![](\"https:\/\/www.webomator.com\/grafx2\/blog\/eatenbyagrue.jpg\")
\n\nSteve Meretzky<\/a> was the author of the text adventure Planetfall<\/em> – which I think, after 24 years or so, is the best computer game I ever played.\n<\/p> \nI think that because I’ve never encountered another game that came so close to being a new narrative art form. The form is necessarily different from prose fiction or film because the medium is unique.\n<\/p> \nThe game uses a form of storytelling that is interactive, and therefore doesn’t even exist until its audience takes action; but unlike almost every other attempt at interactive storytelling Planetfall<\/em> and some of its Infocom siblings manage to create feelings other than fright or shock<\/em>. It evokes an actual emotional response from the player as a result of things the player has chosen to do. And while it may have been a primitive thrust in the right direction, that is exactly what interactive, narrative art needs to do. And has not done<\/em>.\n<\/p> \nImagine that thirty years after the invention of the printing press, nobody had time to write because all they were doing was designing new typefaces. That’s exactly where digital entertainment is today.\n<\/p>\n \nDuring the 1980s Infocom had a tremendous run in popular computer games. Their interface itself was incredibly simple – just a text prompt, and responses to the player’s typed actions. That meant two things:\n 1. The game engine was completely portable. Any<\/em> computer could print lines of text. So Infocom games were available on just about any computer you might own, and in those days there were a great many of them. \n2. Only minimal technical work was necessary to create a new title. All the game’s development, or nearly all of it, was devoted to designing an engaging experience and writing reams and reams of text – because one of the remarkable things about these games was how they could give long, involved responses to all sort of unlikely things a player might do. A new game didn’t rely on graphics advances, new features, or other spinnable hype. It would succeed or fail based completely on its content.<\/em> So then what happened? It’s easy, and correct, to say “graphics happened”. But there’s more to it than that.\n<\/p> \nStill, graphics did<\/em> happen. Implementing a graphic game across a large number of computer platforms was a much more difficult and expensive task. With all its success, Infocom was in a position to have a go at that, and they began to do it at about the same time they were purchased by a pre-bankruptcy Activision (then, as now, a heavy hitter in the games business).\n<\/p> \nYet as Infocom tried to become graphical it found that things simply didn’t translate as well. The designs of the games themselves needed to depend on, and be improved by, the graphical content. And it was obvious enough that while it’s relatively cheap to write<\/em> about any event at all, it was much more expensive to show<\/em> it. Given a couple of years they might have solved those problems. But they fell prey to one of the game business’ periodic slumps, during which their assets seemed too risky for an embattled Activision – which eventually fell into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was several years before Activision came back, and one of their early successes was a reinvention of Infocom’s Zork<\/em> franchise (Return to Zork:<\/em> I did the intro animation for that one).\n<\/p> \nLike I said, though, the thing that I believe killed this sort of narrative fiction wasn’t just graphics: it was realtime, 3D graphics. And specifically the first-person shooter.\n<\/p> \nCastle Wolfenstein<\/em> and Doom<\/em> laid the 2D groundwork for realtime 3D games and that’s the way the industry headed – because publishers correctly believed that what their public wanted was an experience that was as much like a movie<\/em> as possible. A moving camera was necessary for that, and the best solution to that problem was realtime 3D.\n<\/p> \nNow in theory, there’s no reason why an intelligently written narrative game can’t be made using realtime 3D rendering. That’s just mechanics, and the mechanics don’t preclude real content. Yet almost without exception, games today are all shooters in the heritage of Doom<\/em> and Quake<\/em>. You run really fast through… someplace, and you kill everything you see.\nWhy so little variety?\n<\/p> \nI think there are a couple of reasons for that.\n 1. Money isn’t imaginative<\/h3>\n<\/p> \nGame projects, while they are sometimes<\/em> insanely profitable, are always<\/em> very expensive. Games have become bigger and bigger over time. While I started at a time when – just barely – a game could be created by a couple of determined people, they now require huge teams and loads of money. And when loads of money gets involved, the decisions are made<\/em> by the money. New projects tend to be a lot like projects that have already<\/em> made money. These days that means almost every project will be a shooter. A few realtime strategy games will trickle out – especially if they’re successors to a franchise like Starcraft<\/em> or Warcraft<\/em> – but even those aren’t exceptions to the rule that you’re going to see a lot of what you’ve seen before.\n<\/p> \n \nThe second reason is one I think is even more costly and limiting. Games and their promotion are now tightly linked to new developments in graphics cards. That landscape is constantly changing – and in order for a game to get made it has to show that it’s pushing the envelope of the technology. Game after game, year after year. Vast resources are spent, constantly, on reinventing the same thing – putting images on the screen.\n<\/p> \nThis is true whether a developer licenses an engine or, more rarely, develops a rendering engine in-house. New rendering features are given tremendous importance. They become the focus of development, and why not? – since all the publisher wants is a shooter with a few bullet-pointed features that are sold as innovation. Cooperative team play. New weapons. More violent animations. Things that go “bounce” before they go “boom”. As cool as these things may be to look at… they have nothing at all to do with content<\/em>.\n<\/p> \nThe whole development process revolves now around technical issues. This is the exact opposite of the situation I described above, when Infocom was in its heyday – when almost all development resources could be spent on content.\n<\/p> \nThe games industry has been eaten<\/em> by technology.<\/p><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n So what can be done about that? It’s probably not my question to answer. I left that business over two years ago, and I won’t be going back – in retrospect I think that I pretty much wasted close to two decades of my life there.\n<\/p> \nBut there are a couple of things that I believe are encouraging. One is the recent success of Nintendo’s Wii – a system whose graphic capabilities were already behind the times at launch,. but which has enjoyed tremendous success because of its emphasis on gameplay.\n<\/p> \nAnother is the popularity of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft<\/em>. In the current state of games, I think that it’s these ongoing worlds that probably have the most potential for storytelling. While I’d love to see closed systems that can be more driven by game design, and where you’re less likely to be randomly assaulted by a teenaged whatsit, these games are the closest we’ve seen to a roomful of people behaving like their characters<\/em> in a traditional RPG.\n<\/p> \nSo what would one do with those bits of encouragement? Nintendo’s shown you that people will respond to good content, regardless of how it’s presented.\n<\/p> \nDon’t attempt to compete on the playing field of new features and spiffy effects. In fact, consider using an old game engine that’s inexpensive to license, and… concentrate on content.<\/em>\n \nHere are some observations about ways that interactive fiction can work. Trust me: they’ve hardly been used.\n\n
\n
\n<\/p>
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n\n
\n 2. It’s all about the hardware<\/h3>\n<\/p>
Stop thinking about technology.<\/h3>
A Couple of Things for Free<\/h4>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=webomator-20&l=ur2&o=1\")
– by Robert McKee<\/li><\/ul>\n