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I praised Loom for its inventive simplicity, and how it avoids text towards direct interaction, and you refute that by referencing Neuromancer, a game with, in
by sparkpeasy 10y ago
I praised Loom for its inventive simplicity, and how it avoids text towards direct interaction, and you refute that by referencing Neuromancer, a game with, in your words, a "(comparatively) complex interface."
Neuromancer is riddled with complex text interfaces for every interaction. Every choice demands a read through, along with several text selections to decide from. Here's a video of how awful it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNMdbq_Z7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNMdbq_Z7w
How is that more simple?
- Baeocystin 10y agoAwful? Those few minutes of example show more player agency than the entirety of Loom combined. This is not a novel criticism- it was one of the main complaints levelled against Loom when it first came out. There's a difference between text you read, and text you have to guess at/type (ie, the find-the-synonym frustrations of Infocom games).
- sparkpeasy 10y agoPlayer agency in a medium without unlimited outcomes is a Choose Your Own Adventure, where the trick is done in plain sight and therefore unconvincing. Loom is just trying to tell a linear story in a convincing manner with the tools it has available, and it elevated the tools available. That's my only point.
- Baeocystin 10y agoFair enough. // (Although speaking of Choose Your Own Adventure: http://io9.gizmodo.com/remember-inside-ufo-54-40-the-unwinnable-choose-your-o-1552187271 http://io9.gizmodo.com/remember-inside-ufo-54-40-the-unwinna... had a fun "choice".)
- coroxout 10y agoI had that book. Very weird and trippy to my pre-teen mind. After many, many readings, both legitimate play-throughs and cheating flip-throughs, I don't think I realised what the article points out.