media, whereas
> the theorybook is specifically focused on the type of interactive
> fiction generally discussed here. And (despite the working title)
> the book is concerned with craft as well as academic approaches
> to IF.

That's pretty much exactly what I would have tried to say, although
Emily said it better that I could have.

> So, while I hope the end results may be of interest to some of
> the people who contribute to Grand Text Auto, the contents of
> the book are fairly unlike the contents of the blog.

Well, of course Grand Text Auto and IF Theory will probably be more
alike than a pizza restaurant's takeout menu and a picaresque novel,
but I think they will be quite complementary. One certainly shouldn't
render the other pointless.

-Nick
http://nickm.com http://grandtextauto.org
(To contact me, send your message to nickm.com, username nickm)