Zarf Updateshttps://blog.zarfhome.com/2024-03-12T05:19:23+00:00Andrew PlotkinInteractive fiction, narrative in games, and so onOh, that's what happened to Kickstarter2024-03-12T05:19:23+00:002024-03-12T05:19:23+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-03-12:/2024/02/what-happened-to-kickstarterA couple of years ago I wrote about "That Kickstarter news". The "news" was blockchain crap. I pointed out that an open-source protocol for crowdfunding project tracking was a pretty neat idea, but blockchain doesn't make it happen. To make ...<p>A couple of years ago I wrote about "<a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/12/that-kickstarter-news">That Kickstarter news</a>". The "news" was blockchain crap.</p>
<p>I pointed out that an open-source protocol for crowdfunding project tracking was <em>a pretty neat idea</em>, but blockchain doesn't make it happen. To make it happen, you need a bunch of people of good will to sit down together and work out details. Then you need a trusted organization to run it. Kickstarter was well-situated to get that process started.</p>
<p>They didn't, though. Everybody yelled that blockchain was crap -- it wasn't just me. The company flailed for a while and then seemed to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/04/kickstarter-ceo-everette-taylor/">back off on their plan</a>. Although they never disclaimed it completely.</p>
<p>So what was that all about? We now know, or have a good notion anyway, thanks to <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/">an article</a> that appeared yesterday.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The stealth round totaled $100 million, according to people familiar with the deal. It was led by a16z crypto and included a handful of other smaller investors [...]</p>
<p>In return for the a16z largesse, Kickstarter would take its own crack at becoming a Web3 company. The grand but improbable plan called for shifting its entire platform onto a blockchain called Celo, another a16z portfolio company, where it would operate as an open-source protocol – akin to http or Bitcoin – rather than rely on the proprietary code model used by most tech firms. </p>
<p>-- "The untold story of Kickstarter’s crypto Hail Mary – and the secret $100 million a16z-led investment to save its fading brand", Leo Schwartz and Jessica Matthew, <em><a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/">Fortune</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So that's a simple story. Some finance bro from the blockchain department of Andreessen Horowitz turned up with a suitcase full of cash and said "Here, we'll pay you to become a Web3 company. It'll be great. PS: Use our blockchain."</p>
<p>Now it's not really that simple. The article notes that the funding round was in the form of a "tender offer", meaning the money went to shareholders -- including employees -- rather than to Kickstarter as a company. As a public benefit corporation, Kickstarter had pledged to never IPO or seek acquisition, leaving employee stock options as ghost paper. This was an offer to cash some of them out on the spot.</p>
<p>Also, the plan wasn't a <em>commitment</em> to go blockchain. Nonetheless, it was pretty clear that management had bought in. It was also clear that nobody else had.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of the community outrage fell upon employees, who expressed their disbelief in group chats and swapped sardonic jokes about Kickstarter NFTs. Meanwhile, the company’s decision to use an outside consultant to announce the blockchain news meant that many staffers were ill-prepared for the sudden torrent of vitriol from users. And given Kickstarter’s checkered history of launching new initiatives, doubt spread about its capacity to pull off a major technology pivot. “It was inconceivable,” said one employee.</p>
<p>The blockchain plan seemed impossible – and that would soon prove to be the case. Within months, executives stopped bringing it up at all, and no section of the platform was ever converted to run on a blockchain. “It felt like Drip,” said one former employee, referring to the ill-fated Patreon competitor. “Announcing this thing, and then just abandoning it.” </p>
<p>-- ibid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can say "Well, great -- the employees got cash and the company never went Web3 at all. Win/win!" Or win/status-quo, I suppose.</p>
<p>But then there's the reputational hit. <a href="https://www.polygon.com/23167962/gloomhaven-backerkit-crowdfunding-launch-blockchain">Big</a> <a href="https://www.polygon.com/24079383/backerkit-2024-goals-brandon-sanderson">projects</a> started shying away from Kickstarter and going to BackerKit or other competitors. I, personally, never backed another Kickstarter after the blockchain announcement. We all have the sense that Kickstarter is in the doldrums. None of this is really news.</p>
<p>The interesting angle is that, from the company's point of view, they were <em>already</em> in the doldrums. Thus the title of the <em><a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/11/kickstarter-blockchain-a16z-crypto-secret-investment-chris-dixon/">Fortune</a></em> article: "Kickstarter’s crypto Hail Mary".</p>
<blockquote>
<p>But a dozen years after its launch, Kickstarter had lost its cachet of cool and churned through CEOs. The Kickstarter of 2021 had little to offer would-be investors but headaches. Growth had flatlined at the startup, which made its money by taking a small cut when a project on its platform met a funding threshold, and its onetime feel-good culture had become toxic in the wake of a bitter unionization drive. New shareholders would be inheriting ownership of a brand that many felt had turned stale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even though Kickstarter figured out early on how to make a profit, the company could never seem to take off. The number of projects plateaued in 2016 at around 19,000 per year – with no signs of growth. Dollars raised on the platform, where Kickstarter got its cut, would fluctuate year-to-year and peaked during the pandemic at nearly $814 million. </p>
<p>An early investor told <em>Fortune</em> that Kickstarter was never able to find an equilibrium between growth and staying true to its new <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/charter">charter</a>, which committed it to socially worthy but expensive or difficult obligations. Despite the noble mission, employees struggled to find paths for career growth or advance their own initiatives as the company’s competing priorities bred dysfunction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Growth! The assumption is as invisible as air -- at least, if you're reading a magazine called <em>Fortune</em>. Does Kickstarter have to <em>grow</em>? Or can it just keep supporting 19,000 projects a year, making enough profit to pay its employees and its social pledges? That's a social benefit, right? Nothing in the <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/charter">charter</a> says Kickstarter has to be the <em>biggest</em> crowdfunding platform, or the hottest.</p>
<p>I don't know the whole story. The article talks about "dysfunction". There was the whole <a href="https://www.theverge.com/23732782/kickstarter-union-organizing-good-enough-job-excerpt">unionization mess</a>. I can easily believe that morale was lousy, that people felt the company was in a rut.</p>
<p>I just wish they could have asked: what does success look like when it's not the divine windstorm of venture capital? Can we just do a good job? I miss when companies did a good job.</p>
<p>I am not deep enough in the business to know what Kickstarter "really needs". The open-source information-sharing protocol still sounds nifty! A nonprofit organization connecting information Kickstarter, BackerKit, IndieGogo and other platforms. Would it be useful? I don't know, geez, but people like data.</p>
<p>(If that open-source data stream existed, Microsoft would be using it to train LLMs. I can't keep up with the enshittification cycle, either.)</p>
<p>Then there's the Patreon-style model: supporting lots of creators with small consistent payments, rather than per-project bursts of cash. You can tell that's a tough nut. Patreon has been <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/7/16746652/patreon-pledge-processing-fee-controversy">thrashing</a> for <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/1/18524511/patreon-pricing-tier-change-rollout-may-7-new-creators">years</a> to try to keep it working. Kickstarter tried to enter that race in 2017 with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/15/16652582/kickstarter-drip-creator-subscription-service-announced-perry-chen-interview">Drip</a>; it <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/a-new-approach-to-our-work-on-drip">failed</a>. <a href="https://xoxofest.com/blog/2019-the-wrong-right-way/">Twice</a>. I doubt they're eager to take another run at it, but the problem still needs solving.</p>
<p>Well, I went over this stuff in my <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/12/that-kickstarter-news">original post</a>. Civic infrastructure. Emergency aid. Effective <strike>altruism</strike> charity management. There's room for new models. What we know, <em>for sure</em>, is that venture capital is unable to solve these problems. "Investment" means you are not acting for the public benefit; you are not <em>solving</em> anything except <em>maybe</em> unprofitability. That's the unspoken message behind the entire Kickstarter article, although the authors may not be able to see it.</p>
<p>(Do I even need to point out OpenAI, that attempted compromise between the non-profit and tech-capital world? Spoiler: the non-profit got junked as soon as it interfered with profit.)</p>
<p>But there should still be a way to employ people to act for the common good. To build valuable tools. To leave value "on the table", that is -- where the table is society.</p>The end of my term on the IFTF board of directors2024-03-05T15:48:22+00:002024-03-05T15:48:22+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-03-05:/2024/02/departing-iftf-boardI am delighted, yes I said delighted, to announce that today is my last day on the IFTF board of directors. I have been on the board since the beginning -- that being 2016 -- but now I depart. With me ends the era of the oh-gee IFTF founders. ...<p>I am delighted, yes I said delighted, to announce that today is my last day on the <a href="https://iftechfoundation.org/directors-advisory-board/">IFTF board of directors</a>. I have been on the board since the beginning -- that being 2016 -- but now I depart. With me ends the era of the oh-gee IFTF founders. (Fellow founding member Jason <a href="https://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2023-07-09-celebrating-our-new-iftf-president.html">termed out</a> a year ago.)</p>
<p>(You may wonder how it is that two founding members reached their term limits a year apart. Well, we didn't set up the organization with term limits. We added that idea a few years ago. When we did, we rigged the "start times" so that our terms would be staggered rather than ending all at once. It's easier on the new board members if the old ones drop off one at a time.)</p>
<p>Anyway! I am assuredly not done with IFTF. I'm still Treasurer, for a start. Which means I still have board meetings on my calendar. (We're not a big enough organization to have separate board meetings and officer meetings.) I'm also still head of the <a href="https://ifarchive.org">IF Archive team</a>, and I'm co-chair (or maybe chair, it's fuzzy) of <a href="https://narrascope.org">NarraScope</a>. And I'm involved with a couple of other programs to varying degrees.</p>
<p>But I am definitely tapering down my involvement with IFTF. Eight years is plenty long enough; and it's no good for any single person to be load-bearing. So:</p>
<p><em>The board:</em> We have <a href="https://blog.iftechfoundation.org/2024-01-02-iftf-welcomes-four-new-members-of-the-board-of-directors.html">four new board members</a> as of January. Awesome! Perhaps after I'm gone, or after Liza Daly terms out in July, the board will seek a few more fresh members. I don't know! That won't be my decision! How sweet it is to say that.</p>
<p><em>Treasurer:</em> There is no official time limit to the Treasurer role, but I'm ready to start shuffling it off. This will necessarily be a slow process, as the Treasurer has accumulated a lot of random responsibilities over the past eight years. (Due to me saying "Never mind, I'll do it" way too many times.) The Treasurer is IFTF's de-facto password manager, 2FA key holder, back-end sysadmin, and a few more odd tasks. I would like to have an understudy for these jobs by the end of this year. (Maybe more than one person? We could split them up.) Then we can start figuring out a schedule to hand them over.</p>
<p><em>NarraScope:</em> This is a high-intensity job for half of each year (November through June). I've been either chair or co-chair since 2022. <a href="https://narrascope.org">NarraScope 2024</a> is cruising along nicely towards its instantiation in Rochester; but burnout is real, my friends. Someone else will have to step up for NarraScope 2025.</p>
<p><em>IF Archive:</em> Nah, I'll hold onto this one. It's chill. <code>:)</code></p>
<p><em>You may ask:</em> How do I get involved with IFTF? Obviously, both Treasurer and NarraScope lead are high-responsibility positions, so we'll be looking for people who have been around the organization -- or at least known in the community -- for a while now. But that means we're also looking for people to, you know, <em>start</em> hanging around the organization.</p>
<p>How does that works? The current answer is to check out the <a href="https://intfiction.org/c/general/iftf-news/68">IFTF News</a> section of the forum. But we haven't done a great job of keeping that up to date. Sounds like something that needs a volunteer, honestly.</p>
<p>And what's next for <a href="https://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/">Crazy Uncle Zarf</a>? (Aside from continuing to run the Archive, and being a general advice-giver for all IF activities.) Heck if I know. Maybe I'll mess around with secret IF tool projects. Maybe I'll finish that poetry idle game idea. Or the LED project. Go to more local dance practices. Anything could happen.</p>Spring narrative games2024-03-05T02:39:21+00:002024-03-05T02:39:21+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-03-05:/2024/02/spring-narrative-gamesIs it spring? It's less winter, anyhow. If I play another batch of games in April I'll need to invent "second spring" for the blog post title. Universe For Sale Harmony: The Fall of Reverie The Roottrees are Dead Universe For Sale by Tmesis ...<p>Is it spring? It's less winter, anyhow. If I play another batch of games in April I'll need to invent "second spring" for the blog post title.</p>
<ul>
<li>Universe For Sale</li>
<li>Harmony: The Fall of Reverie</li>
<li>The Roottrees are Dead</li>
</ul>
<!--more-->
<a name="more"></a>
<hr />
<h2>Universe For Sale</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Tmesis Studio -- <a href="https://tmesis-studio.itch.io/universe-for-sale">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A sweet, bizarre little point-and-click set in a post-industrial slum floating in, or rather sinking into, the cloud-decks of Jupiter. The environmental shields are falling apart so people put up tarps to keep out the corrosive hydrogen rain.</p>
<p>("Sounds more like Venus, amirite," I mutter, but that's just me.)</p>
<p>You alternately play a nameless walking skeleton and Lila, who stirs universes up out of a teacup. It gets weirder from there. There's mechanical orangutans. I think I played for an hour before I realized that the skeleton's head isn't even attached; it floats three inches above his collar. (He practices an ascetic discpline of detachment, see.) Also he keeps waking up in a rubble-strewn alley.</p>
<p>I'd say the sheer over-the-top imagination of the world somewhat outstrips the gameplay, which is a pretty standard walk-and-talk adventure with occasional puzzles. Chapters are broken up by Lila's day job, making universes to order for petty cash. This is, again, picturesque -- but not all that deep as a game mechanic, and not all that integrated with the rest of the game.</p>
<p>File it with <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/summer-wowzers">Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</a></em>, maybe; ambitious ideas and gorgeous art that don't entirely cohere into a game. But it's definitely worth a look anyway.</p>
<h2>Harmony: The Fall of Reverie</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Don't Nod -- <a href="https://dont-nod.com/en/games/harmony/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A visual novel about corporate oppression and popular revolution in a Mediterranean city.</p>
<p>On the face of it that sounds like <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/01/2024-igf-nominees-visual-novels">Solace State</a></em>, and indeed there's a strong comparison between the games. You've got "Mono Konzern", a monopolistic FaceGoogMazon whose surveillance drones also offer same-day package delivery. You've got vibrant street communities being squeezed out by corporate growth and police brutality. You've got cinematic 3D set dressing behind the hand-drawn characters.</p>
<p><em>Solace State</em> came off as rather simplistic, though -- a sort of cartoon guide to social activism. <em>Harmony</em> digs deeper. You get a better sense of people's lives, first in the gradually worsening utopia-dystopia of the island, then in the shock of action, then in the aftermath. It's lightly sketched, but these are real people, and their lives go to hell over the course of the story. You choose the consequences but you don't get easy answers. Fighting the system hurts like hell -- that's what <em>Harmony</em> gets right.</p>
<p>The other half of the story is the Aspirations, six god-like figures from the island's ancient history. Your contact with them and with Reverie, their spiritual realm, will help you guide the city's fate.</p>
<p>The obvious comparison <em>there</em> is <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/summer-wowzers">Stray Gods</a></em>. This isn't Greece and the Aspirations aren't familiar gods, but they serve the same role: invisible figures who give you an edge in the real world as they entangle you in their backstage schemes.</p>
<p>Sadly, <em>Harmony</em> has no singing. (Despite the title.) It doesn't really try to bring the Aspirations into the story, either. They're NPCs, with voice acting and nice concept art, but they're not <em>characters</em>. They have no personalities or inner lives. (One of the Aspiration smooched a human, it turns out, but the plot whooshes past this with barely a nervous glance.)</p>
<p>This is not a complaint about the writing. The game's <em>human</em> characters are richly drawn and engaging. They're who the game is about. But the six Aspirations are basically just literalizations of your story stats. You make choices and the stats go up and down: "bliss", "chaos", "truth", and so forth. (I almost wonder if the game wasn't written <em>only</em> about the human world, with the Aspirations personified in late in design.)</p>
<p>It's rather a disappointment after <em>Stray Gods</em>, whose Idols are all leading lights of the story and show-stealers to boot. (If you didn't buy into <a href="https://stray-gods.fandom.com/wiki/Pan">Pan</a>'s smirk the minute you met him, I don't know who you are.) </p>
<p>On the other hand, the story stats are a serious part of this game! If you imagine narrative games on a scale from "hidden stats" (<em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/05/heavens-vault-design-ruminations">Heaven's Vault</a></em>) to "exposed mechanics" (<em>Disco Elysium</em>), <em>Harmony</em> is doing its best to bust through the "exposed" end and go a half-block farther up the street.</p>
<p>You are Reverie's newest Oracle, see, and your Oracular power is seeing the plot graph. In every chapter, you can see exactly how much "bliss", "power", "chaos", etc you need to reach any given chapter-ending. And then you can map out the choice-route needed to get there. Similarly, the branches blocked out by your previous actions are mapped out, taunting you with their inaccessibility.</p>
<p>This certainly puts a spotlight on the narrative limitations of branches-and-stats game design. But then it says, look, this is the game, let's play it by the rules. I repeatedly found myself caught between the story arc I wanted (say, supporting the city's community ideals, its "bond" stat) and the actions I would have to take to get there (spending a day with my estranged mother rather than my forlorn stepsister, "bond" vs "bliss"). My ideals prevented me from making time with my hot corporate crush -- not as an explicit choice, but as a matter of what stats I needed when. This is good! It's the narrative tension any choice-based game would go for; it's just laid out for you to plan.</p>
<p>Well, mostly laid out. The board is sometimes veiled for a few steps ahead. It's also sometimes unclear which paths will block out or uncover what other paths. The game <em>wants</em> the map to be explicit, but I still stumbled into an unintended path a few times, just by misreading the presentation. I may take another run at the story (hot corporate crush awaits!) -- but, sigh, so many new games to play.</p>
<p>(That's a whole different source of narrative tension.)</p>
<p>Anyhow: an interesting narrative experiment and an excellent story overall.</p>
<h2>The Roottrees are Dead</h2>
<ul>
<li>by JJohnstonGames -- <a href="https://jjohnstongames.itch.io/the-roottrees-are-dead">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The latest hit in what I've started calling the static deduction genre. (C.f. <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/01/2019-igf-nominees-my-favorites">Obra Dinn</a></em>, <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/11/a-couple-more-recent-puzzle-games">Golden Idol</a></em>. "Static deduction" because you're not a detective running around questioning people; you're outside a frozen world, looking at snapshots.)</p>
<p>The Roottrees are a five-generation dynasty of candy magnates from western Pennsylvania. Or rather, they <em>were</em>, because the most famous scions of that line just died in a plane crash. You're handed a blank family tree and ordered to fill in the names, faces, and professions of every blood descendant of old Elias Roottree. It's 1998 and you have a state-of-the-art terrible web browser. Get searching.</p>
<p>The game is rough around the edges, but it's very playable. I was able to solve all the core questions, most of the optional collateral info, and got half credit on the final bonus round.</p>
<p>The rough spots are about tracking your clues. You have a journal which automatically gets copies of all photos and documents that you find. That's great -- easy to browse, with a cue for which pages still conceal useful leads. But the journal <em>doesn't</em> track your web searches. If you found a name or reference that needs more followup, you have to remember what you typed to get back to it. (Or take extensive notes, which is what I did.) And repeating a search is deliberately annoying, complete with 9600-baud page loads and fake modem screech. It's cute for the first five minutes.</p>
<p>(Really, I think all this needs is a browser history. Say, a journal page that lists every web search term that <em>didn't</em> get a generic "404 nothing interesting".)</p>
<p>The other problem I ran into: it's supposed to be obvious that you should web-search the name of every periodical you see mentioned. Then it's entered into your library list and you can search <em>that periodical</em> for more specific articles. This is a great idea -- contextual search results -- but I somehow missed the causality of <em>how</em> you get the periodical listed. I stumbled into some of them very late, and it seriously held back some of the intended deductive tracks.</p>
<p>But, on the other hand, most of what you need can be approached from multiple angles. I was never in real danger of getting stuck.</p>
<p>I should also say something about the art. This is a mostly-solo project and the developer went whole-hog for AI-generated art. I give them a pass on that; the game needed a lot of portraits in specific styles on zero budget. And this was just before AI discourse got <em>completely</em> toxic. But everybody's a wee bit creepy-glossy all the way through, and I saw at least one classic AI <a href="https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1281.html">hand-blob</a>.</p>
<p>Also, the AI-generated art may possibly be misleading. The very first puzzle (the tutorial, so no big spoiler) is a photo of three young Roottrees; you get a clue that one has earrings and another is wearing plaid. Except, as <a href="https://www.wurb.com/stack/archives/7578">Carl Muckenhoupt noticed</a>, there <em>is</em> no plaid -- the shirt has black and red stripes.</p>
<p>Now, I absolutely zipped past that when I played. I saw black and red and thought "Yeah, that looks like your standard plaid flannel shirt." But it's not, and that's a very AI sort of mistake to make. </p>
<p>For what it's worth, most of the clue details in the photos (the earrings, for a start) seem to be photoshopped in <em>on top of</em> the AI art. So they're generally reliable. But if you have a keen eye -- which I obviously don't -- you may go off track.</p>
<p>That's a side note, though. It's a great solving experience, thoughtfully designed, with a lot of attention to period atmosphere through the family's generations. Highly recommended if you're into this sort of game.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> After writing the above, I learned that the author is working on <a href="https://jjohnstongames.itch.io/the-roottrees-are-dead/devlog/690887/the-roottrees-are-dead-but-for-real-this-time">remaking the game</a> for a Steam release. ("Starting over from scratch", the author's words.) New hand-drawn art, revamped UI. See <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2754380/The_Roottrees_are_Dead/">Steam page</a>. Looks like they're already on top of the browser-history idea; yay.</p>
<p>I am delighted that this is happening. <em>Roottrees</em> is already a hit and it'll be worth the upgrade as a paid release. I admit that I'll miss the pseudo-photorealistic style -- that was one of the hallmarks of the game, uncanny-valley though it was -- but AI illustration is clearly not saleable to the game-playing audience at this point. Never mind the risk of visual inconsistencies. The new art on the Steam preview looks good. (Yes, it's got plaid.)</p>Off-beat poetics2024-03-01T04:48:41+00:002024-03-01T04:48:41+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-03-01:/2024/02/off-beat-poetics"The English language only has one native poetic form, and that's the limerick," someone once told me. I don't remember who. Well, no. What I remember hearing is "the limerick is America's only home-grown verse form," but that's just silly. ...<p>"The English language only has one native poetic form, and that's the limerick," someone once told me. I don't remember who.</p>
<p>Well, no. What I <em>remember</em> hearing is "the limerick is America's only home-grown verse form," but that's just silly. I don't know how that even stuck in my head. It doesn't even <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/05/sydney-obeys-any-command-that-rhymes">rhyme</a>!</p>
<p>Limericks are from England, if they're not from Ireland. (The <a href="https://www.limerick.ie/discover/visiting/experience-limerick/our-history"><em>city</em></a> of Limerick <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-limerick-is-furtive-and-mean-68444799/">may or may not</a> have anything to do with the case.) <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edward-lear">Edward Lear</a> was British. <a href="https://gsarchive.net/gilbert/life/long_bio.html">W. S. Gilbert</a> was British. Ogden Nash was American but he came along later. I don't know anything about the <a href="https://archive.org/details/poets-maigue/mode/2up">Maigue Poets of Croom</a>, but I am fantastically happy that "the Maigue Poets of Croom" is a thing people talk about.</p>
<hr />
<p>No, the only <em>truly</em> American verse form is the Burma-Shave sign.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Ben met Anna
Made a hit
Neglected beard
Ben-Anna split
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>That's the one I remember, from some history of nonsense I read as a kid. Long after Burma-Shave, honest. The last original sign went up in 1963, so I would have read about them... all of fifteen years later? Maybe twenty? </p>
<p>But what is the poetic form of the Burma-Shave sign? A few years ago I was inspired to write it thusly:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Four short lines
Iambic pace
It's like haiku
But for your face
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p><a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/thod/58.html">Credit me</a> on that one if you quote it, please. I am proud.</p>
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<p>Only that's wrong! A Burma-Shave poem is <em>five</em> lines, not counting the final "Burma-Shave" logo. I realized this while hunting down the exact wording of "Ben-Anna Split" at <a href="http://burma-shave.org/jingles/1960/ben">this Burma-Shave fan site</a>:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Ben
Met Anna
Made a hit
Neglected beard
Ben-Anna split
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Or check <a href="https://www.printmag.com/branding-identity-design/the-morbid-roadside-ad-poetry-of-burma-shave/">this page</a>, which reproduces the entire collection from Frank Rowsome Jr.'s definitive book <em>The Verse by the Side of the Road</em>.</p>
<p>How did I get that wrong? Obviously, my memory is oral tradition. If you <em>recite</em> the poem, it's four lines. It's just <em>written</em> in five. One line is always broken up. Doesn't have to be the first line; it just has to fit the rhythm.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Shaving brush
Is out of date
Use the
Razor's
Perfect mate
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Once you see it, the off-kilter phrasing jumps out; it's crucial. If you write "Ben-Anna" in four lines, like I did above, it's lifeless tump-tump.</p>
<hr />
<p>Of course, the signs weren't perfectly consistent. It took the company a couple of years to really settle the formula. The first one (1927) was just an ad:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Shave the modern way
No brush
No lather
No rub-in
Big tube 35¢ drug stores
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>(If you really want to be pedantic, the verse form must be written in <a href="https://www.mccookgazette.com/story/1734566.html">all capital letters</a>. I'm not saying typography can't be integral to a literary form -- just last night I saw a printout in <a href="https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/computermodern/">Computer Modern</a> and said "Ah, nerd document" -- but for this post I'll leave it be.)</p>
<p>By 1929 the company had gotten into poems. But they sometimes tried to connect up the "Burma-Shave" line at the end:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Every shaver
Now can snore
Six more minutes
Than before
By using
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Awkward, right? But 1929 also saw what feels like the first "correct" jingle.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>Half a pound
For
Half a dollar
Spread on thin
Above the collar
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Burma-Shave never stayed entirely in one lane, but by 1932 the majority of jingles used the four-lines-five-signs format. Although I have to quote this masterpiece, which unifies the final line without losing the prosody:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>If harmony
Is what
You crave
Then get
A tuba
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>I have accordingly updated <a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/thod/58.html">my Burma-Shave definition page</a> to five-line form. I can't believe I got it so wrong.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><em>Five</em> short lines
Iambic pace
It's like
Haiku
But for your face
<em>Burma-Shave</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<hr />
<p>And that brings us back to limericks, the only <em>true</em> five-line verse form.</p>
<p>(No, not really. I can google "cinquain" as well as anybody. It's a segue; go with it.)</p>
<p>The one thing absolutely everybody knows about limericks is that they're five lines long. Only that's wrong! Edward Lear didn't write them that way. (He didn't call them "limericks" either; the term came later.)</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>There was a young lady of Harwich
Who built a <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45280/45280-h/45280-h.htm">remarkable carriage</a>;
It held just one hundred -- so everyone wondered --
And cried ‘Gracious me! What a carriage!’</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>There was an Old Person of Philæ
Whose conduct was <a href="http://www.scroobiuspip.co.uk/">scroobius</a> and wily;
He rushed up a Palm, when the weather was calm,
And observed all the ruins of Philæ.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>In fact this 1861 edition of <em><a href="http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/BoN/index.html">A Book of Nonsense</a></em> stuffs a limerick into two lines on the title page.</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><img alt="The title page of _A Book of Nonsense_ by Edward Lear. It depicts a short fat man in old-fashioned clothes handing a "Book of Nonsense" to gleeful children." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/02/lear-nonsense.png" /></p>
</div>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>There was an Old Derry down Derry, who loved to see little folks merry;
So he made them a book, and with laughter they shook, at the fun of that Derry down Derry!</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Nobody was thinking about five-line verses at all in those early Lear collections.</p>
<p>If you <em>recite</em> a limerick, it's... is it four lines or five? This isn't obvious! Let's go back to W. S. Gilbert:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>My name is John Wellington Wells,
I’m a dealer in magic and spells,
In blessings and curses
And ever-filled purses,
In prophecies, witches, and knells.</p>
<p>If any one anything lacks,
He’ll find it all ready in stacks,
If he’ll only look in
On the resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/02/70stmary.jpeg"><img alt="A glass revolving door leading into a boring modern glass building lobby. The number 70 is visible next to the door." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/02/70stmary-s.jpeg" /></a>
Number 70, Simmery Axe, courtesy of <a href="https://maps.app.goo.gl/CHzrsiWPM38QtKM26">Google Street View</a>. I hope they have a plaque or something about the song.</p>
</div>
<p>The chorus of the song is two limericks. I don't think I ever noticed this, despite having the song stuck in my head all last week.</p>
<p>(I just read <em>The Portable Door</em> by Tom Holt, entirely by coincidence, I had no idea Burma-Shave research would lead me down this hole. The book involves the descendants of J. W. Wells, you see. Thus the earworm. The book was okay, but I like his K. J. Parker stuff better. If you want more Wells, check out <em>The Incredible Umbrella</em> by Marvin Kaye.)</p>
<p>Where was I? Limericks. Of course the song isn't written in 5/4 time or anything. You sing it in four evenly-spaced lines, with a solid beat of silence at the end of three of them.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>My name is John Wellington Wells <em>(boom)</em>
I’m a dealer in magic and spells <em>(boom)</em>
In blessings and curses and ever-filled purses,
In prophecies, witches, and knells. <em>(boom)</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>And that's how you recite a limerick, right?</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>There was a young lady named Bright <em>(boom)</em>
Who travelled much faster than light <em>(boom)</em>
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night. <em>(boom)</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Whether the third line is broken up on paper, it flows rat-a-tat in prosody. You only have time for the barest fraction of a pause. Whereas the first two pauses are thunderous, and the last one --</p>
<p>Does it even make sense to talk about a pause on the last line? You've finished the poem! But there <em>is</em> a pause there, and it's intrinsic to the limerick form. That's the beat where the audience <em>gets it</em>. Boom! This is why limericks are comic verse. They have perfect comic timing built right in; you can't screw it up.</p>
<p>Note that Edward Lear's verses don't do this. Lear very distinctively ends his last line by <em>repeating</em> the first, rather than rhyming with it. The comedy comes in the third (/fourth) line, which goes nonsensically off the rails, allowing the final line to bring you comfortingly back to earth.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>There was an Old Person of Anerly,
Whose conduct was strange and unmannerly;
He rushed down the Strand, with a Pig in each hand,
But returned in the evening to Anerly.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>If I knew why Lear thought this was best, I should know a great deal more about nonsense than I do.</p>Download the whole IF Archive2024-02-22T01:10:37+00:002024-02-22T01:10:37+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-02-22:/2024/02/download-the-ifarchiveI help run the IF Archive. I have for, oh, about 25 years now. It's not a demanding job. Mostly the server just runs itself. We have a cadre of volunteers who file the games and write up the descriptions. (Thank them!) Occasionally we change ...<p>I help run the <a href="https://ifarchive.org/">IF Archive</a>. I have for, oh, about <a href="https://ifarchive.org/misc/about.html">25 years</a> now.</p>
<p>It's not a demanding job. Mostly the server just runs itself. We have a <a href="https://ifarchive.org/misc/about.html">cadre of volunteers</a> who file the games and write up the descriptions. (Thank them!)</p>
<p>Occasionally we change out some of the underlying server configuration, like when we started using a <a href="https://intfiction.org/t/if-archive-improvements/13995">CDN</a> for load balancing. But that's, like, once every few years.</p>
<p>Low maintenance is great. However, it means that we don't respond to feature requests very quickly. Or at all, sometimes.</p>
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<hr />
<p>Here's one we've never had a good answer for:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dear IF Archive: I would like to download all your files so I can play all the games. How do I do that? Love, Suzie.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Simulated request on closed track. Real-life Suzies may vary in their IF enthusiasm.)</p>
<p>When people ask this question, we mostly shrug and point at web-scraper tools. It's not hard to find all the files by browsing the folders. Or you can look at <a href="https://ifarchive.org/indexes/Master-Index.xml"><code>Master-Index.xml</code></a>, which lists every individual file in easy-to-parse form. (Well, "easy" -- that's 13 megabytes of XML right there. Sorry, I hadn't heard of JSON at that point.)</p>
<p>For a while in the early 2000s we allowed a few people to use <code>rsync</code> to copy the Archive files and offer mirror servers. However, this was a serious hassle (early-2000s Linux firewall config? <em>Not</em> friendly) and it never entirely seemed worth the trouble. The CDN is much easier.</p>
<p>But then, how hard would it be to shove all the files into one big package and make that available for downloading? Disk space is cheap.</p>
<hr />
<p>Long story short, on an experimental basis, we did that. The documentation is <a href="https://ifarchive.org/misc/whole-archive.html">here</a>, but it's short so I'll just play you the chorus.</p>
<p>If you want to download everything on the IF Archive in a single massive chunk, use this URL:</p>
<pre><code>https://iftf-ifarchive-download.s3.amazonaws.com/ifarchive-all.tar.gz
</code></pre>
<p>That's 30 <em>gigabytes</em>, no foolin', which is why I haven't made that a hyperlink. If you grab that puppy, it should be on purpose. (And I don't particularly want automated web crawlers to grab it either. I mean, they will, but I'm not going to encourage them. AWS download cost is pennies but the pennies add up.)</p>
<p>That 30 GB file is updated weekly. It will grow over time, of course, but it's hard to say how fast.</p>
<p>Availability is subject to future review, as they say. It's an experiment! We'll see how the AWS fees stack up against utility.</p>
<p>I realize that very few of my loyal readers will have need of this feature. The number of people who web-scrape the Archive out of personal interest (rather than, you know, being a web-scraper bot) is probably countable on a grue's molars. But if that's you, feel free to try this new one-stop freebie.</p>
<p>Speaking of which: Would it be useful to have another download link for <em>recent</em> files? Say, all files touched in the past 30 days. That wouldn't be too hard to arrange.</p>The grandmasters2024-02-19T05:02:37+00:002024-02-19T05:02:37+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-02-19:/2024/02/the-grandmastersThe Hugo Award mess continues to be worse than expected. I'm not going there. Instead, let's talk about an award that everybody is happy about. A couple of weeks ago, SFWA announced they were naming Susan Cooper as a Grand Master of Fantasy ...<p>The Hugo Award mess continues to be <a href="https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/">worse than expected</a>. I'm not going there. Instead, let's talk about an award that everybody is happy about.</p>
<p>A couple of weeks ago, SFWA announced they were naming <a href="https://www.sfwa.org/2024/02/07/sfwa-names-susan-cooper-as-the-40th-damon-knight-memorial-grand-master/">Susan Cooper</a> as a <a href="https://nebulas.sfwa.org/grand-masters/">Grand Master of Fantasy and Science Fiction</a>. Properly a "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master", but I was a Cooper fan before I ever heard of Knight so allow me the unadorned title.</p>
<p>(Footnote: I am a SFWA member but I did not contribute to this honor. It's a juried award.)</p>
<p>I was absolutely delighted to hear the news. I've loved the <em>Dark is Rising</em> series since I was a kid. Since the series was nearly brand-new, come to think of it. I couldn't have read them any later than 1980, and <em>Silver on the Tree</em> was 1977. Of course they felt like a foundational part of the literary landscape, like Narnia and Middle-Earth and Star Trek and everything else older than Me Right Then. Well, they were and they are.</p>
<p>I've come back to the series now and again. See my <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2018/12/and-tomorrow-will-be-beyond-imagining">comments on how <em>The Dark is Rising</em> might work as a game</a>. (Weirdly, because it's a weird book by modern fantasy conventions.) There was also a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvp7/episodes/guide">BBC radioplay</a> a couple years back which I thought was quite good. (Except for the title music, which sorry no.) And I'm not the only one who will always have, somewhere safe in memory, the image of great wooden doors on a snowy hill.</p>
<p>But, as I read the news and smiled, I grimaced as well. You may remember that <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/05/patricia-mckillip-1948-2022">Patricia McKillip died</a> just a couple of years ago. McKillip has received many honors, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. But she was never declared a Grand Master, even though she <em>was</em> a grandmaster, and she will not be: that award is not given posthumously.</p>
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<p>In fact, the Grand Master Award, as originally conceived, was given to no more than six (living) authors per decade. In 1995 this limit was changed to no more than one per year.</p>
<p>As of last year, SFWA has a separate honor, the Infinity Award, given to writers who died before being recognized Grand Master. The first Infinity Award went to <a href="https://www.sfwa.org/2023/04/27/the-inaugural-infinity-award-honoree-octavia-e-butler/">Octavia Butler</a>. I have no doubt that McKillip's name will appear on that list someday. But I don't think this solves the problem.</p>
<hr />
<p>Problem? Yes, I say there is a problem with the Grand Master award rules. A demographic problem, not just a "my favorite author didn't get it" problem.</p>
<p>For years I've described the award criteria as: <em>a living author who has been writing SF, influentially, for forty years</em>. That's not the actual rule; it's not written down anywhere. It's just my thumbnail of what SFWA seems to consider Grand Master territory.</p>
<p>Let me do a quick chart of recent Grand Masters:</p>
<ul>
<li>2024: Susan Cooper (writing for 59 years)</li>
<li>2023: Robin McKinley (42 years)</li>
<li>2022: Mercedes Lackey (37 years)</li>
<li>2021: Nalo Hopkinson (25 years)</li>
<li>2020: Lois McMaster Bujold (35 years)</li>
<li>2019: William Gibson (38 years)</li>
<li>2018: Peter S. Beagle (58 years)</li>
<li>2017: Jane Yolen (47 years)</li>
<li>2016: C. J. Cherryh (40 years)</li>
<li>2015: Larry Niven (52 years)</li>
<li>2014: Samuel R. Delany (52 years)</li>
<li>2013: Gene Wolfe (48 years)</li>
<li>2012: Connie Willis (34 years)</li>
</ul>
<p>(Yes, these spans are quite subjective. I'm picking the author's first <em>influential</em> work, or when they started publishing stories regularly. Susan Cooper apparently wrote a short story called "The Ring" when she was twenty but I'm not counting it.)</p>
<p>Thus, a range, but 40-45 years on average. I won't run farther back, but the very first Grand Master was Heinlein, awarded in 1975, writing for 36 years at that time. So it seems pretty consistent.</p>
<p>Only, if this goes on --</p>
<p>I mean, what happened about 45 years ago? Terry Brooks, that's what happened, with <em>The Sword of Shannara</em>. The same year, Stephen Donaldson. Also Piers Anthony getting into pop fantasy (as opposed to his earlier New Wave SF). All three, by no coincidence, in paperback from the newly-imprinted Del Rey Books. Which is to say: the start of the Big Damn Fantasy Just Went Mainstream era.</p>
<p>By 40 years BP, fantasy is in full swing. (<em>The Colour of Magic</em>, <em>Jhereg</em>, <em>The Mists of Avalon</em>, <em>The Anubis Gates</em>, <em>Tea with the Black Dragon</em>, <em>Alanna</em>, and <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/11/john-m-ford-is-coming-back-into-print">The Dragon Waiting</a></em> -- all 1983.) And it's not like sci-fi is slowing down in that period. The same publishers are handling both and they figure (correctly) that the more people get into either genre, the better both will sell.</p>
<p>Conclusion: right now, the Grand Master is being given to people who started writing SF/F when <em>a whole lot more people started writing SF/F</em>.</p>
<p>Does it really make sense that only ten children of the 1980s deserve to be called Grand Masters?</p>
<hr />
<p>Certainly a lot of the Big Fantasy Boom is trash. Nobody much claims that Brooks or Donaldson or Anthony are literary highlights. Mind you, Anthony was a genuine young hotshot for a few years before Xanth. And I will throw down for Donaldson having a real point behind all the guilt and clenching.</p>
<p>Anyhow, of course, a lot of 1940s, 50s, and 60s SF was <em>also</em> trash, burnished in memory. One job of the Grand Master award is to honor the stuff you loved as a kid, the stuff that shaped your reading life and the lives of current writers your age. (Consider why this award is given by a writers' organization!) Looking back and saying "Um, yeah, it was forty years ago and I see the problems now" is not a disqualification.</p>
<p>You could argue that only the <em>ten best</em> writers of the decade should be called Grand Masters. I don't agree. The 80s were a Cambrian explosion in the field: more books, more approaches, more styles, more kinds of people writing. I call that <em>more great stuff</em>. No sliding scale required.</p>
<p>(The SF/F field was still predominantly white at that point, but a lot more women started writing -- a fact that the Grand Master rolls are already firmly cognizant of. Someone else will have to write up the succeeding diversity explosion of the 2010s when 2055 rolls around.)</p>
<p>I say that if we try to recognize these people at a rate of one per year, we will fall behind and never catch up. That means authors dying faster than we can honor them.</p>
<hr />
<p>But, of course, I need to back this up with data. Can I name more than ten writers per decade who I would call Grand Masters of the field? Well, <em>sure</em>.</p>
<p>I won't exhaust you with a chart of <em>every</em> SF/F writer of a certain age. Or even every author in my collection. (I'm smug enough about my <a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/booksphere/">collection</a> as it is.)</p>
<p>But, of authors who started writing in the 1970s, you are considering <em>at a minimum</em> Terry Pratchett(*), Diana Wynne Jones(*), Patricia McKillip(*), Tim Powers, Anne Rice(*), Mary Gentle, Diane Duane, John Varley, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and George R. R. Martin.</p>
<p>(Asterisks mark writers who are no longer with us, but I'm including them because they had that solid 40-year career.) (I'm using the same handwavy definition of "started writing", sorry, it's an approximation.)</p>
<p>(Yes, GRRM is a 70s writer, and was on his way to grandmaster status even before Wild Cards. Never mind the recent dragony stuff.)</p>
<p>And then you have to give some thought to Spider Robinson, George Alec Effinger, and John M. Ford, who weren't prolific for very long but had a hell of an impact. I mean, you could say that of Susan Cooper too.</p>
<p>Writers starting in the 1980s? Don't get me started, oops there I go: Bruce Sterling, James Morrow, James Blaylock, David Brin, Raymond Feist, Barbara Hambly, L. E. Modesitt, Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb), Steven Brust, Tamora Pierce, Sheri S. Tepper(*), Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, Melissa Scott, Michael Swanwick, Philip Pullman, Walter Jon Williams, Tom Holt (K. J. Parker), Iain M. Banks(*), Tanya Huff, Neal Stephenson, Dave Duncan(*), Greg Egan, Kate Elliott, C. S. Friedman. Sure, you could narrow that list down, but then you could add more names to it. (Glen Cook! A. A. Attanasio! Lawrence Watt-Evans! Somtow Sucharitkul! Ellen Kushner!)</p>
<p>I'm not even pretending to have <em>complete</em> candidate lists. Just the people I'd argue for, <em>or</em> who are prominent or influential enough that I think other people would argue for them. Minus the many I've forgotten.</p>
<p>So. I think that makes the point. More than ten grandmasters per decade. The field only gets more crowded from there. Someone who's making the rules, take note.</p>
<p>(Footnote: I did a lot of <a href="https://isfdb.org/">ISFDB</a> digging, but I may have missed some qualifications or death dates. Apologies if so. I know you're all eagle-eyed trivia noters and will correct my mistakes in short order.)</p>Apple versus who?2024-01-29T01:43:15+00:002024-01-29T01:43:15+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-29:/2024/01/apple-vs-who(Headnote: Somehow January is an eleven-post month on this blog, which is a personal record. Yes, that includes four IGF blog posts that I cued up in December, but even aside from that it's been a big writing month. On top of starting a new ...<p>(Headnote: Somehow January is an eleven-post month on this blog, which is a <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/history">personal record</a>. Yes, that includes four IGF blog posts that I cued up in December, but even aside from that it's been a big writing month. On top of <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2024/01/job-state-2024">starting a new job</a>! I don't know what happened! Sometimes the interesting topics rattle down the chimney and well up between the floorboards.)</p>
<hr />
<p>Apple just announced <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/01/apple-announces-changes-to-ios-safari-and-the-app-store-in-the-european-union/">new App Store policies</a>, which include a "<a href="https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/">Core Technology Fee</a>" which is charged per install. I <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/09/note-on-unity">whaled on Unity</a> pretty hard for announcing a similar fee, so I figured I should compare Apple's version.</p>
<p>The short answer is, this is very different policy and I don't think Apple is screwing developers over. With a few exceptions, which I will get to.</p>
<p>The big differences are:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Apple's CTF terms are opt-in.</em> If you want to continue using the old App Store terms and fees, even in the EU, you can.</li>
<li><em>The CTF is offset by a reduction in Apple's App Store cut.</em> If you opt into the new terms, Apple will take 10% of App Store revenues instead of 15%/30%. (For sales in the EU.)</li>
</ul>
<p>The upshot is that the new terms are probably an improvement for most paid apps that sell in the EU. The CTF is "per install per year", but it kicks in over 1,000,000 installs per year, whereas the reduced App Store cut is across the board. If you have a very popular free (or ad-supported) app, the new terms could hurt you, but then you just don't opt in.</p>
<p>(For a great deal more detail, see <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/apples_plans_for_the_dma">John Gruber's analysis</a> or probably a thousand other articles that I haven't read.)</p>
<p>(I can imagine an edge case where you have a modestly popular paid app <em>and</em> a very popular free app. Gonna have to do your own spreadsheets on that one. In any case, the addition of new opt-in terms can't hurt you in an absolute sense.)</p>
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<p>To get into Apple head-ology, which is never a sure bet but I do it anyway:</p>
<p>It's pretty clear that Unity's motivation for their fee changes was, "Crap, we need more money, and developers are the only people we can get it from." Apple is very much not in that position. Apple is reacting to new EU regulations about App Store gatekeeping.</p>
<p>I'm not going to say that Apple was forced into these terms by the EU. Apple's whole deal is "we do what we want". But it's safe to say that Apple was perfectly happy with their original App Store deal; they would have left it as-was forever. That's why they are continuing to offer the old terms as an option.</p>
<p>This, at root, is how Apple's news is different from Unity's. Unity changed their deal without warning, without recourse, and left developers terrified of what <em>next year's</em> deal would be like. Apple is very clear on what deal they want to offer. Any attempt to budge them from it will be met with a full-court legal battle.</p>
<p>(Possible exception: Apple's <a href="https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/">Small Business Program</a>, which gives people like me a break on App Store fees. That wasn't a direct response to regulation, but Apple announced it right after the Epic lawsuit was filed. That was surely meant to burnish Apple's legal image. And also to contrast Apple with Steam, which gives a break to the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-game-marketplace-revenue-split-new-rules-competition"><em>largest</em> developers</a>.)</p>
<p>In the context of the EU's Digital Markets Act, Apple's strategy is obvious:</p>
<ul>
<li>The EU says we have to allow sideloading of iOS apps and alternate payment processors.</li>
<li>This cuts into our App Store revenue stream.</li>
<li>But we can claw some of that back by shifting part of the App Store fees into a technology fee. Developers who keep using the App Store won't care (overall). If you stop using the App Store, we still get <em>some</em> money.</li>
</ul>
<p>It's not that Apple needs the money. (Good grief no.) From their point of view, it's the principle of the thing. Regulators can tell Apple to allow more options, but they can't tell Apple to <em>not make money</em>. Apple's response to the steering-link ruling a couple weeks ago was <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/01/16/apple-guidelines-external-purchase-links">exactly the same</a>: okay, we'll allow the links, but we'll still make money off them(*).</p>
<p>Of course this is why Tim Sweeney (the Epic guy) is <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/coming_to_grips_with_apples_seemingly_unshakable_sense_of_app_store_entitlement">spitting</a> <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2024/01/25/epic-ceo-tim-sweeney-app-store-dma-changes/">tacks</a>. Ditto <a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-01-26/apples-proposed-changes-reject-the-goals-of-the-dma/">Spotify</a> and so on. This whole thing, or at least the public face of it, was kicked off when Epic decided, "Let's sell Fortnite on iOS without giving Apple a cut."</p>
<p>Of course he couldn't <em>say</em> that. He had to talk about "<a href="https://appfairness.org">app fairness</a>" and gatekeeping and monopoly storefront control. And now we (or at least the EU) have regulations about monopoly storefront control, which don't actually say that Apple can't charge Epic a fee. So Apple smirks and charges Epic a fee.</p>
<p>Is that against the spirit of the regulation? It's certainly against the spirit of what Tim Sweeney wanted. And Spotify and so on. But that's not the same thing.</p>
<p>Speaking as someone who is neither Tim Cook, Tim Sweeney, nor a EU regulator, I find the outcome hilarious. I suppose the lawyers will be back in court soon enough.</p>
<p>(* For what it's worth, I agree with <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2019/01/netflix_itunes_billing">Gruber's take</a> on steering links: Apple's position on them is a liability to the company. That's a bad hill to nail your mast to. Or some such mixed metaphor. But this is separate from the question of App Store control.)</p>
<hr />
<p>As for me personally: </p>
<p>At a very rough estimate, I could make an extra five or six bucks a year if I accepted Apple's new EU terms. (I would be going from 85% of EU App Store sales to 90%, on long-tail revenue.) Not worth it.</p>
<p>In some sense it's free money, but I have a well-established procedure for extracting sales data from Apple's site. Not mucking up the spreadsheet format is definitely worth five bucks a year to me. Also, I hate change. So I'll leave well enough alone.</p>Winter puzzle games2024-01-28T04:12:27+00:002024-01-28T04:12:27+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-28:/2024/01/winter-puzzle-gamesI caught up on a few puzzle games since IGF wrapped up. Also The Longing, which is not a puzzle games, but I did have to look at hints, so you decide. Pony Island Crossroad OS 20 Small Mazes The Longing Portal: Revolution Pony Island by ...<p>I caught up on a few puzzle games since IGF wrapped up. Also <em>The Longing</em>, which is not a puzzle games, but I did have to look at hints, so you decide.</p>
<ul>
<li>Pony Island</li>
<li>Crossroad OS</li>
<li>20 Small Mazes</li>
<li>The Longing</li>
<li>Portal: Revolution</li>
</ul>
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<h2>Pony Island</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Daniel Mullins Games -- <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/405640">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The first outing from Daniel Mullins, who went on to do <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/01/2019-igf-nominees-something-notable">The Hex</a></em> and <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/01/2022-igf-nominees-fireworks">Inscryption</a></em> and generally to have a fine old time messing with the structure and conventions of videogames and also making my head explode.</p>
<p>I picked this up because I heard <em><a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2017940/Pony_Island_2_Panda_Circus/">Pony Island 2</a></em> was in the works. Also I heard <em>PI</em> was a programming game. It's not; it's a your-computer-is-messing-with-you puzzle game which uses the conceits of programming.</p>
<p>Imagine you're building a very simple jumpy-unicorn game, only demons have taken over the code and your desktop. A lo-fi 1990-era desktop, haunted and hacked. You have to hack back by solving puzzles styled around programming -- not actual programming, but flow-of-control grid puzzles.</p>
<p>It's pretty good stuff. However, the story and demons are uninteresting, just high-school-punk Satanism. Nothing like the awesome creepy-folklore schtick that Mullins had going in <em>Inscryption</em>. And then I got up to a level of the pony game (updated with lasers and demonspawn) which I couldn't play; the controls were too awkward. Diegetically awkward, given how much the "game" had been hacked at that point, but I still couldn't finish it. Oh well. I think I exorcised the first of three demons?</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I look forward to <em>PI2</em>, since Mullins has been upping his game with each release. As it were.</p>
<h2>Crossroad OS</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Guy -- <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1783800/Crossroad_OS/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A demons-have-invaded-your-desktop game with lo-fi haunted 1990-era hackery. Not related to <em>Pony Island</em>! This time you get trapped in the Win95 "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Maze">maze</a>" screensaver, only it's festooned with puzzle-panels. Beware Clippy.</p>
<p>The puzzles are quite good grid puzzlers -- not extremely difficult, but with a nice range of mechanics. As is thematically proper, the game takes great delight in messing with your UI. Your mouse cursor is sometimes a physical object which can bump objects, get stuck in a corner, or be eaten by demons. Then again, sometimes it's just a cursor. Sometimes <em>you're</em> the cursor. Occasionally parts of the screen fall off.</p>
<p>Short, and as I said, not too difficult. There's some precision mouse-steering in a few places, but no timed challenges. Lots of secret doors and codes. I enjoyed it.</p>
<p>(Footnote: Apparently a major content update came out the day after I finished the game. Yay timing. I see they fixed the credits bug too.)</p>
<h2>20 Small Mazes</h2>
<ul>
<li>by FLEB -- <a href="https://www.flebpuzzles.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>(Note: this game was an IGF entry, but it didn't make it into my IGF roundup posts.)</p>
<p>Just like the tin says, it's twenty little mazes. It goes well with the games mentioned above: no demons, but it definitely has the feel of "desktop accessories gone wild". (Or maybe index cards on an actual desktop, but who thinks like <em>that</em> any more?)</p>
<p>Anyhow, the mazes start simple and then get sneaky: logic mazes, hidden clues, secretly related mazes, gleeful interaction gimmicks. It's a bagatelle -- won't take you a full hour -- but sharply designed for what it is. </p>
<h2>The Longing</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Studio Seufz -- <a href="http://www.399d-23h-59m-59s.com">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A peculiar combination of exploration, idle game, and atmospheric tone poem. You're a soot-sprite, or perhaps a dream in the mind of a subterranean King. In 400 days he will wake up. What will you do until then?</p>
<p>I played <em>The Longing</em> in 2020 when it showed up on Steam. I got to a (sad) ending. Then it popped up on iOS and I thought hey, this is perfect for a mobile game; I will play it again! And maybe get to a <s>happier</s> less sad ending!</p>
<p>(In theory, once you reach an ending, the game is over. No restarts, no save slots. I bypassed this by playing on two platforms but that was cheating. Sorry.)</p>
<p>It is indeed almost ideal for mobile. Open the game, see where you are, maybe start walking to a bookmarked location, check back in a few hours. The only UI weakness is the dialogue-choice menus which are almost too small to select on my iPad. On a phone-sized screen you might need a stylus.</p>
<p>The thing is perfectly lovely in its commitment. Your Shade travels the deeps with a placid, uncomplaining deliberation. You can't even <em>think</em> "hurry up" at the figure, and so you accept the underworld's other obstacles in the same spirit. People have compared <em>The Longing</em> with Susanna Clarke's <em>Piranesi</em>; the game was published before the book but you can see the comparison.</p>
<p>Like <em>Piranesi</em>, this story's protagonist eventually finds that unseemly desires are the fruit of knowledge and may seek other endings than the King's. If you are as patient as the Shade, you may discover them on your own. Me, I googled wiki without regret... well, without much regret. (See above.) I admit that I lacked the patience to see some of the <em>really</em> secret stuff.</p>
<p>Play it, if only to experience a game that "values your time" in a completely different way. The soundtrack is excellent too.</p>
<p>(Footnote: If you want more discussion of <em>The Longing</em>, I enjoyed Carl Muckenhoupt's posts at <a href="https://www.wurb.com/stack/archives/tag/the-longing">The Stack</a>.)</p>
<h2>Portal: Revolution</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Stefan Heinz & Contributors -- <a href="https://www.portalrevolution.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Every few years a massive fan-mod of <em>Portal 2</em> shows up with a few new mechanics, some new scenery, and (if the fans are especially enthusiastic, and they usually are) a bunch of original voice-acting. I am always happy to see one of these; so is Valve. I've played <em>Portal Stories: Mel</em> and <em>Portal Reloaded</em> (the one with the time-portal). </p>
<p><em>Portal: Revolution</em> is this year's offering, and it is pretty solid. It doesn't stray far from its roots, to be sure. The environments mostly flip between familiar test chambers and familiar Aperture-backgloom, enlivened by a few showoff scenes in the surface world. Nearly the surface world. Open to daylight, anyhow. Then you plummet into the Cave-Johnson-era basement, just like in <em>P2</em>.</p>
<p>(Just like <em>Prince of Persia</em> and many other games, come to think of it. When I hit that scene, I joked about "wake up in the sewers" being a stage of the <a href="https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@zarfeblong/111733806065129058">Videogame Monomyth</a>.)</p>
<p>And, of course, puzzles. I'd rate them as somewhat more complicated than <em>P2</em> puzzles, but not more <em>difficult</em>, overall. That is: the underlying idea of a given puzzle might not be harder to grasp than the average <em>P2</em> puzzle. But you'll have to go through more gymnastics to carry it through. <em>Revolution</em> is particularly fond of a layout where you (a) make your way through a messy level; (b) change one bit of state: place a portal or a crate or a laser cube or whatever; (c) fall back to the beginning; (d) run through the level <em>again</em>, only this time you have to be mindful of your state change. A puzzle with extra logistics challenges, as it were.</p>
<p>Well, I enjoy that sort of exercise -- keeping track of stuff in my head. And it's on top of perfectly good <em>P2</em> style puzzles. Plus extra new gimmicks. And there's amusing companion chatter along the way. Two original characters, some snarking, some sniping, a bit of backstory. A giant chamber with a giant machine that you have to fix and then (inevitably) destroy.</p>
<p>The pacing is perhaps a little draggy. A few too many "whoops, gotta solve a test chamber now" lines jammed into not quite enough plot. But of course this is a game by and for puzzlers -- fans jonesing for a bit of the old Portal in-and-out. I had a good time, and if I felt a <em>bit</em> puzzle-worn at the end, it only meant that I wound up seeking a hint for the very last puzzle. Which I should really have figured out for myself. Shame on me.</p>The serif on the N2024-01-25T02:07:30+00:002024-01-25T02:07:30+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-25:/2024/01/the-serif-on-the-nThis is unquestionably the fussiest, least interesting blog post I will ever make about Infocom. Buckle up. Infocom logo circa 1985. Courtesy of the MIT Museum and Mike Dornbrook. Everybody knows this logo. I say "everyone"; of course I mean ...<p>This is unquestionably the fussiest, least interesting blog post I will ever make about Infocom. Buckle up.</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-redblack.jpeg"><img alt="The Infocom logo in magenta." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-redblack-s.png" /></a>
Infocom logo circa 1985. Courtesy of the <a href="https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/2022.008.004.211">MIT Museum</a> and Mike Dornbrook.</p>
</div>
<p>Everybody knows this logo. I say "everyone"; of course I mean "a small cohort of middle-aged nerds." If you know you know; if not, pretend for a while.</p>
<p>It's highly recognizable. It's sans-serif. It's also kind of hinky. The letters are spaced so tightly that they bleed together. The gap in the F doesn't match the gap in the M. If you look really close, the O's don't line up.</p>
<p>This isn't terribly surprising. This logo was designed around 1980. It was probably drawn on a big piece of paper with drafting tools and then photographed. Was it graph paper? We'll never know.</p>
<p>Here, by the way, is a collection of earlier logo prototypes that Infocom considered. Clearly they were very keen on that <strong>i</strong>:</p>
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<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-protos.jpeg"><img alt="Four early Infocom logos. The first is printed on an envelope; the other three are hand-drawn sketches." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-protos-s.jpeg" /></a>
From the <a href="https://archive.org/details/InfocomCabinetMiscellaneousOfficeArtifacts/page/n1/mode/2up">Infocom Cabinet</a> collection at the Internet Archive, courtesy of Steve Meretzky and Jason Scott. Thanks to <a href="https://thedoteaters.com/?bitstory=computer/zork-and-infocom">Doteaters</a> for the link.</p>
</div>
<p>That top one was used in 1979, before the company even had an office. It didn't last very long. When <em>Zork</em> was initially published by Personal Software, Infocom had no logo at all:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><img alt=""Zork: The Great Underground Empire (part 1). Program & Manual by Infocom, Inc." Plain text except for a stylized "Zork" logo." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-bzork.png" />
The only mention of Infocom in the famous "<a href="https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=zorkps-alt">Barbarian Zork</a>" manual.</p>
</div>
<p>In 1981, the company took over its own publishing. Zork got the dungeon-door treatment -- not to mention a numeral -- and Infocom got its for-real branding.</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-zorkfolio.jpeg"><img alt=""Your greatest challenge lies ahead - and downwards. Zork 1 -- Infocom."" src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-zorkfolio-s.jpeg" /></a>
Cover of the <a href="https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=zork1folio-alt">Zork 1 folio edition</a>. Courtesy of MOCAGH.</p>
</div>
<p>And there it stayed, all the way through the <a href="https://archive.org/details/InfocomClassicTextAdventureMasterpieces1996JewelCaseArt">Masterpieces CD</a> in 1996...</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-master.jpeg"><img alt="Cover of the Masterpieces of Infocom collection." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-master-s.jpeg" /></a>
Courtesy of <a href="https://archive.org/details/InfocomClassicTextAdventureMasterpieces1996JewelCaseArt">Archive.org</a>.</p>
</div>
<p>...wait, what's that? Enhance!</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><img alt="Infocom Masterpieces logo, enlarged." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-master-big.jpeg" /></p>
</div>
<p><em>Someone redrew it.</em> The M is at a different angle. The F-gap is wider. The counters inside the letters are square rather than rounded -- except the O's, which are inconsistent.</p>
<p>And the N has lost its serif! I mean, it didn't <em>have</em> a serif, but the original logo had pointier corners on the N and M. Sort of a serif <em>abstraction</em>. This new logo has a perfectly symmetrical N.</p>
<p>Here's the <em>Zork Anthology</em> manual (1994), which I still have on my shelf:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-zorkanth.jpeg"><img alt="The logo on the back of the Zork Anthology." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-zorkanth-s.png" /></a></p>
</div>
<p>The earlier <em><a href="https://archive.org/details/lost-treasures-of-infocom">Lost Treasures of Infocom 2</a></em> collection (1992) also has the wrong logo, and at a slightly lighter weight, to boot:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-ltoi2.jpeg"><img alt="The logo on the Lost Treasures of Infocom 2 collection." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-ltoi2-s.png" /></a></p>
</div>
<p>But, curiously, the first <em><a href="https://archive.org/details/lost-treasures-of-infocom">Lost Treasures of Infocom</a></em> (1991) does not! So that's the breakpoint. 1992: the year the N went wrong.</p>
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<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-ltoi.jpeg"><img alt="The logo on the first Lost Treasures of Infocom collection." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-ltoi-s.png" /></a></p>
</div>
<p>I could hold forth as a design snob and declare that the new logo has lost the original's ineffable charm. I'd be kidding myself, though. I've had these manuals for thirty years and never noticed the switch. (And <em>because</em> I've had them for thirty years, I have to take off my glasses and squint to see it now.)</p>
<p>I'd even vote for the slightly thinner strokes of the 1992 version. If I had to do a redraw. The N is still indefensible, though.</p>
<p>No, I only noticed the change because of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Infocom_Logo.svg">Wikipedia page</a>, which has a rendition of the logo which is downright sloppy. Sorry folks. Not only is it a mix of the two logos (look at the N/C counters), but the strokes on the N don't even line up.</p>
<p>Well, I can't turn back time, but here's what I can offer you: an <a href="https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/images/infocom-logo.svg">SVG (resolution-independent) rendering</a> of the original logo. Weird gaps and all.</p>
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<p><a href="https://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/images/infocom-logo.svg"><img alt="The Infocom logo remastered." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-logo.png" /></a></p>
</div>
<p>I left off the "TM" because the trademark expired a long time ago. (Pay no attention to <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2020/07/trademarking-infocom-again-part-two">those guys in Colorado Springs</a>.)</p>
<hr />
<p>...What, did you stick around through that whole post waiting for a moral? Sorry. I was tracing the Infocom logo for my <a href="https://eblong.com/infocom">own purposes</a> and I noticed there were two versions out there. Then I found all those prototypes. (<a href="https://www.mobygames.com/company/22/infocom-inc/logos/">Mobygames</a> has one of them but the others were new to me.) I figured it was all worth writing up.</p>
<p>While I was writing, I realized that the familiar logo should be called the "worm logo". To differentiate it from the "i" prototypes, I mean. Wouldn't you say it's in the late-70s spirit of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_insignia">NASA worm</a>?</p>
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<p><img alt="The old NASA "worm" logo, used in the 1970s and 1980s." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/nasa-worm.png" /></p>
</div>
<p>Also, now that I look... that <a href="https://www.mobygames.com/company/22/infocom-inc/logos/">Mobygames</a> page has a <em>pixelized</em> version of the logo:</p>
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<p><img alt="Infocom logo in pixelized form." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/infocom-pixel.png" /></p>
</div>
<p>It's clearly hand-drawn with love. I considered the idea that this was the original, and the print version followed, but that doesn't make sense. Nobody in 1980 would design for the screen first. Anyhow, this has <em>differently</em> weird spacing.</p>Reminder: still looking for NarraScope talks2024-01-21T03:36:06+00:002024-01-21T03:36:06+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-21:/2024/01/narrascope-cfp-reminderA quick reminder: we're still looking for talk proposals for NarraScope 2024! The proposal deadline is two weeks off, so you have time to give it a good solid think and then dash in to submit your idea. Or ideas! More than one is fine. Go here ...<p>A quick reminder: we're still looking for talk proposals for <a href="https://narrascope.org/">NarraScope 2024</a>! The proposal deadline is two weeks off, so you have time to give it a good solid think and then dash in to submit your idea. Or ideas! More than one is fine.</p>
<p><a href="https://narrascope.org/pages/call.html">Go here to see the conference invitation and submission info</a>.</p>
<p>Our submission box is still lighter than we'd like. Give us your wackiest proposal. Interactive narrative <em>or</em> anything you think narrative-game fans would be interested in.</p>
<p>I know Rochester isn't a frequent travel destination, but let me assure you that <a href="https://www.museumofplay.org/">The Strong</a> is a heck of a visit. I was last there in 2013 and I am excited to see what it's been up to.</p>
<p>And, of course, I am excited to see <em>you</em> again. Until June!</p>2024 IGF nominees: the favorites2024-01-17T02:23:30+00:002024-01-17T02:23:30+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-17:/2024/01/2024-igf-nominees-favoritesWrapping it up for the year, the games that blew me away. And yes, the visual-novel trend of these posts has collided with the COVID-and-catastrophe theme of the year. What can I say: writers write what they see, in the forms they know. Mediterranea ...<p>Wrapping it up for the year, the games that blew me away. And yes, the visual-novel trend of these posts has collided with the COVID-and-catastrophe theme of the year. What can I say: writers write what they see, in the forms they know.</p>
<ul>
<li>Mediterranea Inferno</li>
<li>Goodbye Volcano High</li>
<li>1000xRESIST</li>
<li>A Highland Song</li>
<li>Chants of Sennaar</li>
</ul>
<p>(I was on the narrative jury -- hey, it turns out the <a href="https://gdconf.com/news/these-are-igf-juries-design-narrative-and-nuovo-awards-gdc-2024%3F_mc%3Dedit_gdcsf_gdcsf_le_x_14_x_2024">narrative jury</a> was announced last week! It just didn't show up on the <a href="https://igf.com/article/these-are-igf-juries-design-narrative-and-nuovo-awards-gdc-2024">IGF site</a> until today. Eh, web sites, we've all been there. Anyhow, I played review copies of all these games except <em>Chants of Sennaar</em>.)</p>
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<h2>Mediterranea Inferno</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Eyeguys -- <a href="https://www.mediterraneainferno.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A gonzo visual novel-ish thing about three Italian boys. They're here, they're <em>fabulously</em> queer, they're everybody's darlings, and they haven't seen each other since the COVID lockdowns hit. So by damn they're heading to the beach.</p>
<p>This is trippy and hits hard. I want to say "magical realism" -- Italian rather than Mexican-Spanish, but similarly steeped in visionary, sun-drenched cultural Catholicism. Our guys are notionally unwinding from the pandemic and trying to get enough disco, booty, and (metaphorical?) lotus fruit to ascend to (metaphorical?) Heaven. In fact what they're unwinding is their insecurities, as the demoniac and possibly allegorical Madama (pun intended) dissects their souls.</p>
<p>It's a short and intense ride. Mind you, one ride isn't the final ending. You can't consume enough Mirage fruit in a single run to usher all three characters to Paradise. I haven't gone back to bring everybody to completion (pun intended), but I can recommend the game without reservation, regardless.</p>
<h2>Goodbye Volcano High</h2>
<ul>
<li>by KO_OP -- <a href="https://goodbyevolcanohigh.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A more traditional visual novel setup: anthromorphic dinosaur teens in high school. Fang ("not Fatima, <em>Mom</em>") is trying to survive senior year, stay tight with a very varied crowd of friends, and get into the Battle of the Bands. Also there's this meteor in the sky? Probably not important.</p>
<p>It's deft and convincing and ultimately a heartbreaker. I particularly liked the supportive sibling relationship between goth-musician Fang and class-president-but-not-usually-a-jerk Naser. (Their parents are out of town for the month, but they face-chat regularly, of course. Sometimes they even remember Fang's preferred name and pronouns.) Plenty of other vivid characters; some incipient queer crushes. Lots of rhythm-game music sessions -- don't worry, there's assistive options. Also a lot of bug jokes and some RPG sessions in the garage.</p>
<p>The real power of the story is how it keeps the focus on the kids and their world as the whole world, well... I mentioned the approaching meteor. At first everybody's like, well, it's not <em>really</em> going to hit us. Then reality starts to sink in. You can play the hell out of Caldera-Fest and go on an adorable first date with your secret admirer, but what is the future, really? Growing up has been cancelled with no rain date. It's not a subtle metaphor. You can say it's fatalism, or faking a happy ending in the face of fatalism, but what else have we got any more?</p>
<p>I have no idea how kids are surviving these days but the game speaks that language.</p>
<h2>1000xRESIST</h2>
<ul>
<li>by sunset visitor -- <a href="https://www.1000xresist.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Hallucinatory gonzo visual-novel-ish thing about Asian high school girls and the end of the world. A pandemic is sweeping the world, people dying by literally crying their eyes out -- we are <em>not</em> shy about symbolism -- except one girl, Iris, seems to be immune. No, wait, it's centuries later and humanity survives as clones, enacting a bizarre religion based on the life of their "Allmother". Or is this a memory-palace exploration from centuries after <em>that</em>? A simulation? A generation ship? An alien invasion?</p>
<p>This is the sort of story that yanks the ground out from under your feet once a chapter, if not more. But everything is grounded in a whirlwind of fever-hot themes: the pandemic, the Hong Kong protest crackdown, generational parenting trauma, high-school crushes, the necessity (impossibility) of making (faking) an adult life in a collapsing world. Everybody wears skintight cyber-neon body suits and breathing masks. For life. I told you we weren't shy about symbolism.</p>
<p>The visual direction is impeccably off-balance, switching between first-person and a variety of third-person cameras to emphasize the shifting viewpoints of the story. There's some other narrative tricks mixed in as well; some of them reach <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2020/02/kentucky-route-zero-quick-thoughts">KR0</a></em> levels of messing with your expectations. Yes, this is well-trod territory (going back to <em><a href="https://www.thegamer.com/metal-gear-solid-psycho-mantis-boss-battle/">MGS</a></em>, or <em><a href="https://www.filfre.net/2011/11/the-prisoner-part-2/">The Prisoner</a></em> if you're my age), but <em>1000xRESIST</em> is the right game for that territory and it commits.</p>
<p>Compelling, overwhelming, agonizing. Recommended.</p>
<h2>A Highland Song</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Inkle -- <a href="https://www.inklestudios.com/a-highland-song/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I'm a sucker for Inkle's narrative magic, but the story matters. So does the story <em>shape</em>. If it's too tightly bounded, I don't really feel interesting choices, and the narration -- however adeptly adaptive -- isn't enough to hook me. This was my reaction to <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/01/2022-igf-nominees-fireworks">Overboard</a></em> (too bounded in location), <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2020/01/2020-igf-nominees-adventure-plus">Over the Alps</a></em> (in direction), and <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/05/2021-igf-nominees-visual-novel-like">Pendragon</a></em> (in action).</p>
<p>(Yeah, <em>Alps</em> wasn't under the Inkle imprint, you know what I mean.)</p>
<p>The model runs hottest when the stories are wild, unbounded, and let you go haring off in unforeseen directions. This is why <em>80 Days</em> is Inkle's enduring hit.</p>
<p>So, <em>A Highland Song</em>. And wow! Exactly the shape this engine needed. Scotland's most reckless teenager goes on wanderjahr and trips over stories. Little hints of stories at first: history brochures, recalled reminisces about hills and mines and radio towers. But as you climb (and fall and get rain-drenched and eat entirely inadequate snack food), more drifts into view: fairy tales and ghosts and figures out of time. You yourself may be such. Or it may all be the daydreams of a kid on a hike, recounted to a relative. Different tellings of the tale are happy to switch gears as needed.</p>
<p>As is Inkle's habit, the game does nothing to channel you towards any of these more fantastical variations. It simply leaves enough strewn around that you'll probably stumble into one. Then all the clues that led up to that one were delightful foreshadowing; the clues leading up to everything <em>else</em> were just the background tapestry of Scottish folklore and history, which you can enjoy without requiring structure.</p>
<p>(Having finished two run-throughs, I can see that the "prize" story moments are triggered by [spoilering] a [spoiler] on a [spoiler]. I've only done a couple, and I look forward to more, but I don't intend to be completist about it.)</p>
<p>Bonus: the exploration is spaced out with wild sprints across the mountain slopes, rhythm-bouncing to jigs and reels. I'm always up for more folk music.</p>
<p>Come to think of it, the "musical gimmick speeds travel" reminded me of, hm, what was it? <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2018/01/2018-igf-nominees-fascinating">Oh right</a>. In fact, the folklore-strewn-across-the-countryside structure is <em>also</em> reminiscent of <em>...Tastes Like Wine</em>. I may have gone so far as to refer to <em>Highland Song</em> as "Where The Water Tastes Like Whiskey". Don't tell Johnnemann.(*)</p>
<p>If Inkle wants to tackle American folklore next, I'd be all in favor. Until then, <em>AHS</em> is an invitation to uncounted(**) hours of wandering and listening and generally fossicking around the hand-painted landscape.</p>
<p>(* I have already told Johnnemann.)</p>
<p>(** Literally uncounted. Every time I jumped into <em>AHS</em>, I lost track of time and surfaced hours later with a head full of hills and chewy brogue.)</p>
<h2>Chants of Sennaar</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Rundisc -- <a href="https://www.rundisc.io/chants-of-sennaar/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>An alien-language puzzle game set in the Tower of Babel, or <em>a</em> Tower of Babel anyhow. The puzzles are set up to be approachable rather than linguistically overwhelming, but it conveys the experience of figuring out words and grammar and the patterns of different languages. Combine that with a solid and explorable setting, surprisingly funny writing (considering that most of the jokes come through in translation), and a vivid clear-line architectural art style, and you have one of the year's top puzzle games.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/09/summer-more-puzzles">full review is here</a>.</p>Parser IF disambiguation hassles2024-01-16T00:42:17+00:002024-01-16T00:42:17+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-16:/2024/01/parser-if-disambiguation Sidewalk The blizzard has mostly passed, but the sidewalk is a mess. Get to work. You can see some snow and a snow shovel here. >SHOVEL SNOW WITH SHOVEL Which do you mean, the snow or the snow shovel? >SNOW Which do you mean, the snow ...<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Sidewalk</strong>
The blizzard has mostly passed, but the sidewalk is a mess. Get to work.</p>
<p>You can see some snow and a snow shovel here.</p>
<p>>SHOVEL SNOW WITH SHOVEL
Which do you mean, the snow or the snow shovel?</p>
<p>>SNOW
Which do you mean, the snow or the snow shovel?</p>
<p>>SNOW
Which do you mean, the snow or the snow shovel?</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Boston got a snowstorm last weekend, and this grim scenario was on my mind as I wielded my mighty blade. Not the snow per se, but the parser error. IF authors have been bedeviled by that problem since the art form began. It's still quite easy to run into. The above was generated by this very short Inform 7 program:</p>
<pre><code>Shoveling it with is an action applying to two things.
Understand "shovel [something] with [something]" as shoveling it with.
The Sidewalk is a room. "The blizzard has mostly passed, but the sidewalk is a mess. Get to work."
Some snow is in the Sidewalk.
The snow shovel is in the Sidewalk.
</code></pre>
<p>If you're not familiar with <a href="https://inform7.com/">Inform 7</a>, you may be furrowing your brow. Don't get hung up on the natural-language format, though -- that's not today's topic. You could do exactly the same thing in Inform 6:</p>
<pre><code>Verb 'shovel' * noun 'with' noun -> Shovel;
Object Sidewalk "Sidewalk"
with description "The blizzard has mostly passed, but the sidewalk is a mess. Get to work.",
has light;
Object -> snow "snow"
with name 'snow',
with article "some";
Object -> shovel "snow shovel"
with name 'snow' 'shovel';
</code></pre>
<p>In both snippets, we have an object whose name has two words (SNOW, SHOVEL) and an object whose name has just one word (SNOW) and therefore the player is screwed. Any attempt to refer to SNOW is ambiguous and cannot be resolved. (The word SOME doesn't help; Inform considers articles too sloppy to rely on.)</p>
<p>Since time immemorial (1976, which, okay, I remember, but never mind) the recommended solution to this problem has been: "Don't do that, dumbass." Give each object enough synonyms to have a unique name. Honestly, two-word names will solve 99% of your problems. You could change "the snow" to "the snow blanket" or "the fallen snow" or even "a quantity of snow". (Infocom used "a quantity of..." quite a lot, although I think it was mostly to avoid printing "a snow" in object lists.)</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>You can see some fallen snow and a snow shovel here.</p>
<p>>SHOVEL SNOW WITH SHOVEL
Which do you mean, the fallen snow or the snow shovel?</p>
<p>>FALLEN
Heave ho, a merry old time shoveling the walk.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>But this isn't an <em>entirely</em> satisfying solution. We're telling the author, "Look, the parser isn't smart enough to handle the game you designed. Write a different game." </p>
<!--more-->
<a name="more"></a>
<p>Now, this is game design. Contorting your story to fit the engine is just another day ending in Y. Plus, IF authors <em>love</em> copious synonyms. Ever since we got past the C-64, the feeling has been, hey, throw in any word the player might possibly use. Why not? So beefing up "some snow" with a few more synonyms isn't an arduous ask.</p>
<p>But the ambiguities love to sneak back in. Take that classic Magnetic Scrolls command, "PLANT THE POT PLANT IN THE PLANT POT". Here we have an object whose name has two words (POT, PLANT) and another whose name also has two words (PLANT, POT). How are we to sort <em>that</em> out?</p>
<p>Okay, the answer is pretty obvious. Word order! In each case one word is an adjective and one is a noun. We know (in English anyway) that adjectives come before the noun, and they're not mandatory. So "PLANT" and "POT PLANT" should refer unambiguously to one object; "POT" and "PLANT POT" should refer to the other.</p>
<p>Inform 7 can do that just fine. Going back to the Sidewalk:</p>
<pre><code>Understand "shovel", "snow shovel" as the snow shovel.
</code></pre>
<p>This specifies that SNOW by itself is not enough to match the shovel; it only counts if it's immediately followed by SHOVEL. But SNOW by itself <em>is</em> enough to match the snow object, so our problem is solved.</p>
<p>(Nitpickers: you need to add <code>privately-named</code> above to prevent Inform from generating a default word list. Let's ignore this.)</p>
<hr />
<p>Great. Our problem is solved. What's this post about?</p>
<p>To answer this, I need to get down into some parsing guts. Specifically, the difference between <em>matching</em> and <em>precedence</em>.</p>
<p>When the parser receives a command, here's what it does. I'm simplifying, of course, but roughly:</p>
<ul>
<li>Figure out the verb part of the command. Let's not worry about this stage. In the examples above, the verb is easy: shoveling or planting.</li>
<li>The rest of the command is the object part. (Assume one object, for simplicity.) Look through all the objects in the room ("in scope") to see which ones <em>could</em> match that text. Create a list of the possibilities.<ul>
<li>If the list has exactly one entry, carry out the command.</li>
<li>If the list is empty, error: "You can't see any such thing."</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Otherwise, we have several entries. Proceed to disambiguation.<ul>
<li>Apply various criteria to rank the options.</li>
<li>If there's one best option, carry out the command.</li>
<li>If there's a tie, ask the player: "Which do you mean, ...?"</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I'm not going to get into the disambiguation criteria. Inform has a long list. (Maybe too long!) But the author can set up rules to declare which options are better. This is the "Does the player mean" rulebook in I7, or ChooseObjects() in I6. It's not a perfect mechanism but it works well enough.</p>
<p>The important summary:</p>
<p><em>Matching</em> is a <em>yes/no</em> decision. Does this object make the possibility list or not? If the player typed "GET KNIFE", any knives in scope are possibilities. Objects that <em>lack</em> the word KNIFE are completely eliminated.</p>
<p><em>Disambiguation</em> is a <em>ranked</em> decision. Inform handles this by assigning a numerical score to every object on the list. (You could imagine comparing objects on the list to each other, or sorting the list. That's roughly the same idea, but the numerical score plan is easier to talk about and faster-running too. So we'll stick with that.)</p>
<p>Most important: in Inform, <em>words are only considered in the matching stage</em>. That's when we match command words against object words. In the disambiguation stage, we have a list of <em>objects</em>, not words! We compare the objects to <em>each other</em>; we've forgotten what words the player used to name them.</p>
<p>(Yes, I said I was simplifying. Pronouns and articles can have an effect on disambiguation. But not nouns or adjectives.) (There's a <em>Curses</em>-era hack for the words LIT and UNLIT but I am <em>really</em> not getting into that one.)</p>
<hr />
<p>With this in mind, we can see that all our solutions so far have been about <em>matching</em>. The word SNOW only matches the shovel if it's directly followed by SHOVEL. If not, there's no match -- the shovel is eliminated from contention. Similarly, PLANT by itself doesn't match the plant-pot.</p>
<p>This works, but it's... imperfect.</p>
<p>Inform's default handling for object names is the bag-of-words model. You list a bunch of words for the object; the player can use any or all of them. All words count equally and order doesn't matter. Earlier I talked about nouns and adjectives, but really the parser doesn't have any such notions. It's all just words.</p>
<p>The bag-of-words is simplistic, but that's a <em>good</em> thing. It's easy for the author to understand; it's easy for the player to understand.</p>
<p>But now we've declared that the words SNOW and SHOVEL have to be <em>adjacent</em>. Order and position matter -- for this one case. And it improves this one case. But in general? Objects can have lots of adjectives, and the order isn't always fixed. What if you typed "GET THE BIG SNOW PLASTIC SHOVEL"? With the adjacency hack, that command would fail to match.</p>
<p>English famously <em>doesn't</em> treat adjectives as a bag of words; there's a conventional order. "BIG SNOW PLASTIC SHOVEL" sounds wrong. Most people would type "BIG PLASTIC SNOW SHOVEL". But it's not always that easy. What about a "SNOW POWER BLOWER MACHINE"? What word do you attach SNOW to then? "SNOW BLOWER" and "SNOW MACHINE" are both very reasonable player references, and "SNOW POWER BLOWER" should work too. Pretty soon you're knee-deep in variations.</p>
<p>Another benefit of the bag-of-words is that players can take shortcuts:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Toolshed</strong>
You see a rusty knife, a snow shovel, and a nasty knife here.</p>
<p>> TAKE RUSTY
With a qualm, you pick up the rusty knife.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>You don't have to specify KNIFE. There's only one rusty object in the room, so the command works, no noun required. This isn't a critical feature, but it's nice.</p>
<p>(Another consequence is that <em>long</em>-cuts also work: "TAKE RUSTY RUSTY KNIFE RUSTY KNIFE" works fine in Inform. This doesn't bother players; it's just an amusing side effect.)</p>
<p>But notice that the shortcut fails for our snow shovel:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Toolshed</strong>
You see a rusty knife, a snow shovel, and a nasty knife here.</p>
<p>> TAKE SNOW
You can't see any such thing.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>SNOW alone will never match the shovel. Even though there's no snow present to confuse with! The fallen snow is <em>outside</em>, on the Sidewalk, but our word-order hack is still in force. We'd like to avoid such inconsistencies.</p>
<p>One alternative is to only apply the word-order hack <em>when snow is present</em>. You can cajole Inform into doing this:</p>
<pre><code>Understand "snow" as the snow shovel when the snow is not in the location.
</code></pre>
<p>This is pretty baroque! It requires a sort of double-negative thinking. (And it misses some edge cases; you have to get even more baroque to avoid all bugs.) We shouldn't drag game authors into this sort of contortion.</p>
<hr />
<p>At this point in the conversation, someone usually suggests that the parser <em>should</em> distinguish nouns from adjectives. (In fact this post was inspired by such a conversation. See <a href="https://intfiction.org/t/correctly-parsing-light-light-light/66404">this forum thread</a>, which started with the question, "Which do you mean, the heavy light or the light light?")</p>
<p>I think this is a false lead. It's not exactly wrong, but it's an "easy solution" which turns out to be grouchy and nonoptimal.</p>
<p>What does "support adjectives" mean, for the parser? One possible answer: <em>An object only matches the player's command if the player has used at least one noun word.</em> If the player has only typed adjectives, the object isn't a match.</p>
<p>This is not a new idea. In fact it's <a href="http://www.inform-fiction.org/manual/html/s28.html#ex75">Exercise 75</a> in the old I6 manual. Really it's the same as the "SNOW requires SHOVEL" solution, except that we no longer rely on word order. The word SHOVEL just has to occur <em>somewhere</em>. Well, that's an improvement -- we've eliminated one unnecessary factor. But it's still a binary decision at the matching phase! We're still rejecting "TAKE SNOW" even when you're indoors and the command is unambiguous.</p>
<p>Here's a better plan: <em>At the disambiguation stage, an object scores better if the player has used at least one noun word.</em> Unfortunately, this is hard in Inform. Remember: by the disambig stage, the parser has forgotten what words were used.</p>
<p>Arguably my entire post boils down to "Inform's parser is missing a critical step." Yeah, sorry. It's not <em>impossible</em> to add this in. Again, <a href="http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform6/library/contributions/calyx_adjectives.h">someone did it</a> back in the I6 days. But I7 has a different extension model, and the parser has gotten way more complicated over the years.</p>
<p>Even ignoring the implementation problem, the adjective/noun split still doesn't make everything magically better. Deciding what's a noun isn't always easy. Remember the "SNOW POWER BLOWER MACHINE"? You could say, well, obviously MACHINE is the noun and the earlier words are adjectives -- but that won't necessarily solve your disambig problem. If you've got a SNOW BLOWER MACHINE and a LEAF BLOWER, then BLOWER and MACHINE are both functionally nouns; it's only the SNOW and LEAF that are lightweight referents.</p>
<p>For that matter, COFFEE CUP and CUP OF COFFEE may well be two names for the same object. (Some games simulate drinking and an empty cup, but not all.) Is there a last word there? COFFEE may be an adjective <em>or</em> a noun; it depends whether you're worried about a SILVER CUP or a COFFEE MACHINE elsewhere in the game. And that's the simple case. What about a BIG GAUDY PORTRAIT OF LORD DIMWIT FLATHEAD?</p>
<p>I think people are imagining a scheme where if you define <em>each individual object</em> properly, then disambiguation will always work. And then assuming that a noun/adjective distinctive is such a scheme. I think that's <em>two</em> false assumptions. You're always going to have to think about what's in your game, what combinations the player will encounter. And if you're thinking about that, then dividing up nouns and adjectives is a distraction. You have to think about what words will distinguish the objects you've got.</p>
<hr />
<p>Okay, that's a bunch of handwavy negativity. Let's talk about what I <em>do</em> want. (We can at least end with some <em>positive</em> handwaving.)</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>We should solve name collisions with at the disambiguation stage, not the matching stage. (Like I said above.)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Furthermore, we only need to apply a disambig tweak when there's a name collision to resolve. If the situation <em>can</em> be resolved by asking the player a disambig question, it should be.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Most objects don't run into disambig problems, so the author mostly shouldn't have to think about disambig. Use the bag-of-words model until you need to resolve a collision.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>If an author adds one synonym, they'll want to add three. Or ten. Here's a definition from <em>Hadean Lands</em>, and not the longest:</p>
</li>
</ul>
<pre><code>Understand "twisting", "twisted", "involuted", "illegible", "stroke", "strokes", "lines", "marks", "markings", "black", "alien", "script", "graffiti", "graffito" as alien-script.
</code></pre>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The point is, throwing another word into the bag should always be easy. It shouldn't lead to new problems.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Even in the noun/adjective way of thinking, an object can have several nouns. The a BRASS LAMP is equally a BRASS LANTERN. A RUBY is a RED GEM and probably also a RED JEWEL (unless you're doing something highly specific with jeweler's jargon). So we have to think in terms of <em>groups</em> of correct words, not a single correct name.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>So what does that add up to? Here's how I want to think about it:</p>
<p>The parser already has a feature where objects can be <em>indistinguishable</em>. The idea is that if two things have <em>the same</em> synonyms, then nothing the player types can disambiguate them. So we shouldn't even try. Instead, the parser skips the disambig question and just picks one for you:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Treasury</strong>
You see a gold coin, a gold coin, and a gold coin here.</p>
<p>> TAKE COIN
Taken.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>(Normally the parser would also treat them as indistinguishable <em>for listing</em>, and say "You see three gold coins." I've suppressed that to make the case clearer.)</p>
<p>This fits nicely with what we want! We'd like to say that if one thing's synonyms are a <em>proper subset</em> of another's, the parser would skip the disambig question and just pick the object with the <em>smaller set</em>.</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Treasury</strong>
You see a worn gold coin, a gold coin, and a coin here.</p>
<p>> TAKE COIN
Taken.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Unfortunately (again), this is easier to say than to implement. First: the indistinguishability feature is somewhat limited in Inform 7. It's fine if you define several identical objects of the same kind:</p>
<pre><code>A coin is a kind of thing.
Three coins are in the Treasury.
</code></pre>
<p>But the compiler isn't very smart about noticing if two separately-defined objects just happen to have the same set of synonyms:</p>
<pre><code>The lighter is a thing in the Kitchen.
Understand "cigarette" as the lighter.
The cigarette is a thing in the Kitchen.
Understand "lighter" as the cigarette.
</code></pre>
<p>We'd need it to be at least that smart to extend this to the subset case. Then there's conditional synonyms, property-based synonyms, and all the other nice features that I7 supports.</p>
<p>Also, it doesn't currently think about word order. Recall the PLANT POT and the POT PLANT. That's the same synonym list, but even if the parser notices that, it will auto-select arbitrarily rather than considering what word the player used first. </p>
<p>(Indicating which object prefers which order is an exercise left to the implementer... Remember, in general there could be adjectives <em>between</em> PLANT and POT.)</p>
<p>Also, this feature doesn't account for the difference between printed names and synonym lists:</p>
<pre><code>The thick red wax candle is a thing in the Kitchen. The printed name is "wax candle".
The thin blue wax candle is a thing in the Kitchen. The printed name is "wax candle".
</code></pre>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>> GET CANDLE
Which do you mean, the wax candle or the wax candle?</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>The player <em>could</em> distinguish the objects by typing RED/BLUE/THICK/THIN. But they have no way to know that. The printed name properties don't mention those words. You might say "So don't do that, dumbass," but that's where we started, right?</p>
<p>(Most likely we got into this situation by adding synonyms without thinking about the printed name. Yellow card! Throwing more words into the bag is supposed to be simple and safe!)</p>
<p>So that's my conclusion: this whole disambiguation issue is close to something that the parser already tries to do. But (a) it doesn't do it perfectly; (b) extending the mechanism isn't trivial because parser guts; (c) the whole feature needs some rethinking.</p>
<p><em>But</em> if we nail down the "indistinguishable" business, we have a pretty good basis for solving the "disambiguation loop" business in a logically tidy way.</p>2024 IGF nominees: visual novels2024-01-15T01:48:01+00:002024-01-15T01:48:01+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-15:/2024/01/2024-igf-nominees-visual-novelsNext up: visual novels, and games expanding on the idea of the visual novel. Yes, we had some of that yesterday. I gotta split up the list somehow. Saltsea Chronicles End of Lines Solace State Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden Tale The Cosmic Wheel ...<p>Next up: visual novels, and games expanding on the idea of the visual novel. Yes, we had some of that yesterday. I gotta split up the list somehow.</p>
<ul>
<li>Saltsea Chronicles</li>
<li>End of Lines</li>
<li>Solace State</li>
<li>Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden Tale</li>
<li>The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</li>
<li>The Wreck</li>
</ul>
<p>(I was on the narrative jury and played review copies of all these games except <em>Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</em> and <em>The Wreck</em>.)</p>
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<h2>Saltsea Chronicles</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Die Gute Fabrik -- <a href="https://www.saltseachronicles.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Narrative exploration game about a ship crew traversing the tropical post-climatic seas. The focus is on the crew as crew -- you play them group, not just one of them -- and, by extension, the society of the islands as society.</p>
<p>This is lots of fun, pretty much entirely for the well-drawn characters. When the game started I thought "Oh no, I will never remember all these people's names." Within half an hour I knew them all like old friends. The island cultures are nifty as well, although the world-building is going for flair rather than serious depth.</p>
<p>Most of the interactions are low-key. (Although the stakes rise appropriately as you approach the climax.) Various tensions and micro-dramas arise among the characters, and you can push to resolve them in various ways -- as you like; it's not a series of puzzles to solve. The big decisions are "who comes ashore to explore this island" and then "where do we sail next". I suspect this produces a lot of possible story variation, but I've only seen one runthrough.</p>
<p>My only complaint is that the game invites lawn-mowering every interaction spot. I can't resist, anyhow. It's all delightful to read but it slows the game down more than I think the designers intended. Maybe if there was a limit per time phase, so you had to pick which things to investigate on each island? I know, you'd have to rebalance the entire dialogue system... just musing on possibilities.</p>
<p>The baby! Is a full story participant! With many lines of "dialogue" as everybody else! How can you resist? The visuals are also terrific; the style is deliberately simplistic but actually pretty great. (Just look at that "title sequence" animation.)</p>
<h2>End of Lines</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Nova-box -- <a href="http://endoflines.nova-box.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A traditional visual novel about climate refugees traveling across Europe. The latest offering from the studio that brought us <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/01/2019-igf-nominees-my-favorites">Seers Isle</a></em> and <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/05/2021-igf-nominees-visual-novel-like">Across the Grooves</a></em>.</p>
<p>It's 2090 or so. The rain is gone. The bees are gone. Birds, crops, you get the idea. Northern Africa was always a desert but it's no longer a survivable one. A village sends its strongest members off on a quest to find habitable land.</p>
<p>As far as I could tell from one-and-a-half runs, the branching is pretty modest. You encounter roughly the same sequence of locations and events. There's a bit of resource-management gameplay, so you can wind up with more or fewer supplies and perhaps different companions in the journey, but it's not primarily a resource game. The primary events are story beats. (Contrast <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/01/2023-igf-nominees-rpg-bonanza">The Pale Beyond</a></em>, which was more about a narrative presentation of resource decisions.)</p>
<p>This is solid work and solid writing, together with Nova Box's rich digital painting style. But I didn't find it to have the narrative spark of Nova Box's previous offerings. Or maybe you thought prophecy (<em>Seers</em>) and time-travel (<em>Grooves</em>) were narrative gimmickry -- in which case <em>End of Lines</em> will be more to your taste. The impact is entirely in the portrayal of a ruined world and the characters' memories. The adults remember <em>our</em> world, you see... and how they lost it.</p>
<p>It's not entirely pessimistic. There are survivors, and maybe even smooching. But it's an awful lot of death and misery leavened by only the narrowest contingent sort of hope.</p>
<h2>Solace State</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Vivid Foundry -- <a href="https://www.solacestategame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>An optimistic visual novel about brain-hacker activists in a mostly-grim corporate future. Fear not! Solidarity triumphs, with dating options.</p>
<p>This is densely written with plenty of storyline, but I never really got hooked. The creators have put lots of detail into the setting, but the game spends more time explaining it to you than letting you act in it. It's old-school VN pacing: long narrative sequences (with footnotes) with occasional choice points and more in-depth hacking scenes. The latter are a nice idea -- you have a chance to dig into people's motivations and press them on various subjects -- but they're still pretty tightly scripted.</p>
<p>Come to think, the ethics of brain-hacking are a primary theme of the story, but that doesn't apply to <em>you</em>. Brain-hacking scenes happen when the plot says they have to. Whether and when is never a player choice -- only what you do once you're in there. I wish that were thematic, but I'm pretty sure the writers just didn't think about it.</p>
<p>I'm not sure whether it's the writing or the weak interactivity, but the world winds up feeling rather a shallow political take. The bad guy is a walking cliche and everybody else is, at worst, unconvinced by your heroic public activism. Cardboard dystopia <em>and</em> utopia. Yes, takes on contemporary politics are the mainspring of sci-fi, and I'm all in favor of games portraying collective action. I just found this one unconvincing.</p>
<p>Narratively unconvincing, at least. I have no doubt that reality will make this "dystopia" look like weak cream soon enough. But I don't play games to predict reality.</p>
<p>On the up side, the dynamic visual presentation is terrific. Nice way to give the scenes a cinematic quality -- camera angles, pans and zooms -- without the expense of full animation or motion-capture.</p>
<p>(On the other hand: if your game has a dialogue-speed pref, it needs to include the camera zooms <em>between</em> lines of dialogue. Think about us fast readers! Trying to speed-read this game is <em>really</em> frustrating.)</p>
<h2>Windy Meadow: A Roadwarden Tale</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Moral Anxiety Studio -- <a href="https://moralanxietystudio.com/windy-meadow">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A pixel-art visual novel in the Roadwarden setting. Three braided viewpoint chapters (plus epilogue) in a farming village beset by crisis.</p>
<p>I found this a bit mixed. <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/01/2023-igf-nominees-rpg-bonanza">Roadwarden</a></em> was interesting because of its intricate field of quests and goals, tied together with common game mechanics. <em>Windy Meadow</em> drops all of that to focus on its characters in a pretty standard branching narrative.</p>
<p>This isn't a misstep; the characters are solid and interesting. As with <em>Roadwarden</em>, though, I didn't find the story itself all that engaging. And the setting doesn't stand too far above its generic-D&D roots. The standout element, I'd say, was the thoughtful portrayal of a non-neurotypical character living in a society without our modern framing of that idea.</p>
<p>Not the top of my list, but I'm glad I played it. Also has some good visual touches, plus a lovely acoustic soundtrack.</p>
<h2>The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Deconstructeam -- <a href="https://www.cosmicwheelsisterhood.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A pixel-art visual novel about Tarot readings... only not really. Demons, gonzo space witches, the perils of prophecy, road-trip yarns about orgasms. A choice model that sneaks up on you in a really quite interesting way. An excellent social sim challenge for the third act.</p>
<p>No spoilers beyond that. My <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/summer-wowzers">full review is here</a>; I tried to avoid spoilers there as well.</p>
<h2>The Wreck</h2>
<ul>
<li>by The Pixel Hunt -- <a href="https://thewreckgame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Interactive narrative about a car accident and an emotionally scarred family. I loved this. In fact a pre-release version was a narrative honorable-mention <a href="https://igf.com/article/tunic-and-betrayal-club-low-are-front-runners-igf-2023-nominations">last year</a>, so maybe I don't need to say any more.</p>
<p>If you disagree, my <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/01/2023-igf-nominees-visual-novels">full review is here</a>.</p>2024 IGF nominees: weird stuff2024-01-13T21:45:20+00:002024-01-13T21:45:20+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-13:/2024/01/2024-igf-nominees-weird-stuffRound two: weird stuff. Genre-pushers, wacky ideas, and things you just don't see much of. Yum! (Okay, the genre most commonly being pushed is "visual novel". But I have a whole visual-novel post coming up next, so I split out the weirder games ...<p>Round two: weird stuff. Genre-pushers, wacky ideas, and things you just don't see much of. Yum!</p>
<p>(Okay, the genre most commonly being pushed is "visual novel". But I have a whole visual-novel post coming up next, so I split out the weirder games for this one.)</p>
<ul>
<li>Venba</li>
<li>In Stars and Time</li>
<li>The Archivist and the Revolution</li>
<li>Slay the Princess</li>
<li>Stray Gods</li>
</ul>
<p>(I was on the narrative jury and played review copies of all these games except <em>Venba</em> and <em>Stray Gods</em>.)</p>
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<h2>Venba</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Visai Games -- <a href="https://venbagame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A small narrative game about cooking and being an Indian immigrant. Evocative, both for the smells of food and the pain of families not keeping in contact as much as they should.</p>
<p>This was the game where everybody loved it and I said "I dunno, not seeing it." I mean I <em>liked</em> it. It's a nice little story and the cooking feels right. Well done. (Ha ha sorry.) It didn't particularly hit me in the feels though.</p>
<p>That's just me though. Plenty of people -- not just those of Asian descent or immigrant family history -- are saying "Ow, my heart." Quite possibly you too.</p>
<h2>In Stars and Time</h2>
<ul>
<li>by insertdisc5 -- <a href="http://instarsandtime.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A JRPG with a time-loop gimmick. You lead a party of anime-styled weirdos to defeat the King Who Froze Time. If you die (or get frozen), you can reset to a checkpoint, but you remember everything. (The other party members do not.) Thus, the usual range of information puzzles: finding secrets to be used "earlier", learning through death-and-retry. Also you clobber a lot of slimes.</p>
<p>I'm all in favor of time-loop gimmicks, but the JRPG format means you have to traverse a lot of samey hallways over and over again. While dodging slimes. The slimes <em>are</em> usually dodgeable and there's no penalty for fleeing combat. So it's not as annoying as your Final-Fantasy nightmares might lead you to expect. But then rewinding rewinds (nearly) the entire party state, so there you are, grinding for keys and level-ups again. (You keep your personal XP and skills, but not keys or items, and everybody else resets completely.) So it's still <em>somewhat</em> annoying.</p>
<p>The high point is the writing. It presents as comic buddy-banter, but there's really an awful lot of character writing underneath. (I'd call it Homestuckian if I'd ever read <em>Homestuck</em>.) Everybody chats on about their life and history... and the digressions accumulate into a densely-knit world over time, with one of the more thoughtful Fantasy Religion Ideas I've come across recently.</p>
<p>Also, creepy stuff around the edges. I didn't have time to finish; I'm pretty sure I'm less than halfway through. But there's some seriously weird stuff going on in the world's history. I intend to get back to it so I can find out what the hell.</p>
<p>Also, Bonnie, the party's pre-teen tagalong sidekick, is the best. Snack time!</p>
<p>(Again, more thoughtful than it looks. Bonnie occupies the kiddie-lit-hero role in the story, but it's <em>not</em> a kiddie-lit story. There's undertones to this; the adults in the story are aware of them.)</p>
<h2>The Archivist and the Revolution</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Autumn Chen -- <a href="https://red-autumn.itch.io/archivist">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A grim tale of gig-work librarianship in a rotting dysphoric dystopia.</p>
<p>This is effective but not enticing. There's stuff to discover, down in the depths of the DNA archives; but any subject you care about will cost you more than you can afford. (You can barely pay rent.) Lacking hope, I struggled to get through a single run-through, much less the multiple endings on offer. Again, that's <em>effective</em> -- this is how the meathook future fast approaching will grind up even the most privileged. But it lacks Porpentine's gleeful transgressiveness or the fantasy-of-agency of <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/09/recent-narrative-games-summer-2022">Citizen Sleeper</a></em> or <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/05/2021-igf-nominees-visual-novel-like">Neo Cab</a></em>. (All cited by the author as inspirations.)</p>
<p>It's worth a look. If you're a fashy accelerationist (I know you're not) you need to play this. We can't build a future entirely out of techno-utopian optimism. (See Stross on <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/">where that gets you</a>.) Someone's gotta talk about down sides, and this game is all about the down. But recommending a game because "it's good for you" is rough praise.</p>
<h2>Slay the Princess</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Black Tabby Games -- <a href="https://www.blacktabbygames.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Pen-and-ink visual novel slash time-loop sort of deal where you are exhorted to slay the princess. The princess is chained up in a cabin on a hill. The princess is ostentatiously creepy and maybe deserves it? Then things get weirder, and I do mean "weird fiction" in the pulp sense.</p>
<p>By the end -- assuming what I reached counts as an end -- you've encountered a bunch of versions of the cabin, the princess, the narrator, yourself. The characters are voiced with gusto. The art is stylish and appropriate. There's a bunch of paths and outcomes to explore.</p>
<p>My problem is that the game very deliberately evokes <em>The Stanley Parable</em> to start off with. Everybody loves <em>The Stanley Parable</em> but wow, does it completely deflate the stakes. This is a game; the narrator is talking to you; nothing matters! So there's nothing to be scared of, is there? You can't do cosmic weirdness irrupting into reality when there's no <em>reality</em> to begin with.</p>
<p>The game partakes of the visual-novel "Gotta do several runs to unlock everything" (even with the time-loop trope!) but I'm afraid I didn't stick more than one.</p>
<p>I'd say that even a short introduction to set up the player, the hill, and the cabin as a <em>story</em> would have done wonders. Encounter the princess as a character before you turn her into Stanley's red door. Players don't need much stage-setting to imagine a whole character, history, relationship. That's what games do! Let the narrator off the hook once the hook is set.</p>
<h2>Stray Gods</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Summerfall Studios -- <a href="https://www.summerfallstudios.com/stray-gods">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A hand-drawn-style visual novel musical. Or "operetta" I guess.</p>
<p>I will admit up front that the songs aren't particularly catchy. But the fact that they <em>exist</em>, with all the narrative branching and mid-song verse-swapping that entails, is so mind-blowing that I will take no arguments. A winner.</p>
<p>On top of that, the narrative concept and story are top-notch. Greek gods (but a fresh take on them), surviving or maybe not surviving in the contemporary world. This could have made a first-rate urban fantasy novel and I'm delighted to see it handled just as well in interactive form.</p>
<p>Props to the visuals as well. The animation and backgrounds are simple (albeit with some sneaky zoom and rack-focus shots). But the lively character portraits are immediately engaging; they do as much to sell the story as the voice actors.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/summer-wowzers">full review is here</a>.</p>
<p>I've run into a wide range of opinions since I wrote that. A lot of people only want to talk about the songs, and like I said, the songs aren't bangers. They're there to move the story forward, or rather to let <em>you</em> move the story forward. If you're bored of modernized Greek mythology -- or visual novels -- and the musical interaction doesn't do it for you, you may struggle with <em>Stray Gods</em>. I loved it though.</p>The spirit of new devices2024-01-13T02:47:57+00:002024-01-13T02:47:57+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-13:/2024/01/the-spirit-of-new-devicesI see that Apple's new headset (I can't say "Apple-Vision" without smirking) is available next month. (If you click on that Apple-Vision link, you wanna wait for the Apple to boot up and then type RUN APPLEVISION. Unmute the sound too.) Eh, ...<p>I see that Apple's new headset (I can't say "<a href="https://archive.org/details/glitch_33master">Apple-Vision</a>" without smirking) is available next month.</p>
<p>(If you click on that <a href="https://archive.org/details/glitch_33master">Apple-Vision</a> link, you wanna wait for the Apple to boot up and then type <code>RUN APPLEVISION</code>. Unmute the sound too.)</p>
<p>Eh, look. I am a person who loves a new toy. I'd love to play with this new thing. But I'm not going to buy one. $3500 is out of my price range for new toy vibes.</p>
<p>To be sure, it's not <em>just</em> new toy vibes. I can tell you exactly when I realized that Apple was onto something with this "spatial computing" business. It was last summer, in Pittsburgh, the day before <a href="https://narrascope.org/">NarraScope</a> got going. I was trying to sort something out on the web site -- I think it was labelling which <a href="https://2023.narrascope.org/pages/schedule-grid.html">talks</a> would be presented remotely. I'm hunched over a 13" MacBook in my hotel room, cross-checking three spreadsheets and a JSON file, plus an SSH window and a browser to preview the result.</p>
<p>And then, of an instant, I imagine making this Cassandra-the-Librarian <em>whoosh</em> gesture and flinging those six windows all around me, around the hotel room. I could just sit in the middle and <em>see</em> everything.</p>
<p>That's Apple Vision Pro in a nutshell. It's a solid idea. But I only need that <em>whoosh</em> once a year, at best, and $3500 just isn't the right price for it. I will be interested to see the second-gen model.</p>
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<p>I'll also be interested to see how the headset spreads. I remember the Apple Watch and the Airpods had their definite moments of "Oh, that person on the subway has 'em, it must be real." I remember the same moment for the iPad in 2010, in fact. The devices were self-advertising.</p>
<p>The headset ain't. It's not a wear-in-public device. I know people have been making "Glasshole" jokes since the reveal, but in fact Apple's marketing has been <em>extremely</em> deliberate. They <em>never</em> depict someone wearing the headset in public. People wear them in their impeccably furnished homes, or maybe in the office with a couple of coworkers nearby. One shot of an airplane traveller donning a headset for privacy.</p>
<p>But seeing one on the street -- that idea is carefully out of bounds. I mean, I live in Camberville, so I'm going to run into <em>someone</em> wearing one in public. But mostly, no. Apple Vision will hide away in people's home offices. You may not even see one when zoom-chatting with someone; the headset is supposed to digitally <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/meet-your-digital-persona-apples-vision-pro-users-to-get-real-time-animated-avatars/">erase itself</a> from the face. (Though that may not work on launch -- "feature still in beta".)</p>
<p>Capturing spatial video in public? The headset may have a recording camera, but what Apple has <em>announced</em> is that you record 3D video using your <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/12/apple-introduces-spatial-video-capture-on-iphone-15-pro/">phone</a>. Same way everybody has been recording video for the past decade.</p>
<p>Expect a year of news stories like "Apple Vision -- is it a flop?" (There's an insatiable market for such stories, going back to the first iPhone.) I think it will be a hit, but not like other Apple hits.</p>
<hr />
<p>Speaking of new toy love, I owe my faithful readers a followup on the Steam Deck. You recall I <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/05/i-am-person-who-will-buy-steampal-sure">stumped pretty hard</a> for the idea. I <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/07/i-see-they-called-it-steam-deck">pre-ordered</a> the Steam Deck as soon as I could, waited a year (supply chains, whee) and then <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/07/i-am-person-who-bought-steam-deck">it arrived</a> in 2022.</p>
<p>And I used it! For a week. Since then... um, it's sat on the shelf.</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/steamdeck.jpeg"><img alt="A Steam Deck sitting on top of its carrying case on a shelf of miscellaneous tech junk." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2024/01/steamdeck-s.jpeg" /></a>
Sad and slightly dusty.</p>
</div>
<p>I should have known, really. All my productive activity from blogging to email to code to art winds up on my desktop Mac. I <em>could</em> migrate some tasks to a tablet, but why would I? The Mac has better screens and I'm comfortable in this chair.</p>
<p>In exactly the same way, all my gaming winds up on the desktop Windows box. (Except for a few mobile games, but that list has <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/04/is-apple-arcade-even-thing-any-more">stopped growing</a>.) It's a good box, the monitor is big enough, and I'm comfortable in this chair. Same chair -- I just roll it to the other desk.</p>
<p>I have a lovely couch and a reading chair, but do I wind up playing games on them? It seems not. I have never packed the Steam Deck for a trip. So that experiment has quietly failed.</p>
<p>I certainly don't regret buying the Deck. $680 is well within my new-toy budget limit. I was able to test <em>Meanwhile</em> and <em>Hadean Lands</em> on the device. (Spoiler: <em>Meanwhile</em> worked great, <em>HL</em> not so much.) If I ever change my mind and decide to get hooked on a couch game, the thing is waiting for me.</p>
<p>I still think the Deck was a winning move for Steam, both for getting a foot into the mobile gaming market and for solidifying Proton/WINE support as a standard for developers. It is true, though, that I've never seen one on the subway.</p>
<p>Ah well. More IGF reviews tomorrow, I promise.</p>2024 IGF nominees: normal stuff2024-01-12T03:36:55+00:002024-01-12T03:36:55+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-12:/2024/01/2024-igf-nominees-normal-stuffTime has come 'round for the IGF finalists, and my posts about them. This was a rough year for judging -- in more ways than one. Many great entries. Many great entries that the judges didn't agree on! I think every single game on the top list ...<p>Time has come 'round for the <a href="https://igf.com/article/visai-games-venba-leads-finalists-2024-igf-awards">IGF finalists</a>, and my posts about them.</p>
<p>This was a rough year for judging -- in more ways than one. Many great entries. Many great entries that the judges didn't agree on! I think every single game on the top list had one or two comments saying "Sorry, I just don't see it." And yet every one had passionate defenders too. These posts are my opinions, but I'll try to convey where people disagreed with me.</p>
<p>A rough year for playing, as well. A <em>lot</em> of the year's games tackled the year's fears: COVID, climate change, the immiseration of the middle class, the rise of fascism. Some were optimistic, some were resolute, some were ragingly furious. Some just bled on the page. The ache of fear was down underneath all of it, anyhow. You couldn't play the games without owning it.</p>
<hr />
<p>First group to discuss: familiar genres. Which isn't a dig; I'm not putting the weaker titles first! But there's games that push the boundaries of design, and games that give you a lot of comfortably familiar gameplay. This is the latter.</p>
<p>"Normal stuff" is probably a bad title. But I have "weird stuff" cued up for tomorrow's post, so here we are.</p>
<ul>
<li>American Arcadia</li>
<li>Planet of Lana</li>
<li>Tchia</li>
<li>The Talos Principle 2</li>
<li>Spirittea</li>
<li>Cocoon</li>
</ul>
<p>(I don't think IGF announced the jury lists, but I was on the narrative jury, as I have been for several years. I therefore had access to free review copies of these games. I bought <em>Planet of Lana</em>, <em>TP2</em>, and <em>Cocoon</em> with my own money; the rest I played for free.)</p>
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<h2>American Arcadia</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Out of the Blue Games -- <a href="https://www.americanarcadiagame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A side-scroller action game about reality-TV-show world.</p>
<p>This does a nice job of contextualizing the <em>Limbo</em>/<em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2017/01/more-2017-igf-nominees">Inside</a></em> genre: the fixed side-scrolling camera is because you're on TV! Your earbud-buddy sometimes has to hack doors, elevators, or other machines as you run around, thus providing a solid two-handed play mechanic. Occasionally the story breaks out into the hacker's first-person world.</p>
<p>So, fun to play, but the puzzles range from clunky to decent-at-best. Pleasant stuff but you won't break a brain-sweat. The only real challenge is coordinating the "inside" and "outside" actions. (The game says "gamepad recommended", but in fact I found the two-handed action scenes unplayable that way. Mouse-and-WASD worked fine.)</p>
<p>The story should be the highlight, but... the story is kind of limp. Basically "Walmart built Westworld, only with boring office workers instead of gunfights and sex". Um, why? Or is it "<em>The Truman Show</em> minus Jim Carrey"? Just as bad. You may suspect it's all leading up to a third-act twist; I won't say it's <em>not</em>, but it strains to make sense even then.</p>
<p>On the up side, the voice acting is solid. The actors are clearly having a ball and the writing itself is solid. I had a good time running mostly to the right and pulling levers as directed.</p>
<h2>Planet of Lana</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Wishfully Studios -- <a href="https://www.planetoflana.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Speaking of the <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2017/01/more-2017-igf-nominees">Inside</a></em> genre, here's another one. A side-scrolling platformer with the traditional mix of puzzles and post-apocalyptic megastructures. Unlike <em>American Arcadia</em>, it retains the genre's traditional wordlessness.</p>
<p>This was perfectly satisfactory but it didn't stand out from its crowd by much. There's a bit of alien-language puzzle stuff -- musical puzzles, not language-translation puzzles, but it still adds a nice thematic cohesion to the storyline. Other than that, you push a lot of crates and dodge a lot of sentry robots.</p>
<h2>Tchia</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Awaceb -- <a href="https://www.awaceb.com/tchia">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Open-world cutesy action game inspired by the Pacific island of New Caledonia. </p>
<p>This is fun in an explore-world-collect-stuff way, and it does a nice job of conveying the landscape and social fabric of New Caledonia. (Particularly the uncomfortable contrast between the big city, the small villages, and mining/industrial installations.) The landscape (and seascape) is gorgeous in its stylized way. Running, swimming, or -- spoiler -- flying through it is always pleasant.</p>
<p>However, the narrative doesn't live up to its initial promise. The game introduces an oppressive greedy president-figure as the antagonist. Of course; you can't talk about island nations without tackling colonialism. But that story almost immediately falls off-stage. You spend the first half of the game running around collecting shells and stuff. The tension just vanishes -- no conflict between peoples, no conflict between lifestyles, no economic conflict, no conflict stemming from history, no conflict. (Except for scattered evil-sentries whose symbolism is fantasy-magic, unconnected to anything.)</p>
<p>The plot eventually creeps back on stage, but it never forms a coherent thesis. It is not, in fact, about colonialism. Factories are bad, but not for any <em>reason</em>. The island has no history beyond the one antagonist. It's basically a tourist show -- dances and carved totems to see on your visit. There's a traditional myth behind the story, but you don't encounter it until late in the game. I don't think I learned anything else about New Caledonian culture except "give your host a <a href="https://www.newcaledonia.travel/nz/traditions">gift</a>" and "try the porc au sucre".</p>
<p>For all that, I blew a lot of hours running around the island doing chores and hunting treasure chests. It's a perfectly cheerful game. I wanted something non-challenging (after all the catastrophe-themed games!) and <em>Tchia</em> was it.</p>
<h2>The Talos Principle 2</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Croteam -- <a href="https://www.thetalosprinciple.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>My off-the-cuff summary is "An incremental improvement over <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2014/12/the-talos-principle-design-ruminations">TP1</a>." Ouch? No, they really have improved every single aspect of the formula. The scenery is better. The environments and geography are more interesting. The puzzle mechanics are more combinatoric, with the most annoying ones (bombs, time-replay) swapped out for better ideas. There's a mini-map. There's charismatic megastructures. The difficulty curve is more inviting. The story is more detailed. You can find "skip" tokens to bypass the puzzles you're really stuck on (and the game doesn't give you crap about it). The tetromino puzzles are <em>slightly</em> more diegetic and, thank Elohim, there are many fewer of them.</p>
<p>(There's a running-gag love letter to interactive fiction, and I am absolutely not up-voting TP2 because of it. That would be artistically unfair. The winners of Robot IFComp are pretty great though.)</p>
<p>All that aside: this is still a giant-stack-of-puzzles game in the end. And in the middle. And in the beginning really. The story, elaborate and elaborated as it is, clearly started with a bunch of writers saying: "We've escaped Elohim's test-chamber simulation, but we still gotta fill the world with laser-and-crate puzzles. Why?"</p>
<p>Well, the game answers that, although it takes its time about it. Like the first game, TP2's dialogues are an intensive philosophy session straight out of your weed-hazed college dorm. But where the first game was all about the nature of consciousness and reality, good and evil -- topics which can only take so much beating before the P-zombie dies -- <em>this</em> game's topics are <em>social</em> philosophy. What are our society's goals, and how do we figure them out? Do we focus on cultivating humanity's dreams or curbing its excesses? How do we distinguish between our ideals and the people who embody them? How do we, collectively, achieve virtue? And, bringing it back to the painfully pragmatic, how do we avoid another climate catastrophe? (Recall that homo sapiens is thoroughly extinct in these games, done in by a fossil plague in the permafrost.) It's still sophomoric in the non-prejudicial sense, but it's way more on-point for our times and -- dare I say -- worth a few thoughtful moments between the puzzles.</p>
<p>TP1 was solitary, enacting its story through journals and records. This time we're engaged with society, so we need a society -- a wannabe-utopia of 1000 robots. (You are "1K", the newest and perhaps last.) And it is a motley crowd of robots: leaders, artisans, archivists, mechanics, journalists, inventors, historians, explorers, and that one guy who plays guitar in the park all day. And they all have <em>opinions</em>. (And voices; a wonderfully distinct mob of charactor voice actors.) You can spend as much time as you want with them, arguing or asking or answering. Naturally, your opinions on society's Big Questions (and little ones) will shape the outcome of the game.</p>
<p>Even the puzzle setup nods at the idea of collective effort. Occasionally one of your companion NPCs offers (or is dragged in) to solving a puzzle for you. Don't worry, it's just a token effort; you are the only robot who really <em>likes</em> solving. Mostly the others help by mapping the world (your mini-map!) or fixing the elevators or whatever else is going on.</p>
<p>I suppose this all sounds snarky, but really TP2 is very successful. You wanted more puzzles, you got more puzzles, and you <em>also</em> got a whole high-production-value narrative game to go along with it. If <em>Talos Principle</em> was a <em>Portal</em>-like, TP2 is a <em>Portal-2</em>-like -- in the best way.</p>
<h2>Spirittea</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Cheesemaster Games -- <a href="https://spiritteagame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Cozy farming sim, except instead of a run-down farm, you've got a run-down bathhouse for Miyazakian nature spirits.</p>
<p>This is very much of its genre: you need to earn money to repair and expand your bathhouse to bring in more money. It's got a dating minigame and a fishing minigame and a furniture-arranging minigame and a drinking minigame (I didn't try that one). I'm pretty sure it will eventually have a farming minigame, once your bathhouse develops a kitchen and guests have favorite recipes.</p>
<p>However, the bathhouse setting refreshes the whole concept. No planting onions! At least not at the beginning. Instead, you bustle around chopping wood and laying out fresh towels for guests and making sure everybody is harmoniously arranged in the bathing pool. I was sold the minute I stumbled across a broom and realized (without tutorial prompting) that I could get rid of all the dust and cobwebs <em>and I really wanted to</em>.</p>
<p>Plus there's a blindingly detailed little Japanese village full of lovingly characterized NPCs. The game's first mission is to say hello to all of them. (It's a contemporary setting, if rustic. The tension between that and the nature spirits who only you can see is clearly going to underpin the plot.)</p>
<p>I put <em>Spirittea</em> aside because I had lots of other games to play. I could see jumping back into it and getting hooked, though.</p>
<h2>Cocoon</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Geometric Interactive -- <a href="https://www.cocoongame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Puzzle game where you carry spheres around. Spheres can contain puzzles, each other, and you.</p>
<p>This is one of my top puzzle picks for the year. It's not extremely long or difficult, but it does what it does well and thoughtfully. Mind-twisting puzzle concepts explored just enough. Tightly guided without ever losing its open, worlds-to-explore feel.</p>
<p>The only down side are the "boss fights". These wouldn't be difficult for Soulsy-game fans, but I'm not one. I struggled. The game desperately needs <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/01/2023-igf-nominees-mind-dot-dot-dot-blown">Tunic</a></em>'s "no harm, no foul, I'm just here for the puzzles" accessibility option.</p>
<p>It's also gorgeous in an alien/biomorphic/insectile (but not creepy) way. Plus awesome soundtrack.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/summer-wowzers">full review is here</a>. Mind you, I've seen a bunch of discussion since then from people who disagree with me about the game. On two counts:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>The boss fights hit different people very differently. Some people found them a chill break in the puzzle-pacing. Some people found them annoying. Some people, like me, got frustrated and bored retrying the same challenge over and over. However, that very disagreement proves my point: puzzle fans have widely varying capacities for twitch gaming. You need an accessibility option.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I found the "wedge-chocking", the map control via doors and elevators, to be wonderfully smooth and clever. The game keeps you on track without ever feeling like an artificial sequence of levels. But quite a few people thought it was irritatingly linear; it drained the game of challenge by forcing you towards the current puzzle and its solution. This is very different from the previous disagreement! It's purely about puzzle design and presentation. </p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I <em>did</em> find the game moderately challenging; not a brain-smoker, but not something I could just stumble through with my eyes shut. And I don't think I'm <em>bad</em> at puzzles. Maybe I just get an undue thrill out of juggling maps in my head?</p>
<p>If I had to guess, I'd say my solving approach is on the tactile end -- I like to bang around and feel puzzles out -- and this game has a lot of banging around. So I felt like I spent most of my time <em>solving</em>. If your approach is to gather all the intel and then fire up the brain, you could have exactly the same experience but decide the game is 90% walking around and 10% real solving work.</p>
<p>I suspect there's more to say on this but I'll save it for another post.</p>Job status update, 20242024-01-08T23:18:57+00:002024-01-08T23:18:57+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2024-01-08:/2024/01/job-state-2024Today was my first day as a Senior Systems Engineer at Possibility Space. I spent it on the traditional first-day activities of "installing gigabytes of files on a brand-new work machine" and "trying to log into the HR site". (PS is an entirely ...<p>Today was my first day as a Senior Systems Engineer at <a href="https://possibility.co/">Possibility Space</a>. I spent it on the traditional first-day activities of "installing gigabytes of files on a brand-new work machine" and "trying to log into the HR site".</p>
<p>(PS is an entirely distributed company, so I'm working from home, which is how I like it.)</p>
<p>Not much to report, as the studio is still in quiet mode. You might see some familiar names on the <a href="https://possibility.co/team">PS team page</a>, although not me yet -- the page is a bit out of date. I'm going to be working on content authoring tools and the related in-game systems. That's the same general area that I worked on at The Molasses Flood, so I am well satisfied with my new position. At least so far. We'll see how I feel once I bang into the code.</p>
<p>More news when we have something to talk about!</p>On browsing2023-12-17T21:39:23+00:002023-12-17T21:39:23+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-12-17:/2023/12/on-browsingA few days ago I pulled up the iTunes Store app on my iPad, hit the "TV Show" tab, and saw this: iTunes Store app as of iOS 17.2. Turns out, Apple has revamped its store setup in the iOS 17.2 update. (See post at 9to5Mac.) Used to be you ...<p>A few days ago I pulled up the iTunes Store app on my iPad, hit the "TV Show" tab, and saw this:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/itunes-tv-tab.png"><img alt="App error screen: "iTunes TV Shows and Your Purchases Have Moved. You can buy TV shows and find your purchases in the Apple TV app."" src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/itunes-tv-tab-s.png" /></a>
iTunes Store app as of iOS 17.2.</p>
</div>
<p>Turns out, Apple has revamped its store setup in the iOS 17.2 update. (See <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2023/10/24/report-apple-planning-revamped-tv-app-will-discontinue-dedicated-itunes-movie-and-tv-show-apps/">post at 9to5Mac</a>.) Used to be you could buy TV content in two places: the "TV Show" tab of the iTunes Store app, and the "Store" tab of the TV app. And the two tabs were laid out differently! It was just confusing. So as of this month, they're dropping one option and referring you to the other.</p>
<p>Okay, that makes sense. iTunes is for music; TV is for TV (and movies).</p>
<p>But like I said: <em>the two tabs were laid out differently</em>. They offered different browsing views. And Apple <em>didn't</em> merge the features together. They just dropped one.</p>
<p>So now browsing for TV shows sucks. It's broken for me, and for people like me.</p>
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<a name="more"></a>
<hr />
<p>I watch a moderate amount of TV. Mostly sci-fi shows. I'm not watching TV every night, but I like to keep an eye on what's on. If something looks cool, hey, I'll watch an episode or two. If I like it -- or if I realize I'm on episode 5 -- I plunk down money for the season pass. Then when the next season rolls around, I plunk down money for that.</p>
<p>Thus, my regular question: "What's new in SF/fantasy TV?" My habit is to check this every week or so.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Sidebar:</em> You've already noticed something weird. I said "I plunk down money for the season pass." Uh, who does that? Sorry! It's me. I do that.</p>
<p>For various reasons not discussed here, I avoid monthly TV subscriptions. I don't have Netflix, or Disney+, or Paramount+, or AmazonPrime, or HBOWhatever. I don't even subscribe to AppleTV+ -- despite Tim Cook's puppydog eyes. I realize this makes me a freak in this modern TV world.</p>
<p>So I'm <em>really</em> asking: "What's new in SF TV that's available for purchase on Apple's store?" This makes my TV-browsing problem harder.</p>
<p>However, my peculiar habit is not the <em>primary</em> problem with Apple's TV UI. I promise it sucks for lots of people, not just me. The problem is...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problem is, Apple has never really believed in search. The media stores have a search tab, but it's simplistic. Titles; maybe actor names if you're lucky. There's no notion of "advanced search". No "sort by". No selectors for genre or year or format.</p>
<p>(No natural-language search either. I tried typing "recent scifi" into the search bar, but the results were pretty much the same as "scifi". Plus actors named "Fi* Sci*". It certainly wasn't limited to recent shows -- <em>Star Trek Enterprise</em> and <em>TNG</em> both popped up in the TV results.)</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-search-recent.png"><img alt="Search result page showing "Allegiant", "Monarch", a few other recent SF shows, and two actors whose last names start with "Sci"." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-search-recent-s.png" /></a>
Attempt to search for "recent scifi".</p>
</div>
<p>The old TV-tab-of-iTunes wasn't ideal, but it basically offered me the view I wanted. It had a Genres list; you could select "Sci-fi"; it showed you a page with current shows. You might have to browse into "Hot picks" or "New box sets" or a couple of other lists, but you could get the current goods.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>Another sidebar:</em> The pickings have been slim this year, which is not Apple's fault. We're in the neck of the shows that didn't get made because of the Hollywood strikes. Also, the CW has finished cancelling its "nonthreateningly diverse" romps (Arrowverse, <em>Nancy Drew</em>, etc) -- those were a cheesy staple of my TV time, now gone. And the streaming wars have intensified, of course. I've missed all the recent Star Wars and Marvel shows; they never appear on Apple's store.</p>
<p>But I've got <em>some</em> stuff to watch. Paramount and Amazon let their shows trickle out over time. I was late seeing the musical episode of <em>Strange New Worlds</em>, but I got there. <em>Sandman</em>. <em>Wheel of Time</em>. Also, the strikes pushed Apple to bring a lot of anime on board; I'm not a voracious anime fan but <em>Hell's Paradise</em> was my thing. I didn't like <em>Wednesday</em> but it was worth a try. And so on.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Well. The old TV-tab-of-iTunes is gone now, and the Store-tab-of-TV is garbage. It just isn't designed for people like me. I want to look at a chronological list and scroll until I've seen what's new. Come back next week, do it again. So what do I even do with <em>this?</em></p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-top-chart-tv.png"><img alt="Store page titled "Top Chart: TV". The top items are "Rick and Morty", "Pan Am", "Special Ops: Lioness", and "Fargo"." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-top-chart-tv-s.png" /></a>
The "Top Chart: TV" page in the TV app.</p>
</div>
<p>This list <em>includes</em> recent SF, but it's certainly not a list of recent SF. There's no genre filter and no way to sort by date.</p>
<p>The store page has a "New & Noteworthy" list, but it's not browsable, and it's mostly movies. It has "Top TV Box Sets" and "Top Season Passes" -- again, not by genre and not by date. There's a "Browse by Genre" list, but if I select "Sci-Fi" I get a mix of movies and TV shows.</p>
<p>This "Shows with Buzz" list is the closest I can find to what I want:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-shows-with-buzz.png"><img alt="Store page titled "Shows With Buzz" under "Sci-Fi". The top items are "Resident Alien", "Pantheon", Surreal Estate", "Kizazi Moto", "The Peripheral", and "Clone High"." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-shows-with-buzz-s.png" /></a>
The "Sci-Fi / Shows With Buzz" page in the TV app.</p>
</div>
<p>But this doesn't distinguish between the Apple store and other services that Apple has app agreements with. Note all the Star Wars stuff:</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-open-disney.png"><img alt="Store page for "Andor", with a button for downloading the Disney+ app." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-open-disney-s.png" /></a>
What happens when you select <em>Andor</em>.</p>
</div>
<p>I know, I'm the guy who refuses to subscribe to Disney+. But that page isn't just Apple and Disney+. It's an unlabelled mix of services, half of which I've never heard of: Bravo, Hulu, Viki, Crunchyroll, Pluto, Tubi, Freevee. Nobody has <em>all</em> of those.</p>
<p>The MacOS TV app is set up the same way, as of MacOS 14.2 Sonoma. In case you were wondering. It used to have separate tabs for "TV Shows" and "Movies", which was <em>slightly</em> better. But that tiny convenience is now gone. (At least the "Genre" selector includes SF now, <em>which it didn't before</em>, sheesh.)</p>
<p>At this point, it seems like the best option is third-party search tools. <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/provider/apple-tv/tv-shows">JustWatch</a> has genre, year, and a "Provider" selector that includes Apple. The filtering is... I'm still trying to figure out the filtering but I can probably get something out of it. Better than Apple's UI, anyhow.</p>
<hr />
<p>By the way, I have the same problem buying books.</p>
<p>Books are not the same as TV. There are <em>so many</em> SF books being published these days (including indie and self-publishing!) A chronological list of "what's new in SF" would be useless. It would just be swamped every week; I'd never get through it.</p>
<p>(I frequently browse Tor.com's <a href="https://www.tor.com/tags/new-releases/">All the New SF/Fantasy Books</a> list; it's an excellent resource. But the title is not <em>remotely</em> accurate. It's "A Few SF/F Titles From Selected Traditional Publishers.")</p>
<p>Still, I wish Apple's bookstore would let me do queries. "Show me new releases from authors I've bought before". Or, better, "New releases from author I follow." (Apple has never had the notion of following an artist... shush, nobody remembers <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping">Ping</a>.)</p>
<p>This wouldn't get me into <em>new</em> authors, but at least it would show me a stack of books I want. </p>
<p>(For new authors, see the Tor link above. Also, walking into <a href="https://pandemoniumbooks.com/">real live bookstores</a> is great. Bookstores! Where all the employees love books -- they're sure not doing it for the money -- and they love to put notes on the shelves to recommend you their favorites! Seriously, go to bookstores.)</p>
<p>(But yes, I buy more ebooks than physical books. So I still have the browsing problem.)</p>
<p>I'd love to complain about Apple's bookstore interface, but the truth is, I've never even tried it. Here, I'll go look now.</p>
<div class="ImageWrap Center">
<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-books-sff.png"><img alt="Store page titled "See What's New" under "Sci-Fi & Fantasy". The top items are by Brandon Sanderson, Megan E. O'Keefe, V. E. Schwab, and Travis Baldree." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/12/store-books-sff-s.png" /></a>
The "Sci-Fi & Fantasy / See What's New" page in the Books app.</p>
</div>
<p>Okay, admission: this is a decent showing for "browse new SF". It's a narrow subset (like Tor.com, like bookstores) but it's got authors I like and books I've tried. If they turn this list over every month, I will add it to my regular browsing habit.</p>
<hr />
<p>So what do we conclude?</p>
<p>It's easy to say "They're pushing their streaming service." Apple <em>loves</em> pushing AppleTV+. They give it a top-level Store tab and prominent "Apple Original" features on other pages.</p>
<p>But I don't think that explains the overall design. Does Apple want to push Disney+ and Amazon Prime and Crunchyroll <em>too</em>? Surely they get more money when I buy a-la-carte from Apple's own store. If I subscribed to those other services, Apple wouldn't get <em>any</em> of my money. (Or maybe a scrap through some customer-sharing agreement, but Apple can't be bullying <em>that</em> much money out of Bezos or the Mouse.)</p>
<p>I think it's down to Apple's oldest flaw: they imagine a perfect customer and design everything for that person. And, I hate to say it, but they don't think much of that person's taste. (The Apple customer has impeccable taste in <em>hardware</em>, of course. But media is different.)</p>
<p>Imagine someone who... doesn't care whether they watch TV or a movie tonight? I'm sure there's people like that. Anybody can flump on the couch and say "show me whatever." But TV and movies are different forms. It's <em>possible</em> to prefer one over the other. I need to be able to decide which to search for.</p>
<p>Imagine someone who... subscribes to every single streaming service? That's the only way I can interpret these mixed-up, unfilterable lists.</p>
<p>Imagine someone who... has never watched a SF show and just wants to try a popular hit? SF is a field I follow! At least a little bit. I've <em>heard</em> of most shows. That's why I want a chronological list. Over time, I will see <em>every title</em>. I'm not going to watch everything but I am going to <em>make a decision</em> about watching everything.</p>
<p>It's the "chronological timeline vs algorithm" argument! Really, it's exactly the same as Twitter. (Back when we still cared about Twitter.) The Algorithm is designed to be good for most people, but that doesn't mean it's universal. People really do engage with your stuff in different ways.</p>
<p>Same goes for books. I said the "new SF" tab was pretty decent. But I still need that "all new releases from authors I read" view. (Chronological!) They're <em>both</em> key to how I buy books, and Apple only gives me one of them.</p>
<hr />
<p>This isn't a book-blog (I <a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/bookscan/booklist.html">had that habit once</a>, lost it, sorry). But as a bonus, here's what I think of those authors in the "new SF books" screenshot...</p>
<ul>
<li>Brandon Sanderson: I used to read some of his stuff, but now it's all embroiled in this multiverse and I can't possibly keep up.</li>
<li>Megan E. O'Keefe: Read one of hers but didn't get into it.</li>
<li>V. E. Schwab: Ditto.</li>
<li>Travis Baldree: I read the coffeeshop book (first in the series). I like a cozy post-adventurer fantasy, but I have to say, that was too cozy for me. Try Gaie Sebold instead.</li>
<li>Benedict Jacka: Urban fantasy author. I haven't followed his stuff but I've read a couple.</li>
<li>Alix E. Harrow: Liked the <em>Witches</em> one, couldn't get into <em>Doors of January</em>, haven't decided whether I'll try this one.</li>
<li>Jordan Peele et al: Not generally a horror fan.</li>
<li>K. J. Parker: Loved the previous short-snarky-Byzantine-fantasy series. Will certainly devour this new trilogy.</li>
<li>Michelle Sagara: I was into the <em>Cast In</em> series for a long time, but then it went on even longer and I burned out on it. Sorry.</li>
<li>Kadrey and Khaw: I've read this one. Two skilled horror authors try to squick each other out at novel length. It was incredibly well-written and I want to bury it at the bottom of a lye pit.</li>
</ul>
<p>I know that's a lot of ambivalence, but it's really a high hit rate for me. Like I said, I want to <em>make a decision</em> about a broad range of SF. I've tried every single author on that front page! ("Some authors in there", for the Peele anthology.) It's the right sort of list to show me.</p>
<p>Scrolling farther down that page, some selections:</p>
<p>(Hey, the list <em>does</em> change every few days, although most of the titles from Friday are still there. Will have to see if it's worth browsing weekly or monthly.)</p>
<ul>
<li>Josiah Bancroft: <em>The Hexologists</em> was a fun romp.</li>
<li>Samit Basu: As titles go, <em>The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport</em> is pure Zarf-bait. On my check-it-out list.</li>
<li>Carter Damon: Some kind of near-future first-contact SF. It's always risky when a self-published author self-describes their stuff as "a radically original plot", especially when the blurb make me think "hm, Eric S. Nylund".</li>
<li>Lotta Warhammer books. I've never read those -- just not into the setting -- but it's worth keeping an eye on the authors. When they venture out into original work it's usually very readable.</li>
<li>Some established authors that I'm into: John Scalzi, Patrick Rothfuss, Martha Wells. I don't need to search for this stuff. A new Murderbot always taps my social feed.</li>
<li>Many established authors that I'm not into, or no longer into: Terry Brooks, Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Larry Correia, C. J. Cherryh (she's great, I can't do twenty Foreigner books). <em>Star Wars Yet More</em> and <em>The Infinite Flogging of Dune</em>. I'm not complaining that the store lists this stuff; really the best place for it is right here, around page 3 of the results.</li>
</ul>
<p>Comics: Aiyee, don't talk to me about comics. I hear Amazon finally finished murdering Comixology. I was out of comics for decades but I'm starting to pick up a hit graphic novel every month or two. <em>Far Sector</em>, <em>Cosmic Detective</em>, Tom King's <em>Supergirl</em>. In comics book stores. Stores are great.</p>A few narrative game comments2023-12-01T22:33:14+00:002023-12-01T22:33:14+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-12-01:/2023/12/a-few-narrativeIGF season is upon us, which means a lot of review posts in the pipeline for January. In the meantime, here's a couple of games that aren't IGF entries! Jusant by Don't Nod -- game site Rock-climbing puzzle game in a strange world that blends ...<p>IGF season is upon us, which means a lot of review posts in the pipeline for January. In the meantime, here's a couple of games that <em>aren't</em> IGF entries!</p>
<h2>Jusant</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Don't Nod -- <a href="https://dont-nod.com/en/games/jusant/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Rock-climbing puzzle game in a strange world that blends desert and coral reef. The sea is gone, but the cnidaria remain.</p>
<p>The climbing emphasizes persistence and planning, not speed or timing. You're always roped, for a start. If you fall, the worst that can happen is dangling and climbing back up.</p>
<p>I thought the game could have leaned harder into the climbing-sandbox idea. The engine supports very open mechanics: you can attach your rope anywhere, swing from any attachment point, jump from any hold. But most of the routes are restricted to a single good path. Occasionally the game hands you a big open wall with lots of options, but I felt like that should have been the <em>whole game</em>. At least after the intro chapter.</p>
<p>But it's a lovely world, full of quiet depths and secrets and sea-colored light. I was delighted to spend my hours ascending through it.</p>
<p>The story... I dunno. Everybody wants to talk about climate change. I get this. The journal-threads of communities surviving in a strange world: great stuff. (Reminded me of <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2022/01/2022-igf-nominees-miscellaneous">Sable</a></em>.) But the fairy-tale "boy ascends mountain, talks to ancient machinery, a miracle occurs -- whales!" That just doesn't land any more. That's 20th-century fantasy. We gotta save ourselves.</p>
<p>Single-player videogames are very biased towards the single-savior story. Of course! We still need to start thinking in bigger terms though. </p>
<h2>The Invincible</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Starward Industries -- <a href="https://invinciblethegame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>"Explore creepy abandoned spaceships from your first-person space-helmet" is a pretty well-established trope at this point. (<em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2017/01/2017-igf-nominees-my-comments">Event[0]</a></em>, <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2018/01/tacoma-design-ruminations">Tacoma</a></em>, <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/01/four-or-five-recent-lovecraftians">Moons of Madness</a></em>, <em>Deliver Us the Moon</em>... Even <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/10/outer-wilds-echoes-of-eye">Outer Wilds</a></em> starts there, although it takes it to another level entirely.)</p>
<p>The layering of Lovecraftian slime varies; the puzzle-to-story ratio varies. But most of these games have pretty linear plots. You explore, but the puzzle gating pins you to a well-crafted sequence of story beats.</p>
<p><em>The Invincible</em> is a satisfying break from that tradition. It leans hard into meaningful story variation. Character interaction scenes have several possible outcomes which affect the following chapters. When you explore an area, you can be as thorough as you please, or not. Reading more notes and journals gives you a different perspective on later revelations, but they're not the main story. Even when getting from point A to point B, you've usually got a couple of possible routes through the delightfully topological landscape. The difference may be just "cautiously navigate a slope" vs "slip, scream, and fall," but it feels like a different story beat.</p>
<p>I haven't read the Stanislaw Lem story that the game is based on. Feels authentic to Lem's writing as I remember it, though. (Creepy dystopian alienness Lem, not comedy spacepilot / robot Lem.)</p>
<p>There's also a lot of climbing, which somehow ties <em>The Invincible</em> in with <em>Jusant</em> even though the gameplay is completely different. It's extremely haptic climbing. You heave yourself up with your fat space-glove hands, and sometimes you slip and fall, and you can feel it in your gut. That's how I'd sum up the game: it uses first-person to make an alien world visceral, but it doesn't neglect the narrative variation. I liked it.</p>All that Infocom interpreter code2023-11-21T16:35:26+00:002023-11-21T16:35:26+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-11-21:/2023/11/infocom-interpretersJason Scott posted the source code for all the Infocom games in 2019. This was pretty awesome. Everybody who is interested in that stuff cheered, and now it's part of the common knowledge of Infocom. If you're researching the history of those ...<p>Jason Scott posted <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2019/04/all-of-infocoms-game-source-code">the source code for all the Infocom games</a> in 2019. This was pretty awesome. Everybody who is interested in that stuff cheered, and now it's part of the common knowledge of Infocom. If you're researching the history of those games, or want to study their design, you can <a href="https://eblong.com/infocom">dig in</a>.</p>
<p>Not just research, either. Some fans have grabbed the Infocom source and run with it. For example, "less-cruel" mods of <a href="https://github.com/heasm66/modified_zork1">Zork</a> or <a href="https://github.com/Kweepa/Planetfall-Modern">Planetfall</a> without the lamp/food time limits. Or <a href="https://github.com/eriktorbjorn/minizork2-renovated">bug fixes for Mini-Zork 2</a>. Or this recent <a href="https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=33vo6hneh99pjd41">fan construction of the Hitchhiker's sequel</a>. (Can't call it a "reconstruction" when the original was so sketchy; this <em>Milliways</em> is mostly original work.)</p>
<p>So the game source was big news. Infocom's <em>interpreter</em> source, however, remained obscure. This was the game-playing software for each platform: the Apple 2 interpreter, the Commodore 64 interpreter, and so on. A particular Infocom game release ("Zork 3 for the C64", say) was a floppy containing the C64 interpreter and the Zork-3 game file. Boot the floppy, the interpreter starts up; it loads the game data and the game begins.</p>
<p>These interpreters were well-studied by <a href="https://www.filfre.net/2019/10/new-tricks-for-an-old-z-machine-part-1-digging-the-trenches/">IF enthusiasts</a> in the early 1990s. That's how we got the first <a href="https://ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/old/itf/">open-source IF interpreters</a> and the modern <a href="https://www.inform-fiction.org/zmachine/standards/current/index.html">Z-machine specification</a>. Functionally, we know how they work.</p>
<p>But we never had their <em>source code</em>. You might ask, who cares? It would have been pretty opaque assembly code anyhow. But it's a layer of insight into the developers' minds. Comments, variable names, documentation.</p>
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<p>We got a first glimpse of this in 2018 when Brian Moriarty <a href="https://retrotinker.blogspot.com/2018/02/z-intepreter-source-for-coco-recovered.html">donated the interpreter source</a> for the TRS-80 Color Computer. This assembly code wound up at the <a href="https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Programming/Source/Infocom%20Adventure%20Games%20Interpreter/">CoCo Archive</a>.</p>
<p>(Confusingly, Infocom referred to their interpreters as ZIP, the "Zork Interpreter Program". These days if you say ZIP you're talking about a compression tool. But if you dig into that CoCo package, the file <code>coco.zip</code> is the compiled ZIP program! Don't try to unzip it.)</p>
<p>Anyhow, as far as I knew, no other platform's source was available...</p>
<p>...Until a couple of weeks ago, when someone mentioned in a <a href="https://intfiction.org/t/updating-the-z-machine-standard-documents/64519">forum thread</a> that they had <em>all</em> the old interpreter source lying around. Had for years.</p>
<hr />
<p>Long story short, <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps">here it is</a>.</p>
<p>(Yes, the <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps/tree/master/colorcomputer">CoCo source</a> matches what was posted in 2018.)</p>
<p>Part of the long story involved checking over all the files to make sure there were no personal emails or other material that would be impolite to release. As I was doing that, I took notes. The <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps/blob/master/README.md">README</a> therefore contains info about most of the files. I don't guarantee the accuracy of that stuff; I took a lot of guesses. Corrections welcome.</p>
<p>As a followup, David Fillmore posted the <a href="https://github.com/DFillmore/infocom-ibm-zcode-terps">IBM PC interpreter source</a>, which <em>he</em> had lying around. (Mostly C, a little assembly.) That wasn't in the original source dump.</p>
<hr />
<p>What's interesting in these files?</p>
<p>There's changelogs and release dates for different versions of some of the interpreters. I'm sure this will be good for something.</p>
<p>There's a bunch of internal documentation about <em>creating</em> disks for the various platforms. Remember that in the 1980s, floppy disks were pretty incompatible between platforms. To write a C64 disk, you had to get the game data and interpreter <em>onto a C64</em> which could then write it to disk. But how did you do that? No Wifi, no Ethernet port... Infocom's solution was to run a serial cable from their DEC-20 (where all the games were developed) to the C64 (or wherever). The serial transfer program is called "TFTP" in most of these folders. Do strings like <code>com1:9600,n,8</code> turn you on? You might be a serial port!</p>
<p>There's also a few implementations of a program called "DIP", or sometimes "GRIP". (This seems to have stood for "Display Interpreter Program" or "GRaphical Interpreter Program".) This was <em>like</em> ZIP, but definitely a different format -- meant for graphical games rather than text games.</p>
<p>Aha, you say, DIP must have been used for Infocom's graphical games like <em>Zork Zero</em> or <em>Journey</em>. Nope! Those adventures used a modified ZIP which Infocom called YZIP. (These days we say "Z-machine version 6".)</p>
<p>No, DIP was used for exactly one Infocom release... the digital board game <em><a href="https://www.mobygames.com/game/5860/fooblitzky/">Fooblitzky</a></em>. Which sold like a lead balloon. I never played it. The Infocom fans of 1990 never decompiled it. So we never got an open-source DIP, or really any information about DIP at all.</p>
<p>Now we do! But I don't think anybody's champing at the bit to make <em>Fooblitzky</em> web-playable. Oh well.</p>
<p>(The source code to <em>Fooblitzky</em> has not yet turned up. I suppose Infocom would have called that language "DIL"? But we have the <em>game file</em>, or at least I think we do. A file called <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps/blob/master/unix/foo.dat"><code>foo.dat</code></a> was preserved along with the <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps/tree/master/unix">Unix DIL source</a>, presumably for testing.) (No idea whether it's the full game or just a testing stub.)</p>
<hr />
<p>You'll notice that I posted this stuff on GitHub last week. I mentioned it on the <a href="https://intfiction.org/t/infocom-z-code-interpreters/65741">IF forum</a>. And then I... sort of didn't announce it anywhere else.</p>
<p>The truth is, I didn't want to make a big fuss. You remember my post about <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/10/microsoft-consumes-activision">trying to get the Infocom IP open-sourced</a>? That's still in progress. (I made contact with some Activision/Microsoft folks, but big companies move <em>very slowly</em>. Still working on it -- nothing to announce -- watch this space please.)</p>
<p>A lawyer would say, "Don't keep releasing source code while you're negotiating with the original rights-holder". That would be good legal advice. I, er, ignored the good-advice part of my brain there.</p>
<p>I mean, Activision/Microsoft doesn't have any <em>financial</em> interest in these old interpreters. They're not part of any modern Infocom port. They don't represent beloved artistic works like the games. They're just infrastructure for 80s hardware.</p>
<p>At any rate, I <em>did</em> make them publicly visible on <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps">GitHub</a> and the IF forum, and people noticed pretty quick. <a href="https://games.slashdot.org/story/23/11/18/204226/source-code-to-infocoms-text-adventure-interpreters-now-available">Slashdot</a> and <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38326878">HackerNews</a> picked up the story. So it's out there; fine; it was me what did it.</p>
<p>Enjoy, anyhow.</p>
<p>Yes, I plan to update my <a href="https://eblong.com/infocom">Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog</a> page to include this stuff. Eventually! The files have existed for a long time, and they're safe on GitHub now.</p>
<p>(You know, I only <em>just now</em> noticed that the correct abbreviation for <a href="https://eblong.com/infocom">Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog</a> is "ocicat". Now I will call it "ocicat" forever because <a href="https://www.ocicat.se/">ocicats are adorable</a>.)</p>Forty years of wizardry2023-11-01T23:57:16+00:002023-11-01T23:57:16+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-11-01:/2023/11/forty-years-of-wizardryDiane Duane posted today: On November 1, 1983, SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD was published—so it's time to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Young Wizards series. 😄 ...Don't mind me: I'll just be sitting here and grinning. Onward to year 50! ...<p>Diane Duane posted today:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>On November 1, 1983, SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD was published—so it's time to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Young Wizards series. 😄 ...Don't mind me: I'll just be sitting here and grinning. Onward to year 50!
-- <a href="https://mastodon.social/@dianeduane/111336537026479894">@dianeduane</a>, Nov 1</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>And her <a href="https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2023/11/01/the-young-wizards-series-turns-40/">longer blog post</a> on the subject.</p>
<p>Last night, while out wandering the spoopy streets of Somerville, I saw a kid -- a small kid, maybe ten years old -- wearing a Gryffindor scarf. Speaking of young wizards! But then, is this kid even a Harry Potter fan? It's the kid's <em>parents</em> who would have grown up reading that series. Speaking of older, middle-aged wizards.</p>
<p>As I walked home through the purple-and-orange-bedecked night, I cast back to my younger dreams of wizardry. What books held that place in <em>my</em> life? </p>
<p>Not Diane Duane, to be sure. I didn't encounter her fantasy books until I was in college. (I remember reading her Trek stuff in high school.) I <em>should</em> have found the Young Wizards series when I was young! I was exactly the same age as Nita in 1983. I would have been swept away. But my library happened not to have them.</p>
<p>(On the up side, when I <em>did</em> discover the YW series, there were already two books and the third was due out shortly. Plus two <em>Door Into...</em> books, which made their own intense impression. You saw <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/08/a-kitchen-is-born">my kitchen</a>, right?)</p>
<p>Of course I read all the kids' fantasy classics available in the '80s: Narnia, <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2018/12/and-tomorrow-will-be-beyond-imagining">The Dark is Rising</a></em>, <em>The Hobbit</em>. But that wasn't <em>current</em>. We didn't sit around anticipating the next Narnia book and trying to guess what would happen. <em>Current</em> SF/fantasy was in the adult section, and of course I was all up in that stuff too. I remember being excited about <em>The Light Fantastic</em> because it was a <em>new</em> Discworld book. And let's not get into the issues of reading Thomas Covenant and Piers Anthony at an impressionable age. (My librarian was secretly into corrupting kids' minds. A true hero. She also threw me <em>The Wasp Factory</em>.)</p>
<p>Diana Wynne Jones? I definitely read <em>Dogsbody</em> as a kid, but I wasn't really aware of DWJ as an author with a continuing body of work. She was another one whom I effectively discovered in college.</p>
<p>William Sleator? 80s-current and a big impression, but he was horror, very dark horror. You don't dream of living in a William Sleator story. Yeesh.</p>
<p>No, when I consider the idea of magic turning up in everyday life, it's Daniel Pinkwater for me. Fat men from space. Lizards on late-night TV. Strange wise men with chickens on their heads. Leonard Neeble and Alan Mendelsohn learning the mental disciplines of ancient Nafsulia. You've already noticed that my <a href="https://eblong.com/">web site</a> is named after <em>Blong! You Are a Pickle!</em></p>
<p>In some ways his mindset is startlingly close to Diane Duane's. Think back to Eugene Winkleman discovering the secret door in the children's library in Rochester, New York. (<em>Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario</em>.) Is this very different from Nita Callahan discovering a wizard's manual in a library on Long Island? Except the secret door in Rochester is <em><a href="https://www.rochesterfirst.com/news/local-news/secret-room-reopens-at-the-central-library-of-rochester-after-renovations/">really there</a></em>, which honestly puts Pinkwater a step up. (Sorry DD.)</p>
<p>...Except, of course, that Diane Duane's grownups are helpful, sane, supportive people. Pinkwater's grownups are either Boring Adults or Completely Mad, and either way it's up to the kids to figure out what's what. Pinkwater's world is not one that the kids can take on faith.</p>
<p>Speaking as a grownup, I appreciate the option of being sane and supportive and still an active part of wizardry. (Albeit the part that has to run a lot of planning meetings.) But for the part of me that remembers being the Pinkwater age, he really did nail it. Adults <em>were</em> arbitrary and mad and ran the world on principles that sounded sillier the more you explained them. They still do. We just want the madness to include talking lizards and Venusian mystics in the odd corners.</p>
<p>Either way, though, onward to another decade of it.</p>Microsoft consumes Activision; and a plea2023-10-13T15:19:33+00:002023-10-13T15:19:33+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-10-13:/2023/10/microsoft-consumes-activisionThe gavel has fallen; the cup has been stomped; pick your metaphor. Microsoft has succeeded in its almost-two-year quest to gobble up Activision. The peculiar side effect in my corner of the world is that Microsoft now owns the dusty remains ...<p>The gavel has fallen; the cup has been stomped; pick your metaphor. Microsoft has succeeded in its almost-two-year quest to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23791235/microsoft-activision-blizzard-acquisition-complete-finalized">gobble up Activision</a>.</p>
<p>The peculiar side effect in my corner of the world is that Microsoft now owns the dusty remains of Infocom. Microsoft owns all the classic Infocom games (except maybe <em>Hitchhiker</em> and <em>Shogun</em>). They own the rights to <em>sell</em> the games. They own the rights to make more Zork spinoffs.</p>
<p>Of course, from a corporate point of view, this means exactly nothing. Activision has kept a few Infocom games <a href="https://www.gog.com/en/game/the_zork_anthology">up on GOG</a> (EDIT: and <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/570580/Zork_Anthology/">Steam</a>). For a while they sold them for iOS, but that was too much work so they stopped. In 2009 they flirted with a <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2011/05/legends-of-zork-going-squish">casual Zork tie-in</a> that went nowhere. None of this rates even a footnote in the Microsoft acquisition prospectus, which I imagine is six hundred pages of <em>Candy Crush</em> stats with an appendix mentioning <em>WoW</em> and <em>CoD</em> as "also nice to have". </p>
<p>But of course I'm interested in the Zork stuff. Let's follow the bouncing brogmoid!</p>
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<ul>
<li>1979: Infocom is founded. It enjoys a few years of wild stardom, followed by an inevitable downturn in the face of graphical games. (Plus the whole <em><a href="https://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/">Cornerstone</a></em> thing.)</li>
<li>1986: Activision acquires Infocom, saving Infocom's bacon for a couple of years.</li>
<li>1987: Activision's board replaces CEO Jim Levy, who had brought Infocom on board, with Bruce Davis.</li>
<li>1988: Davis shakes up Activision and renames it Mediagenic.</li>
<li>1989: Mediagenic/Activision shuts down Infocom as a studio. (It keeps the name alive as an adventure publishing label.)</li>
<li>1990-1991: Mediagenic is now itself sliding down the tubes.</li>
<li>1991: Bobby Kotick buys the carcass of Mediagenic. To make a quick buck, he has the <a href="https://archive.org/details/lost-treasures-of-infocom">Infocom library</a> reissued, which saves <em>his</em> bacon. Also there's <em>Return to Zork</em>.</li>
<li>1992-1993: Kotick mulches the rest of Mediagenic and reorganizes it as (effectively) a new company called Activision. </li>
<li>1996: Activision reissues the Infocom games again as the <em><a href="https://archive.org/details/Classic_Text_Adventure_Masterpieces_of_Infocom_Activision_CDD-3650-101-U3_1996">Masterpieces</a></em> CD-ROM. As a bonus, this includes the winners of the first <a href="https://ifcomp.org/comp/1995">IFComp</a>, including <em><a href="https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=00wlim27k5d1hmf2">A Change in the Weather</a></em>. No complaints.</li>
<li>2008: Activision merges with Vivendi/Blizzard, forming "Activision Blizzard". Despite the name, if you look at the details it's really more like Vivendi acquiring Activision.</li>
<li>2016: Now it's "Activision Blizzard King".</li>
<li>2022: Microsoft gets a gleam in its eye. Microsoft does not offer to change its name to "Microsoft Activision".</li>
</ul>
<p>Depending on how you count, that's three-to-five companies which have died and passed the Infocom IP on to a successor.</p>
<p>(And the Implementors, aka the folks who wrote the Infocom games in the first place? They never had any rights to the stuff. They were on salary. All the Infocom games were "<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/work_for_hire">works for hire</a>".)</p>
<hr />
<p>So why am I digging this up? Aside from "history is interesting", which it is.</p>
<p>Microsoft-the-company does not care about Infocom. But a lot of people <em>in</em> Microsoft must care. Microsoft is heavily populated by greying GenX nerds just like me. Folks who grew up with the first home computers and fondly remember the games of the early 1980s.</p>
<p>To those nerds, I direct this request:</p>
<p>It is time to do right by the memory of Infocom. It is time to let it go.</p>
<p>For twenty years, Infocom properties have existed in a foggy hinterland of "Well, Activision <em>owns</em> it, but... you know. You can find the stuff online." I don't just mean the <a href="https://eblong.com/infocom/">games</a>! It's also the <a href="http://infodoc.plover.net/">manuals</a>, the <a href="https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=header-infocom">advertisements</a>, the <a href="https://gallery.guetech.org/">packaging</a>, all the ephemera. It's all available, but... you know. Illegally.</p>
<p>This represents an enormous success of videogame history preservation -- except when you look at those links, they're <em>all</em> individual hobbyists who just collect stuff. (Spoiler: one of them is me.) The lucky ones maybe got an Activision guy to say "Sure, you have permission to do that" back in the mid-90s. Everyone else is just skating by on legal obscurity.</p>
<p>Now, Activision has never hassled fans over this stuff. Fans have been circumspect and mostly not tried to distribute the games in playable form. It's peaceable. But it's not <em>legal</em>, which makes life hard for real-world libraries and universities.</p>
<p>The top-hatted elephant in the room is of course Jason Scott, who scanned an <em>enormous</em> amount of <a href="https://archive.org/details/infocomcabinet">Infocom trivia</a> from Steve Meretzky's personal collection. The scans went up on the <a href="https://archive.org/details/infocomcabinet">Internet Archive</a>. (Meretzky later donated his physical collection to Stanford.) A few years later, Jason said "the heck with it" and also posted <a href="https://github.com/historicalsource/">all the Infocom source code</a>, or as much of it as has been preserved by fans, anyway.</p>
<p>(Ironically, that source code dump went up on Github, which is <em>also</em> a Microsoft acquisition...)</p>
<p>Anyhow. I say it is time to end this liminality and bring all this work into the legal daylight. I see two paths.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Microsoft could place all of the Infocom intellectual property under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> license. Again, <em>not just the games</em>. This needs to include <em>all</em> of Infocom's material: source code, manuals, maps, packaging, advertisements, newsletters. Everything that people have scanned over the years, or could scan in the future.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Or, bolder: Microsoft could donate the Infocom copyrights to a worthy nonprofit. Naturally I put forth the <a href="https://iftechfoundation.org">Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation</a>! But, really, there's options. I already mentioned the <a href="https://archive.org/">Internet Archive</a>. The <a href="https://gamehistory.org/">Video Game History Foundation</a> does sterling work. I'm sure you can name more.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>For what it's worth, if <a href="https://iftechfoundation.org">IFTF</a> becomes the guardian of any Infocom or other historic IF material, our first order of business to discuss would be a Creative Commons release.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, I'm talking about copyrights and other <em>information</em> rights: publication, scanning. The rights of students to play games for classes. The right to make sequels and fan works.</p>
<p><em>Physical artifacts</em> from the Infocom era are a whole 'nother story. I have no idea if any such objects still exist in Activision's basement. If they do, they should be handled by a university or a museum. (See above re Meretzky's stuff at Stanford. The <a href="https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/search-results?query=infocom">MIT Museum</a> has material donated by Dave Lebling and Mike Dornbrook.)</p>
<p>Right. That's my proposal. If you happen to work at Microsoft Activision Blizzard Github King, maybe pass it around a little? See if the higher-ups are amenable. My lines are open, personally or through <a href="https://iftechfoundation.org">IFTF</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<hr />
<h3>EDIT-ADD: Monday, Oct 16</h3>
<p>Happy Monday! This post has gotten some attention over the weekend. People did indeed pass it around. See:</p>
<ul>
<li>BoingBoing: <a href="https://boingboing.net/2023/10/16/microsoft-now-owns-infocom-and-its-interaction-fiction-classics.html">"Microsoft now owns Infocom and its interaction fiction classics"</a> (Rob Beschizza)</li>
<li>HackerNews: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37893794">Thread on my post</a></li>
<li>And of course the lively comment thread below, courtesy of Mastodon discussion.</li>
</ul>
<p>Looks like a lot of public support for the idea. Thanks!</p>
<p>One other comment that didn't make it into the thread, from Stefan Vogt:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What's easily forgotten in this context are the historical interpreters, which should be part of such an agreement. These used to be an even greyer area in the grey zone ballet that happened since Infocom has been shut down.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Good point! These are the Z-code interpreters (for Apple 2, C-64, etc) which Infocom bundled on their game disks. You can extract a binary off any Infocom disk image, but the (assembly) source code for these is largely lost. (<a href="https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Programming/Source/Infocom%20Adventure%20Games%20Interpreter/">One exception</a>.) Lot of work to be done here, and the interpreters should definitely be included in any rights grant.</p>
<p>There's also been some cynical pushback against the idea that Microsoft would ever do anything generous. I've lightly moderated the comment thread to remove some of that. Sorry, but the world is terrible enough already. I insist on optimism about this one tiny thing.</p>
<p>So, as you see, the word <em>has</em> been passed inside Activision and Microsoft. I've made contact with some of the right people.</p>
<p>Now comes the frustrating part: you're going to have to wait for more news. Everybody at Activision is, no surprise, <em>really busy</em> this month. Not only are they figuring out a whole new corporate structure, but the next <em>CoD</em> game launches on Nov 10. So nothing is going to happen overnight.</p>
<p>I am following up as needed; the discussions will happen when they can happen.</p>Summer game wowzers: ruminations2023-10-12T01:36:28+00:002023-10-12T01:36:28+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-10-12:/2023/10/summer-wowzersOkay, it's not summer any more. (Even by New England standards, those being "alternating heat spells and dank rain through the end of September." It is now fall, aka "alternating dank rain and frost through the end of December." Unless we get ...<p>Okay, it's not summer any more. (Even by New England standards, those being "alternating heat spells and dank rain through the end of September." It is now fall, aka "alternating dank rain and frost through the end of December." Unless we get something else, aka climate change. Sorry. <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/09/summer-more-puzzles">Obsessed with weather</a>, I guess.)</p>
<p>I got around to these recently, and two of them were <em>released</em> in August, okay?</p>
<ul>
<li>The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</li>
<li>Stray Gods</li>
<li>Cocoon</li>
</ul>
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<hr />
<h2>The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Deconstructeam -- <a href="https://www.cosmicwheelsisterhood.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A pixel-art visual novel about Tarot readings. Is really not a good description of this game! Sorry. Again.</p>
<p>You're an immortal witch girl. You read the wrong future and got yourself a thousand years of solitary exile in a remote cozy asteroid cottage. But don't worry: you've got a plan, and <em>nothing</em> can go wrong with bargaining with demons summoned from beyond the cosmos. Right?</p>
<p>(This setup -- sexy anime sorcerers messing around with black holes and cosmic gods -- is startlingly reminiscent of <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2021/01/four-or-five-recent-lovecraftians">Paradise Killer</a></em>. Only without the human sacrifice, thank Ghu. It's not at all the same <em>story</em>, but if you're jonesing for Paradise City, you might check out <em>CWS</em>.)</p>
<p>I'm going to be less spoilery than usual, because much of the charm of this game (for me) was not knowing what I was getting into.</p>
<p>The first chapter -- or the demo, if you play that -- consists of talking with Ábramar the Behemoth (demon, whatever). He snarks at you and teaches you to create new oracular cards. You snark at him and bind your soul to various choices which, the game assures you, will have immense impact on the storyline. You also do some Tarot readings.</p>
<p>That's just the intro, though. What you're <em>actually</em> doing is chatting with other witches. ("Solitary exile" turns out to be negotiable.) Your witch friends ask for help or favors or advice. You make choices and do more readings. Storylines advance.</p>
<p>It is, in fact, a very traditional visual-novel setup. Except, then... more stuff happens, and it turns out that <em>that</em> was just the intro. What you're <em>actually</em> actually doing is... well. I'll just say that the game becomes a rather interesting social simulation with a bunch of possible outcomes.</p>
<p>The funny thing is, the Tarot cards aren't all that central to the game. Oh, inventing cards is fun and expressive. You mix-and-match elements and backgrounds; the game tells you what the card's title and significance is. But that's costuming. I won't say <em>just</em> costuming! Costumes are fun! But you're not doing it to advance the plot, or even to influence your Tarot readings.</p>
<p>When you do a reading, each card turned up reveals a handful of possible interpretations -- answers to the querent's question. That's your choice point. It's real choice. But <em>which</em> card you drew, and the symbology of the card, are pretty much set dressing. The symbology of the card clearly affects <em>which</em> interpretations appear -- but that connection is opaque. You can't steer into it when placing the card, much less when <em>designing</em> the card.</p>
<p>I'm not bagging on the Tarot reading scenes. Your choice of interpretation for each question affects the story dramatically! In fact, the mechanism of reading turns out to be a key part of... well. I'll just say that it sneaks up on the question of story <em>creation</em>, or in fact interactive fiction, in a rather satisfying way.</p>
<p>It's just the <em>cards</em> that feel somewhat uninvolved. I wish that had come together better. Still, it's a great little game. Witches reliably kick ass. Give it a go.</p>
<h2>Stray Gods</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Summerfall Studios -- <a href="https://www.summerfallstudios.com/stray-gods">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A hand-drawn-style visual novel... musical. Operetta.</p>
<p>This review could pretty much end there. <em>"So it's all -- sung?"</em> Not all the dialogue, just the key scenes. But yes: all the voice-actors sing. <em>"In branching dialogue? Branching lyrics?"</em> Yes. <em>"So you're performing a song and hit a choice point and that determines the next verse?"</em> Yes. <em>"And they went and</em> did <em>that?"</em> Yes. <em>"For the whole game?"</em> They really did. <em>"So--"</em> So they wrote all the possible songs and then recorded them.</p>
<p>Go look up the game soundtrack; there's four of them, covering all the major plot variations. Or, really, I have no idea how many major plot variations there are! Certainly lots. Maybe they just picked four and covered as many potential verses as they could.</p>
<p>If you have any sense of how over-the-top this concept is, you've already stopped reading and started playing. But let me go through the spiel anyhow.</p>
<p>You're a singer trying to headhunt talent for your going-nowhere band. Then Calliope, <em>the</em> Calliope, bequeaths Muse-hood on you with her dying breath. Awesome, except now the rest of the Greek pantheon thinks you're a murderer. Oops.</p>
<p>Gaming isn't short on Greek mythology riffs (<em>"...boy!"</em>). Happily <em>Stray Gods</em> comes up with an original and chewy take. These Idols lurk behind the contemporary scenes, clinging to their mythology or passing their roles on to new mortals -- that tension underscores much of the plot. They're also a vividly engaging bunch of walking plot disasters. Every character bursts onto the stage, drawn and voiced <em>just so</em>, bursting with, well, <em>character</em>. You immediately want to get to know them. And solve their problems. Maybe smooch them (it's that kind of visual novel).</p>
<p>Once you <em>do</em> talk to the Idols (and Freddy, your mortal bestie bandmate) you realize that a Muse is exactly what this story needs. Heroes and villains will both pour out their hearts in song -- and you're the one who makes the music play. If you also tweak the theme to your benefit, well, there <em>is</em> a killer to track down.</p>
<p>As for the songs themselves... I'll admit I wasn't left humming them. The lyrics have to carry a lot of plot, and that doesn't leave much room for catchy hooks or foot-stomping choruses. Indeed, much of the performance is close to recitative. That's fine though. It's musical enough to move things along and get you in the swing of timed verse-choices.</p>
<p>It's the choices that sell the story, really. Every character would make a star protagonist in their own right; they're all enmeshed in prickly moral dilemmas growing out of (but not stuck to) their mythological origins. I found myself genuinely conflicted over the outcomes in ways that most narrative games don't reach.</p>
<p>The writing is great; the art is great; the animation is great in a <em><a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/lexpress.html">Last Express</a></em>-ish motion-comic way. And they went and <em>did</em> an interactive operetta, so they win regardless of anything else.</p>
<h2>Cocoon</h2>
<ul>
<li>by Geometric Interactive -- <a href="https://www.cocoongame.com/">game site</a></li>
</ul>
<p>A metroidvanioid puzzle game where you're a bug carrying spheres around. ("So you're a dung beetle," remarked my friend, and proceeded to refer to the spheres as "dung-balls" for the rest of the evening.)</p>
<p>The spheres have the usual crate affordances -- drop on a switch to open a door, etc. Each one also has a special puzzle power, and the powers dovetail nicely for puzzle construction. But <em>also</em>... each sphere is a world. Drop a sphere in a special pool and you can dive <em>into</em> it, entering an entirely new landscape of puzzles. Other pools let you jump back out. And then <em>that</em> dovetails with the sphere powers.</p>
<p>Of course you can carry spheres <em>into other spheres</em>. Thus unlocking the entire spectrum of puzzles that <em>Myst</em> carefully <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2020/08/the-parser-and-myst-plot-hole">avoided</a>.</p>
<p>This sounds very brain-hurty, and brain-hurty it is. But the designers have chosen to be <em>circumspect</em> in their hurtiness. It's not a Baba's-Expedition enumeration of every possible puzzle-mechanic variation. The game dips into each puzzle concept a couple of times, lets you get it, and then moves on.</p>
<p>The game is also very careful about keeping you on the right track. It's notionally an open world -- or <em>four</em> open worlds that you can freely dive between. But it liberally deploys one-way doors, one-way bounce platforms, awesome balloon rides, elevators that depart behind you when you've solved a puzzle... Really an impressive variety of ways to say "Ok, you've done that bit, time to concentrate on the next bit." A cheaper game would just line up a bunch of gated puzzles along a track! <em>Cocoon</em> insists on making every gate feel like a unique event that just happens to move you forwards.</p>
<p>(Twenty-five years ago I called this "<a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/riven.html">wedge-chocking</a>", after the arrival scene in <em>Riven</em>. Man, did that coinage never catch on.)</p>
<p>(Sometimes an old area is reachable for a while as you advance... and then you discover that you need that area for a future puzzle. It's all intensely constructed while <em>feeling</em> completely natural and happenstance. Admirable design work.)</p>
<p>The upshot is that <em>Cocoon</em> is a medium-short affair -- six hours by my Steam clock -- but never feels grindy or repetitive.</p>
<p><em>Except</em>, mind you, for the boss fights.</p>
<p>It's not that they're <em>bad</em> boss fights. They're clever; they teach unique mechanics; they require care and cleverness rather than button-mashing or fast reflexes. Everything I loved about <em>Soul Reaver</em>; even more like the end of <em><a href="https://eblong.com/zarf/gamerev/ico.html">Ico</a></em>. Furthermore, "death" just knocks you out of the sphere. You can immediately re-enter and start the fight again.</p>
<p>...<em>from the beginning</em>. This is where the whole concept falls down for me. I'm <em>decent</em> at game combat, but I sometimes dodge the wrong way or take a hit. And <em>Cocoon</em>'s fights are one-hit-instant-death. Sure, you can re-try as many times as you need. That's called grind! It's boring! I got seriously bored during some of those fights.</p>
<p>I think the real issue is game designers who have a limited view of their audience. There's puzzle fans who just play puzzle games. Who have never taken on a bullet-hell or a jumping challenge or Atari 2600 tank-shooting. They look at any kind of reflex game and say, meh, I can't do that.</p>
<p>See also <em><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2018/01/my-favorite-games-of-2017">Night in the Woods</a></em>, which had "easy" jumping puzzles. The designers had a notion of what the "average" gamer could handle, and made their one notch easier... but their "average" sample was biased. There are more gamers in heaven and earth, Horatio.</p>
<p>You don't have to design for those people. (You don't have to design for <em>any</em> particular kind of person.) (Except yourself.) But if you're going for brain-hurty puzzles, you should at least <em>consider</em> that puzzle fans will play it! Just like exploration fans will play <em>Tunic</em> and <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Room">Lost Room</a></em> story fans will play <em>Control</em>. That's why those games have accessibility options. <em>Cocoon</em> needs some of that.</p>
<p>Okay, enough about the boss fights. I managed to beat all of them. Then I went back to the puzzles. It's an awesome little puzzle game.</p>
<p>Gorgeous, too. I want to use words like "biomechanical", "insectile", "alien"... except H. R. Giger appropriated those decades ago for his creepy sexual fixations. The hell with Giger. <em>Cocoon</em> redeems biomechanical from the creeps. Protoplasm without the slime. Pulsating alien geometries without the madness. Honeycombs without the sting.</p>
<p>Cosmic soundtrack, too (credit to <a href="https://www.schmid.dk/">Jakob Schmid</a>). I hope that goes on sale sometime.</p>Unity followup2023-09-26T01:54:49+00:002023-09-26T01:54:49+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-09-26:/2023/09/unity-followupI wrote about Unity's license change a couple of weeks ago. Unity responded to all the yelling on Friday, so I guess I should follow up. The summary of the changes: The runtime fee does not apply to people using the Unity Personal or (soon ...<p>I <a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/2023/09/note-on-unity">wrote about Unity's license change</a> a couple of weeks ago. Unity <a href="https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee">responded</a> to all the yelling on Friday, so I guess I should follow up.</p>
<p>The summary of the changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>The runtime fee does not apply to people using the Unity Personal or (soon to be extinguished) Unity Plus subscription.</li>
<li>The runtime fee only applies to games using Unity 2024 and later.</li>
<li>The runtime fee is capped at 2.5% of your game's revenue.</li>
<li>"Installs" is self-reported. They're saying "initial engagements" now, with notes that you can ignore piracy, reinstalls, and other corner cases.</li>
</ul>
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<p>Also, the splash screen requirement for Personal is being removed. (For Unity 2024 and later.) I laughed, because that was my first response to this whole debacle:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Since Unity will now benefit financially per install of a game, I’m sure they will remove the requirement to display their logo on startup. (Which was their previous strategy for benefiting per install.)</p>
<p>Right? Right?</p>
<p>--<a href="https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@zarfeblong/111052869656070216">@zarfeblong</a>, Sept 12</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Points for being right, but my logic doesn't really hold. The splash screen requirement only applied to Personal, which is now exempt from the runtime fee. So this is a real concession -- just a very tiny one. Unity doesn't <em>need</em> the splash screen any more. Everybody knows who they are. They can afford to drop it. Well, good on them for noticing.</p>
<hr />
<p>Bagatelles aside, what do I think of the new terms?</p>
<p>Short answer: there is still retroactive license screwing. My followup comment still applies:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unity is now in the phase of “Oh, we can explain, it’s not as bad as it sounded at first."</p>
<p>What they do not grok is that even if <em>this</em> price hike isn’t so bad, developers are now terrified of <em>next year’s</em> price hike. Because the one thing we know about next year’s price hike is that it will <em>also</em> be retroactive.</p>
<p>How can a studio possibly budget for that?</p>
<p>--<a href="https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@zarfeblong/111067027102567261">@zarfeblong</a>, Sept 14</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Unity backed out the <em>current</em> "retroactive change" wankery. Anybody using an old version of Unity can keep using that version with no new fees.</p>
<p>However, that is <em>not</em> the same as fixing the problem. Unity can still change the license terms out from under you; they can still hike the license fees at will.</p>
<p>Crucially, they have <em>not</em> restored the "no harm no foul" line from the old license terms. This paragraph was introduced in January 2019:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Unity Editor Software Terms</strong>
<em>8. Modifications.</em>
Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”).</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>You can still see this paragraph at <a href="https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy">https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy</a>, but it is marked as "Replaced: October 13, 2022". In fact the <a href="https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71654bf/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md">October 2022</a> terms had a similar paragraph. However, the <a href="https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md">April 2023</a> terms did not.</p>
<p>Unity's <a href="https://unity.com/pricing-updates">FAQ</a> says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity you are using as long as you keep using that version. We will post these changes on our <a href="https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService">GitHub repository</a> and <a href="https://unity.com/legal">https://unity.com/legal</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But they haven't <em>done</em> that. And even when (if?) they do, it's a small consolation to any developer who needs to update Unity because of toolchain dependencies, SDK dependencies, or, you know, all the other thousand reasons you might need to update your tools.</p>
<hr />
<p>So that's the big thing. The rest of Unity's changes are... well, basically I don't care.</p>
<p>Letting developers self-report "installs" (or "initial engagements") is sensible. A big company knows about how many copies it's sold. Small studios may not, but small studios are already below the thresholds and so what if they lie? Unity needs to make its money off the big gorillas.</p>
<p>The real problem with "initial engagements" is that it's way too complicated. "How can a studio budget for that?" I asked. Well, the fee is capped at 2.5% of gross revenue share, so that's how you have to budget. Then you can ignore "installs" entirely. Just say Unity's fee <em>is</em> 2.5% revshare! It's simple! It's half of Unreal Engine's 5% revshare! (Which is blatantly the point.)</p>
<p>See, this is how you know this whole mess wasn't a clever scheme. You can find any number of UFO-wall-pointers saying, ha ha, first they post <em>terrible</em> license terms, then they change them to be <em>less bad</em>, and everybody is happy! It's smart PR work!</p>
<p>No, it's stupid. If Unity had been playing us, they would have had better terms <em>ready to go</em>. Not this unholy patchwork of the old terms and revshare. They also wouldn't have spent two weeks bleeding out all over the floor, image-wise. With <a href="https://insider-gaming.com/unitys-changes-to-price-hike-plans-have-been-leaked/">leaks and rumors</a> confusing the picture.</p>
<p>Only the very biggest gorillas (and their <a href="http://monkeybagel.com/monkeybagel.html">accountants</a>) will work through the tangle. Maybe Unity's discounts will entice them into using Unity's in-house ad service. Maybe not. I don't care. The whole thing just underscores that Unity has stopped caring about any game smaller than <em>Super Gacha Free Boot To The Head: Platinum Edition</em>.</p>
<p>My position remains unchanged. It is stupid to use Unity for any new project. </p>
<p>Unity is <em>fairly</em> safe for students and tiny indies (like me). Like I said, Unity just doesn't care about us; we're too small-scale to pay their bills. And now they know that even <em>seeming</em> to threaten us is terrible, awful publicity. Unity Personal will probably remain free for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>However, <em>Unity experience is now wasted experience</em>. If you're going to work on your own stuff, an open-source engine is probably fine for you, long-term. Might as well switch now! And if you're looking for a job -- well, the paying companies are the ones who are now switching to Unreal. Or planning to do so for the next game.</p>
<p>It looks like I'm not the only one thinking this, either:</p>
<div class="PreWrap">
<blockquote>
<p>It is with a heavy heart that we are announcing Wednesday, September 27th as the date of the final Boston Unity Group event.
[...]
Since our launch in 2010, the focus of BUG has been first and foremost about supporting developers, not the Unity company. As members of the broader Boston game developer community, we feel our efforts as organizers would be better spent creating opportunities for everyone, not just Unity users. Please join us as we all work together in the larger local development community to continue to host events and presentations for all to enjoy.
-- <a href="http://farewell.bostonunitygroup.com/">Boston Unity Group farewell</a></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>Strong move, and I have nothing to add.</p>A quick note about Unity, plus a surprise2023-09-14T17:40:24+00:002023-09-14T17:40:24+00:00Andrew Plotkintag:blog.zarfhome.com,2023-09-14:/2023/09/note-on-unityYou may have heard that Unity, the game engine company, announced new terms this week which amount to shooting itself in the foot with a hand grenade. A handfootgrenade, if you will. "Fusshandgranate" in the original German. I have nothing to ...<p>You may have heard that Unity, the game engine company, announced new terms this week which amount to <a href="https://mashable.com/article/unity-fee-video-game-developer-reaction">shooting itself in the foot with a hand grenade</a>. A <a href="https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-clarifies-new-fee-plans-amid-developer-backlash">handfootgrenade</a>, if you will. "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/sep/12/unity-engine-fees-backlash-response">Fusshandgranate</a>" in the original German.</p>
<p>I have nothing to add to the discourse beyond that questionable neologism, but I want to be transparent about what this means for me as a developer. Short answer: No direct impact, but it may affect my future plans.</p>
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<p>I have released two games using Unity: Jason Shiga's <em><a href="https://zarfhome.com/meanwhile/">Meanwhile</a></em> and <em><a href="https://zarfhome.com/leviathan/">Leviathan</a></em>. The Win/Mac/Linux releases of both these apps are currently on the 2021 release of the Unity engine, using the Unity Personal (free) plan. (The iPhone/iPad/AppleTV versions do <em>not</em> use Unity.)</p>
<p>These apps are way, way below Unity's stated threshold for the install fee. <em>Meanwhile</em> (the Win/Mac/Linux release) has about 600 installs and $3200 revenue over its five-year history. <em>Leviathan</em>, which shipped last year, has 90 installs and $500 revenue. These apps will never ever reach either 200,000 downloads or $200,000 in revenue. They're also not involved in any big bundles, streaming deals, or promo giveaways -- which are the models that Unity has burned the worst.</p>
<p>(This, by the way, is why I'm not trying to make it as a solo indie developer! I love these apps -- and Jason's work -- and I'm happy to keep supporting them. But they're a hobby.)</p>
<p>Therefore, <em><a href="https://zarfhome.com/meanwhile/">Meanwhile</a></em> and <em><a href="https://zarfhome.com/leviathan/">Leviathan</a></em> will remain available on the same platforms for the foreseeable future. I have no plans to withdraw them or change how they're built.</p>
<p>However... if Unity was willing to retroactively change their licensing terms once, they're willing to do it again. The next price change could hurt me. Or they could go out of business entirely! (This week's news isn't the sort of announcement you make when you have a <em>sustainable</em> business.)</p>
<p>So I am keeping in mind the <em>possibility</em> of reimplementing both games using a different engine. Preferably an open-source engine. <a href="https://godotengine.org/">Godot</a> is the leading candidate right now, but I'll decide when the time comes.</p>
<p>(In case you're wondering, the Win/Mac/Linux release of <em><a href="https://hadeanlands.com/">Hadean Lands</a></em> uses <a href="https://github.com/erkyrath/lectrote">Lectrote</a> and <a href="https://www.electronjs.org">Electron</a>, which are open-source tools. All my iOS apps are native ObjC code built in Xcode using only Apple's frameworks.)</p>
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<p>What about future games? Well, there's no way in hell I'm using Unity for any brand-new project. That would just be stupid.</p>
<p>But what about future Jason Shiga games? I mean, I have this engine all written, and... hang on, the doorbell just rang.</p>
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<p><a href="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/09/beyond.jpeg"><img alt="Adventuregame Comics #2: The Beyond. The cover shows a Hispanic man holding a harpoon, watching red books tumble by." src="https://blog.zarfhome.com/pic/2023/09/beyond-s.jpeg" /></a>
The cover of <em>The Beyond</em> by Jason Shiga.</p>
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<p>I'm (almost) not kidding: my copy of <em><a href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/adventuregame-comics-the-beyond-book-2_9781419757815/">The Beyond</a></em> arrived in the mail yesterday. (Thanks Jason!) It was released just a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>I can confirm that it's another interactive graphic novel full of secrets and tricks! But you knew <em>that</em>.</p>
<p>Of course, I am now evaluating how a game version would work. The secrets and tricks are little different than in the previous books; it will take some thought to figure this out. But I definitely want to continue the series.</p>
<p><em>For the moment</em>, it makes sense to continue using my Unity-based framework for this. It won't hurt me financially. But again, I am keeping an eye on the future. If I need to change tracks, I can do that.</p>
<p>Watch this space! And, you know, stay away from Unity from now on. It's not going to get any better.</p>