4 ms·

The IF community will absolutely go to the mat insisting that Twine, etc. is IF in the same sense as parser games. They are judged side by side in the biggest

The IF community will absolutely go to the mat insisting that Twine, etc. is IF in the same sense as parser games. They are judged side by side in the biggest annual competition. I get that they are trying to be maximally inclusive, but frankly I have no idea what they are talking about. These things are plainly apples and oranges. And there is great value to be found in both. But saying these are directly comparable is roughly analogous to saying a point and click adventure game is comparable to a "quick time event" game. I think the IF community cedes too much ground with respect to parser games in the name of having a bigger tent.

mwigdahl 4y ago
This wasn't always the case -- there was a considerable amount of resistance to the idea that choice-based games were equivalent to parser IF in the community as recently as 10 years ago. There were a few related factors that led to the current state, where if anything parser IF is more on the margins than choice-based IF. The first is that choice-based IF is far, far easier to write, debug, and release than parser-based IF. The barrier to entry is _much_ lower. Because of this, the diversity of authors participating in the IF scene expanded quite a bit. Parser-based IF skewed really heavily toward the programmer demographic. Twine and other choice-based options brought in a lot of LGBTQ and minority authors who wanted to tell their stories but didn't have the programming background to do so with a parser-based engine. Twine and other choice-based engines were designed web-first. They incorporated graphics and other visual features enabled by the browser environment while parser-based engines were still effectively stuck in VT-100 emulation mode. Finally, choice-based IF is also often better at simulating interpersonal interaction and conversation than parser-based IF. Parser-based IF stagnated for quite a while. Graham Nelson's Inform 7 programming language was a work of staggering genius, but it was a closed-source one man show for a very long time and didn't update to keep pace with what the choice-based engines were doing. Inform 7 has just recently been open-sourced, with a rearchitected pipeline that should allow for some interesting integrations and enhancements. It will be interesting to see whether there's still sufficient interest around the tool such that the community brings it into the modern era. I certainly hope there is!
- jordanpg 4y ago
  Fascinating survey of how we got here. I would also note that, whatever the API, parser games still leave something to be desired in the year 2022 compared to what is now possible with other gaming frameworks. I'm thinking of indie games like Papers Please and Beholder. But also Twine, et al. The parser interface accomplished beautiful things in its heyday, but now feels to me to be needlessly constrained and difficult. I think there is a future for text-based IF. I think there are entire genres of games that are only (theoretically) possible with that interface. But the usual <verb> <object> + inventory puzzles formula is just too narrow, too time-consuming to play anymore. And I say this from a place of love.
  - mwigdahl 4y ago
    In my parser game _Aotearoa_ (https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem) I worked really hard to provide player affordances such as an in-game interactive tutorial, exhaustive noun and verb synonyms, plus keyword highlighting so players literally _couldn't_ miss a primary interactable item. Even with all of this, people still got stuck, and properly pacing a story that uses an unconstrained parser world model is an exercise in frustration. But I disagree that the games are too narrow. If anything, the frustration comes in because they are too broad. No other game genre has the sheer hubris to present the player a story, tell them they are the main character, and then challenge them to literally do anything they can think of to overcome the puzzles they are presented with. "I got this," they say, presenting that blinking cursor on a blank line. "Anything you can imagine, I can handle." Of course every parser title fails spectacularly at this. But the best ones fail in impressive and fascinating ways. S. John Ross's _Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom_ explicitly limits the number of verbs down to six, but succeeds in creating a game environment that is enjoyable on both the direct and meta levels. My own _Aotearoa_ does a lot to remove the normal barriers to entry to interactive fiction, at the cost of some immersion should you choose to use the cues and tutorials. Andrew Plotkin's _Hadean Lands_ and _Spider and Web_ both have high-stakes, complex stories with detailed world models. This is usually the recipe for frustration and failure in parser IF, but both titles implement wonderful unique, _diegetic_ mechanisms to motivate failure and experimentation. I would hate to see parser IF go away. I think its innovations have been more valuable and influential than many people realize, and I think there's still a lot more that blank line and that blinking cursor have to offer.
djur 4y ago
I think you're right to a certain extent -- CYOA and parser-based IF are not the same thing and appeal to different (albeit overlapping) audiences and creators -- but also that the IF community is correct that CYOA is a perfectly legitimate form of "interactive fiction", as are a lot of hypertext works. Just like the roguelike community has found, it's healthier to expand the territory than to fortify the walls. Parser-based IF is better off than it's been in years and the increased energy brought to the community by Twine and other CYOA systems is a big part of that.

mwigdahl 4y ago

This wasn't always the case -- there was a considerable amount of resistance to the idea that choice-based games were equivalent to parser IF in the community as recently as 10 years ago. There were a few related factors that led to the current state, where if anything parser IF is more on the margins than choice-based IF. The first is that choice-based IF is far, far easier to write, debug, and release than parser-based IF. The barrier to entry is _much_ lower. Because of this, the diversity of authors participating in the IF scene expanded quite a bit. Parser-based IF skewed really heavily toward the programmer demographic. Twine and other choice-based options brought in a lot of LGBTQ and minority authors who wanted to tell their stories but didn't have the programming background to do so with a parser-based engine. Twine and other choice-based engines were designed web-first. They incorporated graphics and other visual features enabled by the browser environment while parser-based engines were still effectively stuck in VT-100 emulation mode. Finally, choice-based IF is also often better at simulating interpersonal interaction and conversation than parser-based IF. Parser-based IF stagnated for quite a while. Graham Nelson's Inform 7 programming language was a work of staggering genius, but it was a closed-source one man show for a very long time and didn't update to keep pace with what the choice-based engines were doing. Inform 7 has just recently been open-sourced, with a rearchitected pipeline that should allow for some interesting integrations and enhancements. It will be interesting to see whether there's still sufficient interest around the tool such that the community brings it into the modern era. I certainly hope there is!

jordanpg 4y ago
Fascinating survey of how we got here. I would also note that, whatever the API, parser games still leave something to be desired in the year 2022 compared to what is now possible with other gaming frameworks. I'm thinking of indie games like Papers Please and Beholder. But also Twine, et al. The parser interface accomplished beautiful things in its heyday, but now feels to me to be needlessly constrained and difficult. I think there is a future for text-based IF. I think there are entire genres of games that are only (theoretically) possible with that interface. But the usual <verb> <object> + inventory puzzles formula is just too narrow, too time-consuming to play anymore. And I say this from a place of love.
- mwigdahl 4y ago
  In my parser game _Aotearoa_ (https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=lrbpmlpsknsgvgem) I worked really hard to provide player affordances such as an in-game interactive tutorial, exhaustive noun and verb synonyms, plus keyword highlighting so players literally _couldn't_ miss a primary interactable item. Even with all of this, people still got stuck, and properly pacing a story that uses an unconstrained parser world model is an exercise in frustration. But I disagree that the games are too narrow. If anything, the frustration comes in because they are too broad. No other game genre has the sheer hubris to present the player a story, tell them they are the main character, and then challenge them to literally do anything they can think of to overcome the puzzles they are presented with. "I got this," they say, presenting that blinking cursor on a blank line. "Anything you can imagine, I can handle." Of course every parser title fails spectacularly at this. But the best ones fail in impressive and fascinating ways. S. John Ross's _Treasures of a Slaver's Kingdom_ explicitly limits the number of verbs down to six, but succeeds in creating a game environment that is enjoyable on both the direct and meta levels. My own _Aotearoa_ does a lot to remove the normal barriers to entry to interactive fiction, at the cost of some immersion should you choose to use the cues and tutorials. Andrew Plotkin's _Hadean Lands_ and _Spider and Web_ both have high-stakes, complex stories with detailed world models. This is usually the recipe for frustration and failure in parser IF, but both titles implement wonderful unique, _diegetic_ mechanisms to motivate failure and experimentation. I would hate to see parser IF go away. I think its innovations have been more valuable and influential than many people realize, and I think there's still a lot more that blank line and that blinking cursor have to offer.

djur 4y ago

I think you're right to a certain extent -- CYOA and parser-based IF are not the same thing and appeal to different (albeit overlapping) audiences and creators -- but also that the IF community is correct that CYOA is a perfectly legitimate form of "interactive fiction", as are a lot of hypertext works. Just like the roguelike community has found, it's healthier to expand the territory than to fortify the walls. Parser-based IF is better off than it's been in years and the increased energy brought to the community by Twine and other CYOA systems is a big part of that.