Category Archives: interactive fiction

Touché, aaronius

Occasionally I surf around the IFDB looking for goodies. I really like the way it is set up, as it takes a number of cues from other community sites that encourage engagement and social interaction. Often I’ll find myself weaving my way through games, reviews, and lists before realizing how much time has passed, and typically I’ll come out with a couple of new games to add to the play list. I also absolutely love how it is so smoothly integrated with Zoom (and others, like iPhone Frotz), which so effectively feeds the immediate gratification beast. Anyway, I digress.

I was flipping through some IFDB pages the other day, looking for some choice information on this year’s IFComp winner, Rover’s Day Out, when [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in 3D/if, game design, Vespers | 2 Responses

IFComp, I Hardly Knew Ye

Rovers Day OutAnd, there we go. Another IFComp come and gone, with the winners announced this past week. It sounds like the 15th Annual was on par with most, although there appeared to be significantly fewer games overall than in the past (24, compared with 35 last year, 43 in 2006, and 36 in 2005). An ominous sign? Not the way I see it. As others have pointed out elsewhere, this year could be considered an excellent year for IF — in particular, non-comp pieces. We saw quality, ambitious works such as Aaron Reed’s “Blue Lacuna” and Jimmy Maher’s “The King of Shreds and Patches”, not to mention Textfyre’s release of their first two commercial pieces, “Jack Toresal and the Secret Letter”, and the acclaimed [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in adventure games | Leave a comment

Austin GDC Slides

I know a couple of people were interested in seeing the slides I presented at the Austin GDC, so I’ve (finally) made them available for download.

There are two versions available. The slides are available in their native PowerPoint (.ppt) format, as well as in PDF format for those who don’t have access to PowerPoint. The PPT version is preferable, since it contains some of my notes for each slide. I sometimes include slides without much descriptive text on them, so having the notes available will help others to know what I was trying to communicate. For some reason there’s something a little denuding about putting my notes out there with the slides, but so be it.

The PDF file does not contain the notes, [More...] Read the rest

Posted in interactive fiction | 4 Responses

Steve’s Cell Phone Number

So one of the cooler things that happened at GDC Austin took place at the Speaker’s Party, a nice rooftop patio party for all of the speakers at the conference with, happily enough, an open bar. I was there in Austin by myself, and I’m not the most extroverted person by nature, so mingling at a social event where most people seem to know each other and I know zero isn’t exactly my comfort zone. But hey, open bar.

So I got my precious free drink, scanned the crowd, and tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.

I finally saw someone I recognized, but only barely; Tom Abernathy, one of the advisors of the Writers’ Summit. I knew a [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in miscellaneous | 5 Responses

Wrapping Up At the GDC Austin

I’m finally getting some time to put some thoughts together on this year’s GDC Austin, as I sit in the airport waiting for my flight back. Luckily, it’s still possible to put some thoughts together, after dumping half a beer on (and in) my laptop last night. I thought for sure that was the end of the line for the MacBook Pro, but it seems to have survived the scare.

It was an impressive amount of beer dumped directly over the power button and right half of the keyboard, and I wasn’t exactly the swiftest to respond. But after giving it some time to dry upside down, it did start up the first time I tried. After that, though, on subsequent power-ups it would only [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in characters in games, game design, text in games, Vespers | 3 Responses