Text, text, text. Once upon a time, most games were full of text. Now most games are full of flashy 3D effects and barely any text at all. Oh, I'm not one of those conservatives who think that any kind of change is bad. Certainly not. I like flashy 3D graphics when they're appropriate. That's the keyword. Some people seem to think that you can put graphics on some sort of scale that goes like this: 'text -> 2D graphics -> 3D graphics'. Well, I've never believed that. Some games just look better in 2D. Take a look at some of the old console games. 2D can have its own kind of beauty, much like a painting. 3D is not better than 2D, nor is it worse. They should not even be compared. Some games work better in 2D and some games work better in 3D.
The same thing goes for text. Sometimes text is just appropriate, and it seems to me that game designers are starting to forget that. There are some things that cannot be done with graphics, that cannot be expressed by pictures. That's one of the reasons we still have books. There's something about words, something that goes straight to the brain. That's why there's still a big interactive fiction scene out there. Perhaps you should check it out. There are text games that so brilliant that your jaw will hit the floor. Try Photopia. It's incredible what you can do with words. I am convinced that it would be impossible to do this with pictures. Pictures are nice, but so are words. We have to realize that words have power, and that we can use that power in our games. It has been done before, after all.

Originally Posted By JonasKyratzes (23 OCT 2002 5:09pm)
I explain what I mean about text in this article (I'm posting the link because I can't just post the entire text).