Re: Myst vs. Text Adventure

[cardinal@cwia.com (Cardinal Teulbachs)]

On Fri, 8 May 1998 20:36:17 GMT, erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
made so bold as to state:

>> "Losing Your Grip", "So Far", "Jigsaw", "Trinity", "Curses", "Babel",
>> "Christminster" -- all of these have pre-ordained plots. The player is allowed
>> some flexibility regarding the order in which he/she can solve the puzzles
>> (which, for that matter, is also the case in Myst), but in every case the
>> object is to simply get to the ending, not to write your own. In some cases --
>> "Grip" and "So Far" in particular -- the final (and I mean VERY final) move
>> allows you to alter the ending's emotional coloring a bit, but it really has
>> little effect on the overall story arc. A "thin veneer" if ever I saw one.
>
>I can only comment on my own games:
>
>I never intended anything else. I invent a storyline, and then present it 
>through the medium of interactive fiction. That's what I do. Other IF 
>authors intend other things, and they haven't so darn badly either. 

Righto, Andrew, and in any case I confess I don't understand this
"write your own ending" mentality, anyhow. Let's suppose such a thing
were even possible; the question I find myself asking is "Why would I
want to?" Hell, if what I want is to invent my own storyline, I can do
that perfectly well enough without the help of a computer program. I
can just sit and imagine it all "to my own specifications" and cut out
the meddlesome middleman. 

What I ultimately want when I play IF (or any kind of story-centered
game, for that matter) is to be told the story the author intended to
tell. 

--CardinalT