Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net, a seminal work of cyberpunk, made the point that video games that become harder and harder until you eventually succumb was a keenly Cold War mentality about entertainment. The nihilism of struggling against antagonists until they beat you was held up as a symptom of the core belief that eventually we'd all get nuked anyway. It actually plays into the core plot of the story, which is fundamentally about the uneasy border between optimism and pessimism in futurism.
It was written in '88. It's about Zaibatsus and terrorism and killer drones and rastafarians, as most of them were. It was "near future" back then; it's now "alternate future." I reckon it's aged a lot better than the Walter Jon Williams stuff but it hasn't proven to be nearly as seminal as William Gibson. This was an '88 perspective on '81 and '82. Legend of Zelda had been out for two years by then; people were clearly expecting more from video games already. The Berlin Wall was a year from falling. I would say it was a fairly insightful viewpoint for the time.we're a bit on the tail end of it... but yah... that rings true.
Hah, we did the same thing growing up! Cowboys and Indians (...yikes...) / Cops and Robbers, though.
I was constantly aware. We knew where the major strike was likely to be, what the fallout would be, what missile would carry it...
I disagree entirely. Entirely. When the design of the game is structured towards your eventual demise, there is no impetus to create novel, creative stages that differ from one another because after all, the goal of the game is to kill you before you've run out of stages. Therefore you have two choices: make every level an iteration on the level before or, when you've run out of levels, make it impossible to win. Or both. Either way, there is no reward to the player to strive other than stubbornness and addiction. The player is effectively a pest that the game must eliminate. On the other hand, a game designed to be won creates incentives for the designers to create challenges - but not insurmountable challenges - that the designers and players must effectively collaborate on. The game has to be tough enough to be fun but not so tough that players don't get to see all the cool shit you created for them. It was different when you only had 20k of memory across the entire system of a Pac Man arcade. Destiny 2 is rumored to be 68GB for preload on Xbone. I'm giving you precious hours of my life. Don't be a douche and treat me like a pest.
Didn't know Plotkin had a blog, thanks for sharing this! He's never been quite my style as far as IF authors/creators go, but I can't deny that he is an incredible font of information. Also, just because IF doesn't come up much, here are some of my favorite IF games for anyone who wants to play one (and you should!): Games about words Counterfeit Monkey - Emily Short A masterful game by one of the best IF creators, and has one of my favorite items in all of fiction: a gun that lets you remove one letter from a word, and thus alter reality. A "pear" can suddenly become an "ear", and someone's tasty snack will suddenly become quite a bit less appetizing. Think of it as "Portal for the English language". Each puzzle has quite a few solutions, and you are limited only by your cleverness. Ad Verbum - Nick Montfort A smartly written puzzle game that relies on clever wordplay and themed rooms. Light and engaging. Suveh Nux - David Fisher By far my favorite one room game. Anyone with an interest in linguistics and "thinking your way out" should check this out. A pretty fast game about unearthing magic. Games about Games Endless, Nameless - Adam Cadre My favorite IF game. Part throwback love letter to old school IF, part metafictional metaphysical rollercoaster. If you've played an IF game before, I cannot recommend this game enough. You will DEFINITELY need to download it and play it on your computer, not online. Make use of saves. Words about Words Galatea - Emily Short A beautiful character study that is incredibly executed from a syntax/programming standpoint. Eurydice - Anonymous It's, uh, real sad. A retelling of the classic myth. Aisle - Sam Barlow By the creator of Her Story. A one word game. NOTE: I only picked freely available modern games because it's a bit harder to find legal ways to play older ones. Obviously, play Zork Sorceror, Adventure, etc. if you can find a copy of them.
Sweet! If you're ever looking for a particular flavor of game, MathBrush's lists on IFDB are pretty awesome and informative. Found out about a lot of cool games through him.