IF activity at PAX East -- now with info!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Comments: 11   (latest 3 days later)

Tagged: boston, if, pax


I said a few weeks ago that interactive fiction stuff "will happen" at the Penny Arcade Expo East (Boston, March 26-28).

This past weekend PAX sent out a call for speakers and panel discussions. Some of us IF folks started emailing back and forth. We currently have three suggestions submitted to the PAX events site. I've listed them below.

Before I get there, let me say that this is not an exclusive list. The names attached to these panels are simply the people who were in that email discussion. If you're an IF author, current or erstwhile, submit more events! Or register as a panelist for IF-related sessions. And comment here, so we know what's going on. I intend to sit in on every IF-related event at the conference.

(A suggestion: include the phrase "interactive fiction" -- not just "IF" -- in the event title. We'd like all of these events to jump out as clearly related on the schedule.)

We'd like to make this PAX a focal point for IF activity, education, promotion, and all-round chin-wagging. For a start, Jason Scott is saying that he's keen to premiere Get Lamp there...


Obligatory note: these are submitted ideas, not scheduled events. The PAX people have not told us whether they are going onto the schedule, in this form or with alterations. I don't expect those decisions to come out until January. I'll post when I hear from them.

So you haven't played any interactive fiction since Zork?

Text adventures didn't go away in 1990. They just went indie. Join us as we whiz through the past two decades of IF history. Then we'll present two recent games that are intended for IF newcomers: "The Dreamhold" and "Blue Lacuna". (Andrew Plotkin, Aaron Reed)

Storytelling in the world of interactive fiction

Text adventures have been quietly experimenting with narrative gaming for thirty years. Five authors from the amateur interactive fiction community discuss the design ideas in their games -- reordered storylines, unreliable narrators, deeply responsive NPCs -- and how they apply to other kinds of games. (Rob Wheeler (mod.), Robb Sherwin, Aaron Reed, Emily Short, Andrew Plotkin)

Rule-based programming in interactive fiction

Inform 7 is a modern text-adventure design language based on two controversial principles: natural-language source code, and rule-based declarative programming. Andrew Plotkin digs into the rule programming model, why it exists, where it might go, and why it kicks OO's butt.

(You might recognize that last as the talk I gave at Penguicon last May. Yes, I want to reprise it for PAX. Apologies to the ten or so people who saw it there -- you'll just have to come back and cheer for me.)



Comments imported from Gameshelf