[atxgpsig] Re: Can't Make It

[Webmaster <webmaster@cjweed.com>]

Chris Nystrom wrote:
> On 5/13/07, Bob Pendleton <bob@pendleton.com> wrote:
> > I'm sorry to hear that, get well!
>
> Thank you. Feeling a little better, but still recovering.
>
> > The meeting was small, but interesting. We had a discussion on the
> > differences between writing for games and movies with a meandering side
> > discussion about Austin and the current job market.
> >
> > The writing discussion was enlightening and highlighted the problems
> > that people working in traditional media have in transferring their
> > skills to new media. It also highlighted the lack of accepted tools for
> > game writing.
>
> I read not too long ago an interesting article by one of the Infocom
> (Zork, et al) writers who lamented how the art of writing in games had
> regressed. He was complaining how the old in the old Infocom games you
> could interact with using the full resources of the language, but with
> modern games such as Everquest they had to highlight the significant
> parts of the quest instead of letting you discover and figure it out
> yourself.
>
> The second interesting thing I have noticed is that game designers
> want to write content for individuals and get peeved with third party
> web sites that list and have walk throughs for all of the quests in a
> game. I wonder if instead of designers thinking of players as
> individuals, if they instead should think of it almost as a designers
> vs. players deal and have some very difficult long term quests, so
> even if all of the players in an MMO share information it would still
> be difficult to solve the quest?
What would be even more crazy would be long involving quests that are 
randomly generated.  Kind of like those "choose your own adventure" 
books, but created by the computer.  It could get exponentially more 
complex the more forks you add.
The writers would have to try to keep each fork at the same level, so 
they could add more content and connect it to previously created forks.

It's beyond my capability, but it sounds kind of feasible.
> > Personally I would like to have a much longer and more in depth
> > discussion of game writing.
>
> Cool. That would be great.
>
> Chris
P.S.  My first time writing here, long time listener :)

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