Last month I mentioned the IF Competition at JayIsGames. What I didn't mention at the time was that I entered -- under a pseudonym, which is how I usually enter IF competitions.
Turns out I tied for second place! I announced this on my web site, and twitter and stuff, but did I mention it here? No, because self-promotion is like unto black necromancy to me, and I suck at it.
Today JayIsGames is featuring Dual Transform, my very-nearly-winning entry. With a nice little review-slash-intro. Thanks, folks! You can play it on their web site.
EDIT-ADD: Also the Onion A. V. Club! (Scroll down.)
One of the more memorable chapters of Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics - his somewhat obscure followup to the paradigm-shifting Understanding Comics - is a critique of how much of the comics market (outside of Japan, anyway) is given over to superheroes. While acknowledging that he'd launched his own career with superhero tales, McCloud described the frustration that a comics creator faces when they wish to tell any other sort of story: that a graphical medium of boundless possibility should fail to have significant sales for anything other than the ripping adventures of flying musclemen in longjohns.
This came to mind for me as I recently started exploring multiplayer online games. Leaving aside certain Facebook games and other capital-c casual exercises, the space seems clearly dominated by either first-person shooters or MMOs. Wandering through discussions on web-based forums, or browsing the games that people were playing together on networks like Xbox Live or Steam, I found very little activity that didn't involve a picture of a gun poking out of the lower-right of the screen. This leads me to think about connections between these games' predominance and the consistent rank-and-file of men in tights on the walls of the comic shop.
This one is for Andrew and for all the other Canabalt lovers out there. Robot Unicorn Attack is a Canabalt clone by Adult Swim Games.
As you might have guessed, instead of a man, you're a robot unicorn. You also have a few more controls. You can double-jump, and you can do a "rainbow dash" through giant star obstacles.
A lot of nice little touches both visually and aurally, but the thing that will continue to be with me throughout the rest of the day is the soundtrack, "Always" by Erasure.
I'd been meaning for a long time to listen to Jon Blow's celebrated and controversial 2007 presentation, "Design Reboot", at the Montreal International Games Summit. It's been available for years as an audio file and (non-synchronized) slideshow from his own website, but only yesterday did I discover that Michael Camilleri transcribed it, editing it for readability. Which I appreciate, clearly, since I just read it.
The talk's most lurid (and therefore most virulent) meme is World of Warcraft is immoral!, and of course that's an oversimplification. A better summary is that Blow compares WoW to junk food or cigarettes. In small doses these things are fine, and can serve as an occasionally welcome and rewarding treat. Their mere existence is not intrinsically evil. But all three products, by their natures, are open for misuse, and what's more all three are couched in industries that intentionally promote this behavior.
That's where the immorality lay, argues Blow, who feels that junk-food games' propensity to burn up countless hours of their users' lives without offering much in return is real harm, just as clogged arteries or filthied lungs are. The remedy he suggests involves a call for game makers to study some examples of recent games that do offer to enrich their players' lives in a small amount of time - like a good film, or poem, or concert - and to think about how they can apply similar principles into their own work, whether they're indie devs or part of huge triple-A studio projects.
Anyway: required reading. Thanks to Doug Orleans for the pointer.
Long story short: a group of King's Quest fans has put in about 8 years of work on a non-commercial fan game in the King's Quest line. They worked out an agreement with Vivendi Universal to be able to continue making the game, with a name change to The Silver Lining. Activision now owns the King's Quest IP, and, after several months of talks and negotiations, they have told the group to stop working on the game and to take down their forums. Not wanting legal problems, the group had to comply.
Their webpage gives a fuller account.
There is a new, empty forum up for fans to talk to each other, and there is also a petition to save the game.
I have decided to spend less time playing solitaire digital games. I won't hold myself to a zero-tolerance limit on this; petit fours indie efforts of all stripes certainly remain fair game, for one thing. (Most recently across my plate: Continuity. Delicious.) But high-budget blockbuster attention-sinks are off the menu for now. Here you observe me not playing Bioshock 2, even if I rather liked the first game. Now see how I sit perfectly at peace about leaving Grand Theft Auto IV unfinished, though I certainly had fun banging through its first third or so last Thanksgiving.
The experience with Team Fortress 2 I described a couple of weeks ago has had a clarifying effect on my relationship with games. I've come to realize that, more than questions of art, story or mechanical design, it is games' ability to bring people together through play that I find their most interesting and engaging aspect. I mean this in all of games' non-solitaire forms, from board games straight through to Super Smash Bros. And, yes, even to sports, though you won't mind if I leave it to others to write about that...
Of particular interest to me today is online multiplayer games, a field of vast potential whose successes uplift me as much as its shortfalls and untapped areas intrigue me. I admit that I feel a little defensive about this, when the digital realm has lately enjoyed a lot of very interesting experimentation with local multiplayer games, those that you play with friends in the same room. (For example, have you seen Pax Brittanica yet?) Online play, meanwhile, seems much less vibrant at first glance, dominated by MMOs and shooters on one side, Farmville on the other, and not much in between.
But, given my own history as a game-player, my specific attraction to online play doesn't surprise me at all.
It's that time again. Boston IF Meetup at Nick Montfort's office at MIT, 14N-233. Tuesday, March 2, 6:30. After chatting and whatnot, we'll head over to the Cambridge Brewing Company for food and/or drink.
Two specific things we're likely to talk about:
- PAX East plans (PAX is less than a month away).
- The recently finished Jay Is Games IF competition (where our very own Andrew Plotkin tied for second!).
This story has already guttered out, but the serious disassembly happened on Usenet where most people won't see it. So I will dedicate a few hectopixels to documenting the situation.
It began on Thursday, Feb 18th, when Jason Scott -- who should have known better -- posted:
GOOD LUCK, KID: http://www.infocom-fiction.com/ (from @textfiles on Twitter)
The caps were apparently insufficient sarcasm, as this drew a flood -- okay, a small backwash -- of "Oh my god Infocom returns could it be true!" posts, on Twitter and various gaming web forums.
Let us now consider the facts.
The infocom-fiction.com web site has the old Infocom logo, the tagline "Interactive Fiction revisited", and this promo image:
Exciting, huh? The image name implies a game called "Triumvirate", presumably a follow-up to Trinity.
Except, alpha, the web site is not new. It appears to have been registered in June of 2007, and it was last updated in July of 2007. That "coming soon" has been frozen for two and a half years now.
And beta, the web site is not owned by Activision. It's registered to a guy in Germany named Oliver Klaeffling. Now, I have no beef with some IF fan deciding to write a followup to Trinity. That's fanfic, and fanfic is cool. But you shouldn't start cheering for the logo on his web site; cheer for the work. And Klaeffling does not appear to have finished the work.
"But what about the trademark?" you ask. Okay, this is where the story gets -- not exactly interesting, but at least a little bit convoluted.
Activision bought Infocom in 1986. That included all the games and all the trademarks. However, they stopped using the Infocom label on new releases after Return to Zork in 1993. (Zork Nemesis and Grand Inquisitor were just labelled "Activision".) They continued to reprint the old text games as "Infocom" until 2002, and then they dropped it entirely.
I don't know exactly when the legal status shifted, but at some time after 2002, the "Infocom" trademark was up for grabs. (In contrast, Activision kept a firm grip on "Zork".)
In July of 2007, Oliver Klaeffling applied for the Infocom trademark. He had already registered the infocom-fiction.com domain, and he put up the image you see above. Then -- nothing. He never completed the trademark application process. The USPTO declared it "abandoned" in October 2008.
At almost the same time -- October 2007 -- another Infocom trademark application went in, this one by "Omni Consumer Products LLC". This is a deliberately silly company name, but it's a real (small) company. It consists of Pete Hottelet finding fictional products (such as "Brawndo" from Idiocracy) and getting permission make them as real (licensed) products.
So that's where the "Infocom" trademark is now: it's held by the maker of Brawndo. Take that as the character note of the 21st century, if you like. Hottelet does not appear to have to have done anything IF-related, but Dave Cornelson said he was emailing him about the trademark, and maybe something will come of that.
Where does this leave Klaeffling? He doesn't have a trademark, and Activision still owns the copyright on Trinity. In the past, Activision people have been generous about permitting free fan-made games in the Infocom settings. But I have no idea if those people are still at Activision. I also have no idea if Klaeffling intended to release his game for free or as a commercial product. Also, of course, I have no idea how far he got implementing it. Conclusion: I have no idea. But it's safe to say the game isn't coming out this month.
Footnotes: Thanks to Stuart Moore for posting facts rapidly on rec.arts.int-fiction. Also this handy trademark blog post from 2007.
Two years after purchasing it (mostly because Portal was on the same disc), I have started regularly playing Team Fortress 2. My delay came from my general lack of enthusiasm about first-person shooters. My writing about it here comes from surprising insights about my own relationship with games that struck me soon after I began to play it.
On the surface, TF2 is an intentionally silly online-only shooter where players, after choosing one of nine character classes, leap into a battle whose goal is one of the time-tested multiplayer FPS standards: capture the flag, king of the hill, or base attack/defense. Sometimes I mix it up with whichever random folks happen to be online when I'm feeling scrappy. My "real" games, though, occur on Sunday evenings with a group known as Clan Elysium who operate out of the web forum Geezer Gamers, a haven for grown-up Xbox Live fans. These times have proven to be some of the most fun I've ever had sitting on the couch with a controller in my hands, and friend, I'd logged a lot of hours under those conditions before this.
There have been three major effects of this experience. First of all, it's reignited my interest in online digital games, both as a player and a ludeaste, and led me to reconsider what kinds of video games deserve the treasure of my attention right now. It also threw some wood under Planbeast, the project I soft-launched last year and then all but ignored; a subsequent post I made to the Geezers' forum unexpectedly led to a small boom of use for that site, and I spent a happy week responding to bug reports that resulted in several significant improvements to the service.
But what I want to write about here comes from the surprising insight this game afforded me regarding the play style I favor, and what this teaches me about unexpected connections between very different kinds of games.
I know, I'm supposed to be all on top of Myst news. But I've slacked on this post, which is the post where I tell you that Myst Online is back online, totally free (but Cyan is accepting Paypal donations).
Everything takes longer than expected these days. Cyan Worlds' plans are to move MO:UL to open source, and we finally have some good news. We've taken a first step and started a MO:UL server, so the Ages of Uru are available again. We've opened all the Ages, and added most of the goodies in MO:UL. We're referring to it as MO:ULagain - feel free to explore and enjoy.
-- from Cyan's Play Myst Online page
(Not a game post today, sorry... It's time for Zarf Wibbles About Apple Gadgets.)
What with the blizzard of iPad hype, everyone is talking about "multitasking" and how it is either a crucial tool of the Matrix infoconomy or a hideous, battery-destroying distraction from Getting Crap Done.
Irony shields to maximum, either way.
I just read through an essay, Understanding Multi-tasking on the iPad by Milind Alvares. It is a good overview but I think it oversimplifies to hit its target ("the hell with traditional multitasking", if I may summarize Alvares in five words).
"Multitasking" is a bunch of things, none of which is absolutely crucial, but none of which can be dismissed either. And some of them are stuck together. Let us then list:
- Software multitasking -- can several programs be running at a time?
- App multitasking -- can the user do something that involves several apps?
- User multitasking -- can the user do several things at once?
(The very word "multitasking" begs its question -- what "task" are we talking about, a human's or a computer's? -- but I'm using it for familiarity's (and Google's) sake.)
What do each of these things mean?
The 7th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, hosted by JayIsGames has just begun. That's thirty new short-form IF games, around the theme of "escape". All are playable online on the competition page.
This is one of the first big modern-IF events to occur outside the IF community. (The extended federation of IF communities, I should say, since there are many.) This comp has clearly gotten the attention of IF regulars; I see several familiar names on the game page -- Stephen Granade, Jim Aikin, Jim Munroe, among others -- as well as many who are entirely new to me. I am keen to find out both what the new authors are writing, and how the new players react to (what I think of as) the established talents of the field.
Voting is open for the next three weeks, and anyone can vote (you have to sign up). Enjoy.
You may have heard of Kickstarter. A number of independent game developers have used it to fund various projects. Here's another example, and I'll let Heather speak for herself:
Before You Close Your Eyes is a game/interactive story about personalitiesJust about 10 hours to go, and she's raised $8010 out of her $8500 goal (which represents 2 months of time to work on the game). And as with most Kickstarter projects, lots of fun gifts for pledges of various amounts.
and consequences. It is intended as an immersive, story-rich vehicle for
introspection and understanding the choices made by others. It is
presented in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style and will be available on
iPhone, Android and Web.
I am attempting to fund this project on Kickstarter, which is a cool web
platform for "crowdfunding". Crowdfunding is what happens when lots of
people are willing to put their money behind something that they love and
think should exist in the world. The Kickstarter model works a bit like a
PBS pledge drive. Backers declare how much they would like to contribute to
the project and receive 'Thank You" gifts that the person asking for funding
had defined.You can take a look at my project site here:
http://bit.ly/dreamgame
We took a little break in January, but we're back. All are welcome at the Boston Interactive Fiction Meetup on Monday, February 8, 6:30 PM, in Nick Montfort's office at MIT (14N-233). We have a few things on the agenda:
- We'll be discussing our participation in the upcoming PAX East.
- We'll be having a student present a prototype of a current work.
- We'll likely check out some of the entries in the Jay Is Games interactive fiction competition.
Further PAX excitement: I have reserved a large suite on the top floor of the Back Bay Hilton. (Room number TBA.) When PAX begins, this will become the People's Republic of Interactive Fiction Hospitality Suite.
The People's Republic of Interactive Fiction is the label we've adopted at the Boston IF meetups. We intend to make games and such under this label, someday; but our first offering will be this room, where we will welcome all PAX attendees on behalf of Boston and its rich IF history.
(Hopefully, not all PAX attendees at the same time...)
If you know the IF community online, come by and meet us in real life. (See the PAX page on IFWiki for the list of familiar names who will be at PAX -- it's a long list, and I promise several of us will be hanging out in the room at any given time.) If you're curious about IF, come by and ask us about it. If you want to play some IF, or learn about how to write it, come by and see the software demos we'll have running. If you want to eat potato chips, we can provide those.
(Really, you don't need to be a PAX attendee to visit the room. If you're in Boston and you missed getting a ticket -- we hear they're selling out fast -- you can still come hang out. But you're going to be sad on Friday night when we all leave to do the IF panel, and then watch Get Lamp.)
The current plan is for the doors to be open noon to midnight Friday, noon to midnight Saturday, and maybe noon to 3pm on Sunday. (Excepting those two IF event times on Friday.)
Further details will be organized on the wiki page. We'll probably have a SpeedIF event (write a complete IF game in two hours -- bring your own laptop), maybe some less-formal panel discussions, maybe show clips from Get Lamp that didn't make it into the Friday evening showing.
One other event I forgot mention in the last post: Emily Short and Jeremy Freese will be speaking at MIT on Monday, the day after PAX. This is for Nick Montfort's Purple Blurb series, and the details aren't officially out yet, but recent Purple Blurb events have been 6pm in MIT room 14E-310.
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