(fwd) Re: Searching for answers about the end (and return) of IF as a popular format (fwd)

[Dan Lyke]

A posting in rec.arts.int-fiction that I thought was apropos...


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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: Searching for answers about the end (and return) of IF as a popular format
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Ben Schaffer (whataguy@el*REMOVE*.net) wrote:

> What I wanted to ask about was: why no more IF on the front page? I know,
> graphics are important now. I know, other companies are in charge. But
> today's games are not MORE than Infocom's.

Why are there pages and pages of movie ads in every newspaper, and only a
couple of mentions of best-seller novels, and nothing about poetry?

Because most people don't care.

> In 1982, people were pretty excited about video games. By 1985, they were
> no longer excited. Why did video games fizzle? According to Douglas
> Crockford, it was because nothing had really improved about them except
> graphics. The games weren't any better. Consumers said, "That's it? That's
> all we can expect?" and they moved on. Graphics weren't enough to hold
> them indefinitely.

That's absurd. Nothing improved about books either. Hell, nothing improved
more than fractionally about *cars*, but people still get excited over
those.

In 1982, computer users were a tiny, self-selected group -- economically
upscale, neophilic, and smart. In 1985, this was less true. In 1990,
forget it; that same group was a tiny minority of the computer-user world.
The trend continues exponentially.

> But in the current computer game world, people DO wait anxiously for the
> same games with better graphics. Can this be a temporary resurgance of
> this phenomenon?

No. Different people. 

> Would it be possible, in other words, to successfully market a game with
> the requisite status-quo fancy graphics which nonetheless takes as its
> core the Infocom-derived game of discovery?

I think many -- even most -- graphical adventure games have tried. Some
have succeeded more than others. You can't look at the Tomb Raider genre;
it's the Myst clones that are taking the most interesting steps.

But most of them wind up fluff, for the same reason that most movies are
fluff. It's economically infeasible to spend two years and hundreds of
thousands of dollars on any product which won't be a smash popular hit.
Therefore, everything must be targetted to idiots. The exceptions
generally fail. (Look at _The Last Express_.)

As the cost of graphics declines, we'll start to see independent works --
stuff written by hobbyists in their basements -- that are experimental,
literate, interesting, and also visually stunning. But they'll never make
headlines, just as text IF will never make headlines. 

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."