When I played the three IF games for the first time I was struck by the differences in the games’ writing styles. The first game, Aisle, differs from the other two because it contains live dialogue. I don’t know if Bronze contains any live dialogue because I didn’t get that far, but the dialogue I encountered was mostly flashbacks to the time when “you,” I’m guessing you are Belle, lived there before. Aisle contains detailed descriptions of your surroundings, from the “bright plastic bags full of pale skin-tone shapes” to the specific names of foods you encounter. This descriptive style differs greatly from the writing in Shade. In Shade, the writer often dismisses items and repeats nondescript phrases: When you command the “work” to “examine floor,” the response is always “it’s a bit dusty.” Shade‘s lack of description, i found, was helpful in deciding which elements were important to the game. Aisle, however, was a bit more abstract and seemingly artistic. The author, it seemed, was trying to make a point about the power of IF in creating such dramatic imagery for the IF genre.
Bronze, as most probably discovered, was the most complex of the three games we played. There were complex descriptions, many rooms to explore and many tasks to complete that often required the acquisition of items from other rooms. Bronze is obviously designed for longer gameplay than Shade, which contains fewer descriptions and no dialogue. It is interesting, however, to consider the complex descriptions and dramatic thought and dialogue featured in the very short Aisle. I don’t know if the writer was trying to be funny or thought-provoking in his creation of the game but it was interesting to compare it to the other games.
In class on Tuesday we spent almost the whole class playing the interactive fiction game Varicella. This was the second time I’d ever played interactive fiction games, the first being the three games we played before Monday’s class. The first time playing I hated it probably due to my lack of knowledge of the commands. Once playing in class with two classmates I quickly caught onto the commands and became obsorbed into the game. I really liked the blog on “Writing in IF.” I feel like the highly descriptive responses the computer gives back emerses oneself into the game and makes you feel like you are actually there. The great thing about IF games is you can create whatever design of the room you want in your head with the few details given. Although Varicella has excellent description, it still leaves alot up to interpretation by the gamer.
I like how the writer of “Writing in IF” commented on how they could tell what was important by the amount of description given back by the computer. Once entering a room and typing look, the computer describes everything in the room. You instantly know that when something is mentioned you can probably either pick it up or examine it. As a first time IF gamer, it took me a little while to pick up on this. It’s interesting to see the different types of language used for different IF games and what the creater is trying to accomplish. I feel like in some cases, less description is better so the gamer can imagine his own world. But in other cases it’s important to include alot of details so the gamer will explore the entire room.