John Crowley's LJ (RSS Feed)
04-14-2008, 08:39 PM
Thanks for all the information and hints from so many people expert in gaming lore, history and possibility. It seems that if I really want to explore the best on offer I'll have to spring for an XBOX and the games too. Ah well. The last game I played that required use of the keyboard or other tools to manipulate things and people was Pong. I never played text games either. As readers of this may remember, I tried out Second Life for a while and found it impossible to manipulate my avatar, who kept falling into an endless ocean.
No I don't have an inclination to write a game of my own; I may be too old a dog to learn the trade conceptually, that is to actually conceive what's possible. I am amazed that the best games now are constructed by hundreds of programmers and designers and artists and cost years and millions of dollars to perfect.
I did try to work with ("read" would be the wrong verb) a couple of the early interactive fictions, in fact I still have one somewhere that Kathryn Cramer sent me to try out -- I can't bring up the name. I found that it combined the worst features of novels and video games -- no pictures or illusionistic action to observe, and no unfolding aesthetic design to grasp. Not even a way to win, though of course that was part of the point... What was the name of that novel...?
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/84293.html)
No I don't have an inclination to write a game of my own; I may be too old a dog to learn the trade conceptually, that is to actually conceive what's possible. I am amazed that the best games now are constructed by hundreds of programmers and designers and artists and cost years and millions of dollars to perfect.
I did try to work with ("read" would be the wrong verb) a couple of the early interactive fictions, in fact I still have one somewhere that Kathryn Cramer sent me to try out -- I can't bring up the name. I found that it combined the worst features of novels and video games -- no pictures or illusionistic action to observe, and no unfolding aesthetic design to grasp. Not even a way to win, though of course that was part of the point... What was the name of that novel...?
(Original Post) (http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/84293.html)