Zarf Updates

A few days ago, Kate Willaert wrote:

Kicking at fuzzy genre boundaries is one of my favorite things in the world, and indeed I had some thoughts there! Let me expand them into a blog post.

First up: genre boundaries aren't defined. I mean, they're not created by definitions. It's a "what I mean when I say X" game. No, worse: it's a "what this community means when they say X" game, and who's the community, anyhow? But I'll lay my own tracks; you can decide whether to follow.

I did not play Metroid or Castlevania because I didn't have Nintendo. My first console was a Playstation. Okay, PS1 had Symphony of the Night, but I didn't play that. I played Soul Reaver, which is where I encountered the gameplay model that people would later start calling "metroidvania".

When Apple shipped the first ARM ("Apple Silicon") Macs, they came with Rosetta 2: a tool which allowed existing Intel apps to run on ARM.

One day, Rosetta 2 will go away, and Intel apps will die. (Just like 32-bit apps died in 2019.) When?

This is a boring question. You don't need to read this post. I'm only writing it because I've put together this chart at least twice. Maybe three times. Next time I wonder, I'll just re-read this post.

TLDR: The answer is probably 2028 or 2029.

Dustborn is a queer punk-band secret-agent road trip with campfire singalongs plus beating up fascist cops with an electric baseball bat. What else is there to say? C'mon.

About twenty years ago, a mysterious Broadcast freaked out most of North America and gave a few people vocal superpowers. Now it's 2030. You've just stolen a Macguffin from the Puritans (Silicon Valley fascists); you have two weeks to cart it across the American territories ('Murrican-style fascists) to Nova Scotia (Canadian librarians, therefore the good guys). "You" are Pax, rowdy (super-)trash-talker and lead singer. Then there's Sai (your best friend, a brick) and Noam (your ex, a snot) and Theo (notional grownup, the boss but not of you). You've each been dragged into this heist because -- well, the money's good. But each of you has their own motivations as well. Time and campfire dialogue will tell.

(The "lesbian road trip" genre is so strong that I had to count protagonists to verify there weren't any. The cast list is variously queer, black, trans, Latino, robot, Asian, disabled, and Muslim; but no lesbians per se.) (As main characters, I mean. No disrespect to Pax's moms in chapter 2.)

Oh, I didn't even mention "comic book". The presentation is comic book, with an expressive spare line-art style and lovely coloring.

Layoffs at a game studio aren't news any more, but I guess I'm on this beat. If nothing else, this blog has a longer searchable history of Cyan history than Cyan does.

Yesterday Cyan posted one of those all-too-familiar dark-mode press releases:

(Cyan people confirmed on Discord that this was discussed in advance within the company.)

If you'd looked at me in 2000, you would have said "Andrew Plotkin is a young author of award-winning interactive fiction. He has a long IF-writing career ahead of him." And I would have agreed! I might have had a notion of branching out -- my IF career had made almost zero money, so maybe I should take my experience into the game industry in other ways. But really I wasn't thinking along those lines. I had a tolerable day job; writing IF was a rewarding hobby.

But this picture of me as "prolific IF author" was already yellowing around the edges. Sure, I wrote lots of games in the 21st century. I did Dreamhold, which was big and deliberately retro, but after that I didn't really have an idea for a big game. I entered Delightful Wallpaper in the 2006 IFComp; but after that it felt weird to enter IFComp, even anonymously. (I entered again in 2011 but that was a collaborative project.) I wrote a few short games for jams and showcases.

It just felt like I was pushing myself. Looking for reasons to get myself off my ass and write a game. Because if I wasn't writing games, what kind of game writer was I?

I am delighted to pass the word that NarraScope 2025 has posted its schedule and its registration link. Come see us in Philadelphia on June 20-22!

We've also announced our keynote speakers -- yes, this year we have two of them:

Vision Keynote: Hidetaka “SWERY” Suehiro

Saturday’s keynote will be delivered by SWERY, the internationally-acclaimed designer of cult favorite Deadly Premonition, the surreal horror-adventure that earned a Guinness World Record for its polarizing reception.

Local Hero Keynote: Dain Saint

Sunday’s Local Hero keynote will be delivered by Dain Saint (he/they), a Philadelphia-based storyteller and artist who has produced games through Cipher Prime Studios, interactive theatre with Obvious Agency, and journalism with the Philadelphia Inquirer.

(I'm quoting from our announcement mailing list. The keynote news went out last night.)

And of course the schedule has, what is it, about 75 other speakers listed? We've scaled up the conference this year. More rooms, more talks, more kinds of talks -- there's going to be some papers from the academic side of things. So we're aiming to scale up attendance as well.

The usual Friday workshops will happen, although that schedule isn't set yet. We will also have an on-site NarraScope Showcase event on Friday afternoon. So if you can make it to Philadelphia, please consider making it a three-day weekend.

If you can't make it to Philadelphia, you can register to attend online. We're keenly aware of the current economic and political issues, particularly for people travelling from outside the US. Rest assured that our hybrid model is still in full swing. All Sat/Sun talks will be livestreamed.

(For those of you waiting for the 2024 talk videos: we are very grateful for your patience. Now that reg is open, Matt has promised to spend some time this week plowing through the video backlog.)

Earlybird registration prices run through April 11. There's also info for conference hotel rates, which have various cutoff dates and availability limits. So plan early.

As always, I look forward to seeing you at NarraScope. Since I'm not running the show this year, I'll even have time to sit in on the talks and chat with people. Excitement!

This morning, Cyan updated Myst (the 2020 release) to include the Age of Rime. This is a free update on Steam (Mac/Win) and Quest; the Xbox update is in progress.

Do I need to say more than that? Sure, why not. Context is life.

A few weeks ago someone quietly posted a link to Invisiclues.org, a new Infocom fan archive.

The site is dedicated to (1) archiving historical Infocom-related artifacts -- InvisiClues, of course, but also magazine articles, marketing material, packaging, artwork, literature, and the games themselves -- and (2) making the archives available in an enjoyable format.

-- About Invisiclues.org

The Net has a lot of Infocom fan archives (including my own, of course). And the Infocom Invisiclues themselves are well-preserved.

Where this new site excels, though, is its collection of articles about Infocom. These are gathered from contemporary game magazines (Softline, Computer Gaming World, ...), general computing magazines (Byte, Softalk, Compute!, ...), and mainstream sources (Time, NYT, ...). There were 250 articles when the Invisiclues site launched, and it's over 300 now.

This collection way, way outstrips our existing collection of Infocom articles at the IF Archive. I imagine that the material is mostly filtered from Archive.org. But it represents an intense curatorial effort, and I'm happy to see it show up. My congratulations and gratitude to the site maintainer.

(As to the "enjoyable" part, check out the working status line in the top right corner. Cute!)

I twooted about Type Help (William Rous), a new deduction-type game which is so full of awesome surprises that it's hard to review!

But, after mulling for a couple of days, I've come up with stuff to say after all. Lucky you!

You are handed an old laptop full of files concerning an old (1936) investigation. A houseful of people were found dead. What happened? You have audio recordings (or rather text transcripts of audio recordings) from the residents' last day. But most of the files are unlisted; you have to figure out the filenames to unlock them.

In October I wrote:

This leaves me with two big IFTF roles: Treasurer and IF Archive lead. I'm happy with the IF Archive job; I figure I'll hold onto that for a while. But it's getting to be time to hand off the Treasurer job. I've been doing that since, well, since day one.

Today the Board formally voted in Colette Zinna as IFTF Treasurer and Doug Valenta as IFTF Tech Officer. Both of them have been around IFTF for a while (and in person at NarraScope). They're cool. I've been getting them up to speed since December. Now they are, as it were, speedy.

So that's me done! As Treasurer and de-facto tech guy, that is. As I said, I'm still IF Archive chair; I expect to do that for the foreseeable future. And I'm helping with NarraScope. No doubt other tasks. But I've attended my last board-and-officers meeting.

Of course I'm still a resource for the new officers. There will be many more questions like "How does this thing work that you set up five years ago?" But that's just... helping out. We all do that, as we can.

Keep doing that, as you can.