Re: Marketing, was Re: Can I make money by writing IF?


29 Nov 1995 15:09:14 GMT

Gerry Kevin Wilson (whizzard@uclink.berkeley.edu) wrote:
: I don't mean to come down too hard. But having just erased a 6 page
: rant/bitch/moan, I figure I'm entitled to a paragraph long one. Don't
: hold your breath. Look around you. This is it, dude. There are a few
: hundred hardcore fans left. Text adventures are going exactly nowhere.

Is that so? Look at the attention garnered by great games like "Curses"
and "Jigsaw." The former has already surpassed the popularity of the average
Infocom game, and I expect the latter to do the same. True, such games
tend to be the exception rather than the rule, but your complete refusal to
even acknowledge them is a great disservice to the entire I-F community.
Look around us. We've got newsgroups, 'zines, I-F programming, an archive,
and a lot of hard-working fans who are doing everything they can to get
people back. Doesn't that mean anything at all to you? Have you honestly
come to despise this form of gaming that much?

: Ask Dave Baggett. Two years ago I was arguing your viewpoint. Text
: adventures, like the Mexican peso, have been devalued. They are no
: longer economically feasible in any form. I hope to just recoup my
: investment on Avalon and flee the genre, skin intact. 2 years. 2 lousy
: stinking years I been writing that game. And I'll be THRILLED, ECSTATIC
: to sell 15 frigging copies. That's a sum profit of jack nothing. Sure,
: the hobby aspect (SPAG, the IF Contest) is fun, but the game writing is a
: waste of time unless you feel it too is a hobby. As for writing
: book-length texts about writing text adventures, well, let's just say I'd
: rather have the time back that I spent writing that IF Authorship Guide.

It's truly sad that you consider the time you've spent on I-F to have been
wasted. Personally, I've enjoyed every moment I've spent on these groups.
All the discussions, texts, criticisms, etc. have really helped me learn
something, and I've been able to talk with a lot of very cool people here
about a topic that I happen to greatly enjoy. Who cares that it doesn't
represent 900f the computer gaming community, or even 10 0.000000or that matter?

Most of the gaming community is stupid, allowing themselves to be coerced
with pretty-looking pictures that they're too damn lazy to imagine
themselves. We've got something better here. Text games are genuine art.
Why do you think they still exist? Look at the LTOIs and Activision's
recent collections -- these games are 10-15 years old, and they're _still_
being sold and played. How many 10-15 year old graphics games have you seen
on store shelves? For that matter, how many 3-5 year old graphics games are
still out there? Very few. And why? Because graphics become obsolete.
They get old and outdated, and look clunky. The written word has been
around for centuries. It'll _never_ become outdated.