June 21, 2008: A long overdue entry

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As I mentioned on Twitter a while back (somewhat sanctimoniously, now that I think of it...), Entertainment Weekly reviewed a pile of albums that I was actually considering checking out. This never happens. I read it because it's the smartest of the entertainment magazines, in my opinion, but their music section, anymore, rarely does much for me. (I did get into Kate Bush and Fiona Apple through their reviews, but that was years ago when I was just learning about music.) This gives me a lot of hope. It's remarkable how I thought 2008 was going to be a horrible year for music, and how it's turning out to be as good or better than 2007 (which was great.)

Seems Cathy Davey's "Tales of Silversleeve" just got its UK release. Time to update my wiki. And the reviews... are mostly positive! Yes, British media! Recognize greatness when it is presented to you!

(It did kind of irritate me that one review started out complaining about how female artists always get compared to the same three female artists - and then went on to trot out Kate and Fiona. Kate I could sort of see, if I wasn't already over-bludgeoned by comparisons, but I can't think of any moment in any of Cathy's songs, released or unreleased, that reminded me of Fiona Apple. Oh well. Clearly they're following The Rulebook of Making Comparisons in Music Reviews.)

I haven't found any Stina Nordenstam comparisons yet, which is frustrating because it's one that would actually be valid, considering that Cathy's actually cited in an interview that she was influenced by Stina's voice. It isn't even difficult to find. One review did say that her voice sounded like she came from Stockholm, which could be a roundabout comparison, I guess. I shouldn't be too harsh. I am legendarily bad at comparisons myself.

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In a few days, I should get another Amazon gift certificate. Now to decide what to spend it on. I've been neglecting books. My shopping list there is full of various and sundry nonfiction, which is great, except for filling up a $25 certificate.

So I think I'll go with another copy of a book of false-logic puzzles I used to have. This one: http://tinyurl.com/447oar . There are plenty of 'entry-level' puzzle books like this, and they are addictive. It's been long enough since I've done that book that I no longer remember the answers, so it should be fun.

Puzzles are fun in general. My crazes tend to vary. I had a short-lived phase where I loved the logic puzzles that came with the tables (but could never solve them, not really getting it; this was years ago, remember). Then, an ongoing cryptogram phrase, a kakuro/cross-sums phase (this was before sudoku became popular. Never my favorite.)

Cryptograms, in particular, are something I hold up, at least personally, as a testament to the idea that people can learn to be good at things. I always used to skip cryptograms. I didn't get them. But as you start, you learn certain things. You learn that the words "the" and "that" are common and similar in a way that most words just aren't. (For a perfect example, just reread the previous sentence.) You learn that the letters in the words "little" and "people" are arranged in rather distinctive ways. I suppose by saying those things I deprived you the opportunity to figure it out for yourself, but then, most cryptogram books tell you these things in the introduction anyway.

End result: You get very familiar with the English language. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with root words, but I suspect most people don't analyze nearly that much. There are other things to learn, of course, that don't have as much to do with English as with how cryptograms - and quotations - work. For instance, you quickly learn which writers have the most (often mis-)quotations in the popular consciousness. Some of them have distinctive letter patterns, even. Like Winston Churchill. I've only found one book out of the common ones that largely avoids quotations. Needless to say, it's a lot more difficult. I'm working on it.

The point of that little rigmarole? People can learn how to do things. When I do cryptograms in public, some people come up to me and are a bit mystified at the whole process. But people can learn. I'm not disparaging them. Being mystified is a great first reaction. It's conducive to wanting to know how people do things. It got me into Minesweeper. In seventh grade, one of the people in my class was doing an amazing job at the Expert board, and I was VERY mystified. A few years later, I learned.

Oh yes, and I also love jigsaw puzzles. But only the 1000-piece kind. A few years ago one of my favorite time-killers was to take a whole bunch of 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles and dump ALL the pieces, collectively, in one big vat, and THEN do them. It takes a lot of floor space, but it is frighteningly addictive. It's tied up with memories, too. This was when I used to listen to the radio, so hearing certain songs (I think this was when a Sugababes song got onto American radio. Before Siobhan Donaghy made a decent solo album, though. I use my mind for these things, and I'm not a bit regretful.) will take me back to that time, no problem. Kind of like how older songs will take me back to the time when I was in elementary school and my family was about to move out of our first North Carolina home, and I had a cot, and a radio.

June 9, 2008: An embarrassingly small slice of modern IF

It is 2008 and I have yet to write an interactive fiction work. Not a complete one, at least. It's on my list of things I want to do before I die. It's daunting, though, requiring writing that doesn't suck, some programming, and - above all - imagination.

A handy excuse is that I haven't been active in the IF community for years. I've logged into ifMUD a few times, garnering a few "holy crap it's _____" comments, being overwhelmed with bb posts, and promising to be a regular, and then promptly (ugh. pun not intended.) forgetting about said promise. The last IFcomp I can legitimately talk about at a level involving more than one game was in 2000.

I will persevere. Right now I'm actively searching out an idea for a game. I suspect that if I ever do find an idea, it'll be on the comedic rather than the Serious IF side, mainly because my Inform knowledge is still rudimentary, and because I haven't gotten The Idea yet.

There are people making Serious IF, and there are already a number of classics in the genre. Delusions still blows me away. Spider and Web does too. I've lavished quite enough praise on Galatea already, but, regardless, it blows me away. STILL. Even after being spoilered.

(There are some classics I haven't gotten into. I, uh, never got past the first few turns in Photopia. This might have something to do with the kick I was on where I was obsessed with ferreting out and collecting all the dialogue in IF games. I don't remember much dialogue in the part of Photopia I played. Yes, I realize this is like watching Oscar-winning films to count the number of redheads, or listening to music to hunt for multisyllabic words.)

(For instance, when I was a kid I learned the word "incomprehensible" from an ABBA song and thought I was a genius for knowing a Big Word.)

So as a bit of research, I decided to go look up Serious Games. The way that discussion works, this ended up being one of the more controversial ones. So you can call this a mini-review post. I wouldn't call either of these classics.

As far as spoilers go, I'll be as spoiler-free as I can without ruining my review. But there are some. Reader beware.

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"Rendition", by nespresso.

Yes, I played it past the first scored turn. I did not play to victory. I don't think that's a reprieve, really.

I can't decide whether this is a good game, or a bad game trying to pass itself off as a good game, or a good game that makes its point by resembling a bad game trying to pass itself off as a good game. This could get recursive, I know, but if you play it you'll soon see what I mean, I hope.

The basic plot: You're an interrogator assigned to interrogate a suspected terrorist named Abdul. To your PC, violence is indeed the solution.

The rest of the game is what amounts to an simulated Milgram experiment. There is only one real task. There is one way to score points. There are plenty of constraints because of the letter of the Geneva Convention, or at least the game's version of it.

Unfortunately, the constraints don't really work. It feels highly sociopathic to describe the game in sanitized design terms, but, really, by the time you figure out what the game wants you to do, it becomes guess-the-verb AND guess-the-noun at the same time. After you run up against the constraints, it becomes clear that what you're dealing with is not corruption, but a parser. This destroys the illusion. Also the comparison. Somehow I doubt the people at Guantanamo were thinking in terms of synonyms. I'm not sure how much you can actually do, because I really didn't want to mess around with too many commands. I pity the people who had to beta test this thing.

The other problem was the lack of any other context. Neither character felt human. Maybe that's the point, to expose torture as fundamentally dehumanizing, but it sure felt like lazy writing. Someone mentioned Spider and Web here, and I'm going to have to agree that it worked better. Cold War interrogation and Guantanamo interrogation aren't the same thing, of course, and comparing a relatively new author to Andrew Plotkin is unfair, but at least both characters felt like characters, not Inform objects. The PC's writing, in particular, seemed like overly stereotypical jingoism. Evil is more convincing when it doesn't wear a black hat and monocle.

It's a good concept. A disturbing concept, though. I think it could be expanded. I don't know if I'd want to replay it, though.

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More reviews coming as I play games.