WRT: Writer Response Theory

“A Gamers’ Manifesto: 20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles” isn’t exactly a public declaration of principles - it is more of a humorous wishlist wrapped around a lengthy enumeration of grievances. Funny, funny grievances.

The manifesto is primarily written from the point of view of 3d-physics gameworlds for first person shooters, football, extreme snowboarding and car racing. But we here in the digital text world can take a moment to share some of the triumphs and setbacks of our more polygonal bretheren - chatbot and IF aficionados have some similar complaints and aspirations. In other places, of course, they differ sharply.

Here is a brief response to the first 3 console demands on the Manifesto (you might want to read them first) with comparisons and contrasts between the issues of consoles and IF.

1. Smarter A.I. (”Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then.”)

While in the console world “AI” generally signifies enemy tactics, in IF “AI” generally indicates rich character behavior and narrative flexibility. IF has a long tradition of both yearning for better “AI” on the one hand and calling it a red herring on the other. This probably has something to do with the focus on storytelling rather than competition, and the fact that true conversational improvisation by NPCs seems neither achievable in the short term (computers aren’t up to it) nor as desirable as it might at first appear in the long term (flexible conversation doesn’t advance stories). In the area of non-conversational AI, robust libraries exist for NPCs to manage object use, do map pathfinding, and even set goals, but much of the best work involves reinventing the wheel for each game… and while game environments from the Sims to Doom to Madden NFL use AI to drive individual agents, the source code for simulating convincing crowds in works such as City of Secrets or Rematch tends to be implemented as environmental effects.

2. New genres (”Give us a genre of game we’ve never seen before. Something that’s not an FPS or an RPG or Madden NFL or…”)

There are more manifestos about calcified genres in games than you can shake a stick at - and while the Manifesto blames hardware architecture, I think there is a growing consensus that lack of new genres is due to the deep conservatism of investors and IP holders, who wield the power of the purse strings. In trying to outsell Hollywood, the games industry has eventually had to pay the piper.

Although there have been certain artifacts of genre (such as mazes) that were at certain points considered the demons of IF design, calcified genres are a problem IF has never had to face - neither during the halcyon days of big-budget Infocom games nor during the long uncapitalized period that followed. Perhaps when IF has to fend off a multi-billion dollar cutthroat marketplace then it can turn to console game developers for advice on how to overcome the deep conservatism of investors. In the meantime, experimentalism is everywhere . (”Not more steampunk noir / cooperative space opera / introspective shopping simulations / evolutionary time travel games again!”)

3. Advertise real graphics (”Don’t bullshit me about your graphics”)

Whereas the console game industry commonly markets 3d games through screenshots of (vastly superior) prerendered cutscenes (and this bothers people), the IF non-industry has a culture of “feelies” which harkens back to the days when it was the game industry. Feelies are printed maps and artifacts, small objects, scratch-and-sniff samples, or anything else included with the software which enriches your mental image of the “in-game” expierence. They have included glow-in-the-dark stones, coins, 3d glasses and more. Interestingly, from a “feelies” perspective, a well-rendered portrait of the main character is not deceptive but rather has obvious value, just as the beautiful dust-jacket image on a book has value. It may (for example) increases your imaginative pleasure while reading IF to know that the character has spiked hair and a snakeskin belt, even if seeing or using that belt is beyond the granularity of the game model.

On the other hand the comparable frustration to prerendered screenshots in IF might be flowery prose - flowery prose which in fact does not allow flowery input. Like the deceptive ad, it implies that the world which you will be allowed to enter is richer than it in fact turns out to be, setting the interactor up for sever disappointment.