IF ITALIA - Il sito Italiano sull'Interactive Fiction

INTERVISTA

Q What is your ideal audience ?

A "Well, my book is about high school, and my ideal reader for that is sixteen years old and female. It'd be kind of unrealistic to expect the same sort of demographic for an IF work. Actually, I suppose the main difference is that I have no idea who'll be reading a book I write, but have a pretty good idea of who visits the MUD and posts to r*if. So the audience I have in mind for IF is a bunch of people I talk to on a daily basis."

Q "I think this leads to a question which I had prepared for later on... but which comes in natural now. The IF community is such an obviously closed one. In a previous interview you referred to the "niche-like" component of it, and in fact the amount of in-jokes and constant self-reference among it is astonishing.. Why is it so ? Will it change ? When ?

A "Oh, I have no idea. That's an interesting point -- I think that the in-jokes and self-reference you speak of didn't really start happening with any kind of regularity until this MUD was established, and a lot of us found ourselves interacting with each other live for several hours a day instead of merely through newsgroup posts. That said, I don't think that any really major works are going to reflect that fact all that much. For joke games, sure, but when people commit several months to a project, they're going to follow their muse, and chances are that said muses don't hang out on this MUD. And there are still plenty of people in IF who don't come here.

Q Why do male NPCs often represent a kind of threat in your games ?

A "Wow! That's quite a question.

Q "Is it a tough one?"

A "I'm thinking about it..."

A "I think it may just be coincidence. I've only written two games of any real substance, and it just so happens that they both feature female protagonists and male antagonists. But the game I'm working on now takes place in a deliberately male-dominated environment, and my other long-running project, Pantheon, features a male protagonist, but the gods calling the shots and causing problems are mostly female.

But it's possible you've identified some key aspect of my psyche. I'll have to think about that some more later.

Q "in fact there are also male figures which are NOT threats in Photopia. Another thing I wanted to ask is: what do you make of the ideas you dump ?

A I'm not sure I understand. Could you say that a different way

Q "Yes. In creative processes many ideas go wasted (remember me to amplify on this point later on. Do you keep tracks of those who go wasted ? Do you recycle them for future projects or not ? Do you try to put everything in your works, or do you prefer to ride the tide of the inspirations of the present moment ? If that is any clearer)

A "Yes, I see what you're asking. Yes, I try to hang on to most all my ideas. I may never get around to all of them, but I do sort of file them away for future reference. For instance, at the time the MUD started, I had two IF projects in mind to work on next: Pantheon, and another one that I'll call 'Companion'. I haven't released either of those. The game I *did* do next, Photopia, wasn't either of those, nor is the game I'm working on now either of those. But I am still planning to do both of them. Someday.(Sorry my connection is having so much trouble tonight.

Q You seem to like mixing up aestethical worlds: Did you ever think of writing IF with sound and graphics

A "Yes. In fact, while I was working on Pantheon, I was collecting graphics to use as 'footnotes' to the game. But I don't have any major plans for sound and graphics right now.

Q What would have Companion been about, if you want to tell us ?

A "Well, I'm still planning to write it at some point, so I think I'll keep it a secret."

Q "That's well thought out

Q What are the tricks of the craft which would work in conventional fiction and do not in IF ?

A "Oooh, wasn't expecting that. I thought you were going to asks which IF tricks would work in conventional fiction. Let me think about this one.

Q Gosh, I want to ask the one YOU thought about

A "Okay, I'll answer my own question while I think about yours. I think the main thing that translates from IF to conventional fiction is this: in IF, you spend a lot of time trying to respond to things. You have to think of what the player might try, and come up with a reasonable thing that might happen in response. I think this is also a good way to approach fiction. Rather than just go from Plot Point A to Plot Point B to Plot Point C, actually think to yourself, okay, what *would* this other character reply to what the main character just said? How *would* people react to this event -- and not just how do I want them to react in order to get to the next scene? What would be the logical followup?

As for which regular fiction tricks don't work in IF...hmm, that's hard to say. Every time I think of a possible answer, I immediately think, hey, wait, maybe that's something I ought to try. For instance, characters are very hard to do in IF because NPC interaction is so primitive -- but I think of that as a challenge which my next few games (including the one I'm working on) are going to try to overcome. I think that's the whole answer to that one

Q Aabout the 'wasted idea' topic... IF stimulates the develpoment of branching plots. This involves a certain amount of 'wasted'work. The more your work involves different plot developments, the more you can be sure that many of your good ideas will go wasted on the single player, who just won't see them. Is there a way to avoid that ? Furthermore, is it desirable to avoid

A You mean, is it bad if a player misses out on a plot branch?

Q Roughly, yes, that's what I mean.

A "Well, from the player's point of view, it's both good and bad. Bad in that naturally players want to see all there is to see, but good in the sense that it's nice to get the feeling that the boundaries are limitless. For instance, one thing I liked about Sim City 3000 (before I got Alpha Centauri and started playing that instead) was that new messages kept popping up -- I hadn't seen every single message on the message ticker even after a couple weeks of play. From the author's point of view, it's hard to say. As the flamewar over I-0 on r*if demonstrated, people can have violent disagreements over a work for the very simple reason that they played the game out in different ways, saw different events in different orders and so on, and so naturally they're not going to agree on what happened or what the game was about -- because what happened and what it was about was *different* to each player.

Q And that reflects on the image the author has. Good point.

A So it that sense you want the player to try to see the structure of all the different branches and not miss anything. But then you can make an argument another way and say that if you want the player to see the whole structure, why not just release the source code instead of the game? That should be 'So in that sense...'"

Q "Hmm. Are you familiar with 'Rayuela' by Julio Cortzar ?

A "No, not at all. Sorry.

Q "It's a novel which offers you a standard way to be read, and then an alternative path which includes extra chapters. I thought you might have read it, but I don't even know what is the english translations's title (and if there's any ).

Speaking of this, which are the novels which have more heavily influenced you ? A "Hmmm. That's a different question than simply asking for favorites. Give me a minute to scan my bookshelves...

Q Do they extend for miles ?

A "No, they just take up half of one wall in one room. Okay, let's see. Some of these books are my favorites, and some I may not have liked quite as much, but learned from nonetheless. And this is bound to be an incomplete list. But some of the ones that stick out as important right now are: SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE and A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving, LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov, everything by JD Salinger, WAS by Geoff Ryman, WATCHMEN by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, A BILLION FOR BORIS by Mary Rodgers, THE GREEN FUTURES OF TYCHO by William Sleator. A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath.. THE CEMENT GARDEN by Ian McEwan..."

Q "Oh that one is incredible.

A "That's an incomplete list, but those are the titles that are jumping out at me right this minute

Q "since you mentioned Garcia Marquez...

A "Note that I'm just as influenced by film and non-fiction as by novels, though. But go ahead...

Q "Is Remedios the Beauty a source for the development of Tracy Valencia ? You know, this (I lack the word in english) beauty which travels in a hostile world...

A "Very good. I don't think I was actively thinking of Remedios the Beauty when I was writing Tracy, but the influence is definitely there. She's also a heavy influence on other characters I've written, such as Molly Mockery in my novel. That's very perceptive. Yes, Tracy and Remedios are close in a lot of ways.

Q I just have to ask this, have you read 'Lanark' by Alasdair Gray

A "No, I'm not familiar with that one either. I don't read nearly as much fiction as I probably should. Once I have some money to spare, I should probably buy about thirty really good books and try to read them all. In a short period of time, that is

Q "It's a novel where girl are *mean* to say the least... I would have liked to hear your view on that

A "I'll put it on my list of books to look for"

Q How would you describe IF to somebody who is prejudiced against it (if you care for

A "Prejudiced in what way?"

Q Yes, there may be different prejudices. If they are novel aficionados, you know, they'll have to turn a blasted computer, and that's obviously so unattractive (but maybe that's an italian sociological trait)

A (For instance, I knew one fellow who I tried to get to play So Far... he immediately started giggling at the Rito and Imita play, and I asked him why he was mocking it when I thought it sounded quite good; he replied that since it was on a computer screen, he'd just assumed that it was really bad without having even looked at the words of the play.

Q I dream of inventing a language where brackets can only be closed

A "Heh."

Q Actually, I see now that my question was rather naive

Q What is the key to obtaining the 'limitless boundaries' effect, as you call it ?

A "It's hard to say. On the nuts-and-bolts level, I can think of some tricks to try: for instance, giving the characters a long list of possible default responses -- so that if the player is talking to an NPC, the NPC responds not with a single set phrase every single time, but perhaps chooses from a list of thirty. We talked a little about this during the Puzzle-Writing Forum for XYZZYnews. And some of the phrases that came up were 'the illusion of choice' and 'illusory vistas' -- make the player think that there are thousands of areas that could be explored, when really there are only a handful.

To go back to your earlier question for a moment -- it's interesting that, yes, IF can be marked as second-rate work from a couple different angles. The literary snob might say that any text to be found on a computer screen is inferior, because if it were any good it would be in print; the computer-game snob, on the other hand, is likely to thing of IF as inferior, because if it were any good it would have graphics and sound."

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©2000 Simone Zanella e ©2000 IF Italia. E' vietata la riproduzione.