Hello tom. well perhaps i could try and put together a more speculative sort of artical this weekend on game genres and audio interfaces (as a philosopher, speculation is sort of my stock in trade, -----;D).
about the text adventures though, I can give you an answer right now. Much as I enjoy text adventures, I'm afraid it's incredibly unlikely that I wouldn't be willing to pay money for them for several reasons. firstly, there is already a lot of very good interactive fiction available for free, all of which is screen reader accessible. True, it's necessary to run them in an interpreter, but I've never had any problems with those. I'm not sure about running them on different platforms, but I'm sorry to say i'm a pure windows user at the moment. then, there is the replayability issue. A heavy component in my games playing is exploration and atmosphere. while there is a lot of very nice atmospheric text adventure writing, how atmospheric it would be the 2nd time around, when I know exactly where to go and what commands to type is another question. for something like Monti, even if it's the 4th, or even the 40th playthrough of the game, I've stil got to be vaguely paying attention to details to avoid those skulls and snakes. And in Monti, the exploration is so continuous and smooth that it's possible to miss corridors or litle corners for several goes through a level anyway. and if extra levels or some sort of editer come into the mix later, all the better! (I'd be quite prepared to either pay for a monti level editer or extra level sets). Like a piece of music, there will also be times when the atmospheric sfx of Monti will leap out and grab me, even a time or two after I've played the game. I've owned Shades of doom for a couple of years now, and the game stil terrifies! me! Of course, there are books I reread many times for the writing style, but unless a text adventure is more heavy on the plot than the puzles, the flow of the story the 2nd time through will always be interupted by the litle mental tick list in my head, ----- oh yes, this is the place where the horrible murder happened, ---- I need to search the body for the key. unless there is the option for several story paths, the 2nd run through text adventures often feels to me like a slightly slower and clumsy read through of a novel, where I have to stop and type stuff to get on to the next bit of the story. the same largely goes for fighting fantasy gamebooks as well. there is only one sort of text adventure that I'd be willing to pay money for (and have payed money for), and that is a continually expanding online game with added areas to explore, new adventures being released etc. that game is Sryth. If you produced a similar game, I might well considder paying for it, ----- though sinse many persons of reduced visibility play Sryth at the moment, and Sryth is rapidly approaching page 11000, competing might be a trifle difficult. I hope this explains things Tom, and gives my personal answer to your question. Of course, other people might think differently, ---- which is of course naturally as it should be. Beware the Grue! Dark. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:43 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] The next issue of Audyssey > Hi Ron, > As a game developer I am always interested in what styles and genres of > play are most in demand by the gamers at large. I hardly if ever see any > good articles on the matter. > I have however seen comments about gamers wanting to play sighted > quality games, but that level of game play is extremely dificult to > reach on more than one level. The programming is difficult, and as I am > discovering with my Tomb Raider experimental project true 3D > environments are almost impossible to relate to in an audio only format. > How exactly do you signal to the new player look up because the exit out > of the room is in the celing, and you will have to find a way up there, > pull yourself through, and continue on with your adventure. It is tough > to design and describe such an environment. > Then, there is text adventures. Allot of folks like them, I wouldn't > mind writing some, but I am not clear how many folks would pay money for > such adventures. I can create them easy enough, make them multiplatform, > etc but unless there is financial interest in text adventures there > isn't much sense in producing them. > > > --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
