Re: Superfluous rooms (was: Gameplay theory: leaving object behind..)


25 Sep 1995 09:57:33 GMT

In article <43qr1c$h2g@blues.epas.utoronto.ca>,
Walter OGrady <wogrady@blues.epas.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>In article <43mc9m$jds@nic.lth.se>, Magnus Olsson <mol@marvin.df.lth.se> wrote:
>>From the pure game-play viewpoint, your extra rooms might simply be
>>considered as red herrings. Put yourself in the player's shoes: do you
>>actually think it's enjoyable to examine a lot of empty rooms and
>>useless items that the author put there just to make the whole thing
>>more realistic?
>
>Absolutely!
>
>>Or would you prefer some action, some actual problems
>>to solve?
>
>Not at all. I get the feeling I'm in the minority of IF-players, but
>I much prefer the exploring element of the games I've played to the
>puzzles.

I can agree with you. Exploration is fun, and many ames seem to ignore
the exploration aspects of IF. This was my greatest disappointment with
"Hithchhiker", for example.

>So much so, in fact, that I often find myself giving up a
>game as soon as the first really difficult puzzle comes along, because
>it has lost its appeal.

Again, I can agree with you. And in a wider context, puzzles tend to
disrupt the flow of the story as well. On the other hand, a story with
no puzzles wouldn't be enough of a challenge, would it? In general, I prefer
games with simple puzzles (or good hint systems), provided the "fiction"
part of IF is strong.

>"Empty" rooms, then, are great, as long as they're not literally
>empty. If they're clearly put in for atmosphere and are carefully
>described, they'll be interesting without being frustratingly
>nonproductive.

But in that case the rooms aren't really "superfluous", are they? I
think this debate is suffering a bit from the fact that different
people seem to mean differnt things when talking about "empty",
"superfluous" or even "useless" rooms. My point in my earlier posts
was that every room should serve some purpose; however, the "empty"
rooms you are describing *do* serve a purpose, don't they? WHat I was
attacking was "filler" rooms put in for some "external" reason.

An example: in "Lurking Horror", you're inside a college building at
night. Naturally, there are lots of offices, but they have no bearing
whatsoever on the story. In this case, there is a simple solution to
the problem of what to do with them: since it's night, they're locked
and you can't enter them.

But an inexperienced author may well get the idea that he needs to
implement all those rooms, just because "they're there in real life".
Having lots of empty offices in "Lurking Horror" would add absolutely
nothing to the game; in fact, it would detract quite a lot by drawing
the player's attention away from the plot.

> It's a bit irritating playing a game and knowing that
>at every stage, something is expected of you -- I enjoy just wandering
>around.

It's a bit like the "one object - one use" syndrome, isn't it? Like
objects, rooms in IF can - and should have - a varying number of
"uses" - they can be there for atmosphere, to provide the setting for
a puzzle, because they're needed by the mechanism of a puzzle... But
rooms that have no use whatosever (like the "useless closets" in
"Detective") are a Bad Thing (tm) - for the same reason that
irrelevant subplots and characters in a novel are a Bad Thing (one of
the things that distinguishes fiction by a good author from that by a
bad author is that when reading the good author, you may ask yourself
"What on earth is _that_ supposed to mean?", but you will eventually
get some kind of answer, at leas if you search hard enough (I'm
excluding certain kinds of experimental fiction here)).

Magnus