Parser as Prototype: why choice-based games are more interesting

Gosh, but it’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. The reason for that is I’ve been tied up with inkle: the last post was September ’12, which was about when we started on our Sorcery! series, and that hasn’t really let up. Sorcery!, if you don’t know, is a series of choice-based text-games for touch screens, that’s done pretty well so far. I’ve been working on the design, and also done the adaptation from the original gamebooks to our inklewriter-based format.

But that’s not really what I wanted to write about. What I wanted to write about the type of games we’re now making. They’re not parser games – they use choices – but in terms of design, they’ve ended up being closer to parser games than anything else. In fact, I’ve got a provocative statement to make, which is this.

“Parser games are prototypes of choice-based games.”

This is not quite true, but it’s quite close to something true. I’m now going to try and argue it.

New interactive story: The Intercept

Bletchley Park, 1942. A component from the Bombe machine, used to decode intercepted German messages, has gone missing. One of the cryptographers is waiting to be interviewed, under direst suspicion. Is he stupid enough to have attempted treason? Or is he clever enough to get away?

Working on a new branching narrative project for inkle has crystallised in my head a problem I think I’ve often skirted around, but not ever pinned down before; and it’s a problem that sits right the heart of interactive narrative design.

The problem is this: if we’re tracking what the player chooses, and using that to alter how events play out, then how do we decide when to cause, and how do we decide when to affect?

There’s a conversation going on here – the reader says something, and the author says something back. The best interactive writing matches the author’s reply to the reader’s comment so perfectly it feels like there must be a human being inside the machine, typing furiously away.

But how do we decide who gets to hold the talking stick at any given moment?

Two IF Games for Kindle

Well, it’s been a long time since I posted on this blog – inkle has been keeping me pretty busy. But there’s a couple of releases to report, both on active content for Kindle (so US-only!), and both appearing on the same day, as luck would have it.

inkle’s Frankenstein is released!

After four months development, inkle‘s first project, Frankenstein, written by Dave Morris and published by UK publisher Profile Books, is now available to buy in the App Store.

Cracks @ Black Static #28

I seem to have accidentally written a horror story, or close enough to one that it’s coming out in Black Static‘s latest issue, in a week or so. Here’s the cover splash, courtesy of TTA.

For fans of the genre, Black Static gets consistently great reviews from around the horror zine scene, so it’s an honour to appear there. The big question will be, will I have the nerve to read the rest of the issue?

In other fiction-writing news, my story from last year Sleepers has been picked up to appear… elsewhere. Details on that when it comes out.

The final 5%

If you watched the remake of Battlestar Galactica, you’ll know that after two or three years of escaping murderous robots with LED eyes and their sleazy-nightclub-owner-type owners, the last surviving humans were faced with the terrible threat of the Final Five. Five last Cylons who could yet destroy everything. Hard to pin down, hard to defeat, hard to negotiate with…

It’s something that anyone who’s worked on long projects can sympathise with. Projects can be easy or hard, but every project ends with that final 5%: the final 5% that nearly kills you.

New game: A Colder Light

The last light has gone. The stars are coming out in the black sea above. Many are hidden by ice-fingered winds. My father is still not returned and the fire is almost gone.

But this is how life is: always an edge. A thin sheet on a diving-deep pool.

I hope he will return soon. I cannot summon him.

A Colder Light is now available to play online.

A game is for life, not just for Christmas…

Merry Christmas, and if you’ve just unwrapped a new game, here’s a sobering puppy-for-life type statistic which is urban legend in the games industry, and might even be true: the majority of console games are played once.

So what? you might think. Most books are read once, most DVDs are watched once, most Christmas cakes eaten once… But I don’t mean finished, I mean played. The majority of console games are opened, installed, booted up, played for a single session (possibly of several hours), then never booted up again. Even though games can afford tens of hours of entertainment; and even though games cost four times as much as books or films.

And that isn’t true of books, or DVDs, or Christmas cake. So why the difference? Is it just because people can get stuck on games?

I don’t think so. I think it’s deeper than that. In fact, I’m not sure there is a difference between the consumption pattern for a DVD, book or a game. I think instead that the difference is in what we mean by the word finished. (And, what is inkle going to do about it?)

Is this the end?

I’ve been busting my way through a holiday text adventure, the way one does. A couple of days off is the perfect time to get 80% of a game down, ready to be shelved, redrafted, tweaked, and polished until it no longer seems like such a good idea.

I had the puzzle structure worked out before I coded a single word. I’m now 80% of the way through, but then I got distracted, adding hyperlinks.

I just turned off the actual text prompt thing. It seemed so… retro. There are just these buttons now. It feels kinda okay.