The Gaming Philosopher

I want to react to Sarah's excellent blog post . For now I'll just comment on a very small part of it and talk about that; I'll leave other things for later. It is related to things said in the comments to my previous post, to the piece by Internisus I quoted, and in fact to a lot of things I have heard over the years. Here is the snippet: So this is the great advantage of Actor stance: facilitating immersion. Immersion. What is it, and what it is good for? Immersion apparently is a mental state in which we identify ourselves with a character; but identify outselves with that character in a very specific way, namely, we achieve for a moment something that approaches forgetfulness about the difference between ourselves and the character. When I say: "I am like Hamlet, for I too think incessantly about my interior", I am identifying myself with Hamlet, but I am not immersed. But when I read the play and feel rage at the king's betrayal and want to revenge myse...

Internisus writes : Are you familiar with Victor Gijsbers's experimental Figaro? It's an IF in which, at specific points, the game asks the player what s/he would like to see in the story. For example, you're spying on a scene, and a guy walks in. Now the game pauses to ask you whether you want the guy to be, say, your shady uncle or your romantic interest's boyfriend. You choose which way you want the story to go, and the narrative continues. It's a normal IF in every other respect. Victor wrote a short paper explaining the thinking behind this idea, and I wrote something on raif explaining why I absolutely hate it. Is it hard to see why? It's vaguely promising for some applications, perhaps, but for the most part in any title where you play a character with all the mortal and finite restrictions that apply to being a person , you absolutely should not have godlike control over the narrative. Some things are just out of your control--that's life! Who that ...

SPAG #53 has just been published, and in it you will find my detailed analyses of Photopia and Rendition . Please enjoy them, and consider writing something for SPAG yourself! Reviews, analyses, essays - more or less anything that has to do with interactive fiction is appropriate.

I have already played 13 games in the IF Comp, but I've only written about 6 of them--so it's definitely time to crank out some more not-quite-reviews. Lest the opportunity for small talk given to me by the necessity of filling this space with more or less meaningless sentences go to waste, I will now tell you that this competition will always be linked in my mind to the music of Meatloaf . I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show a week or so ago, and now I'm putting on Meatloaf songs whenever I start playing IF. My reviews will probably suffer. Here we go, talking about Snack Time! by Hardy the Bulldog & Renee Choba. What is good? This is a very polished effort. Not only is the interaction smooth and painless, the author has also anticipated all kinds of funny actions. The game has its own voice, being told from the perspective of a puppy. This makes what would otherwise be a very standard puzzler much more distinctive. The puzzle - for it really is just a single pu...

I have already played 11 games in the IF Comp, but I've only written about 5 of them--so it's definitely time to crank out some more not-quite-reviews. Lest the opportunity for small talk given to me by the necessity of filling this space with more or less meaningless sentences go to waste, I will now tell you that this competition will always be linked in my mind to the music of Meatloaf . I watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show a week or so ago, and now I'm putting on Meatloaf songs whenever I start playing IF. My reviews will probably suffer. Here we go, talking about A Martian Odyssey by Horatio. What is good? Alien landscapes are good! Overwhelm me with daring feats of the imagination, and I'll forgive you many things. Basing your work of IF on an existing story can be good as well. This territory hasn't been explored that well, and I welcome further exploration. What could be better? I said "overwhelm me with daring feats of the imagination", and ...

This is a spoilery post about Project Delta by Emilian Kowalewski. Please do not read on unless you have played the game! (And in fact I have to add some meaningless words here so that the real review doesn't show up on feeds; although frankly it's not the words that are meaningless, and indeed, not even the sentences; I'm reading Carnap at the moment, and he is way too quick in saying that a sentence is meaningless; for instance, "the moon is a city in Germany" seems to me false, not meaningless; but I guess that's what happens when you apply Russell's theory of types to our language about the empirical world.) As I explained in a previous post, I want to write these comments on the form of advice to the author; not as reviews that end with a numerical mark. So: What is good? As far as there is a game, it seems relatively well implemented. What could be better? If you want to show off your new IF-authoring system, you can do two things. First possibility...

This is a spoilery post about Channel Surfing by Mike Vollmer. Please do not read on unless you have played the game! (And in fact I have to add some meaningless words here so that the real review doesn't show up on feeds; although frankly it's not the words that are meaningless, and indeed, not even the sentences; I'm reading Carnap at the moment, and he is way too quick in saying that a sentence is meaningless; for instance, "the moon is a city in Germany" seems to me false, not meaningless; but I guess that's what happens when you apply Russell's theory of types to our language about the empirical world.) As I explained in a previous post, I want to write these comments on the form of advice to the author; not as reviews that end with a numerical mark. So: What is good? This game has a lot of ambition, and then some. It is a scathing criticism of television in general and stupid game shows in particular. It offers a cynical view on politics. And if tha...