Interviews
Just
Adventure Interview with Howard Sherman – Malinche Entertainment
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JA – Some
people claim that there’s no hope for the adventure genre, let alone
for interactive fiction. As and independent developer, what would
you say if confronted with these arguments?
No, no and NO! <grin>
Just yesterday a co-worker’s wife popped into the office to drop off
some paperwork and asked me what I was doing as she took a peek at
my screen. I explained I was programming a new text adventure game
called Greystone. She asked me “what’s that?” and
I quickly explained and demonstrated. She walked out with a marketing
agreement to help me sell IF to the K-12 education market here in
the United States. She couldn’t believe the power of IF and how it
could transform students with a bored-at-best attitude towards reading.
She never heard of IF before and she walked out wide-eyed and wondrous
at the very prospect of INTERACTING with a story. How many other people
like her walk the earth I wonder….?
That’s to speak nothing
of the staunch IF fan. The Zork trilogy sold over one million
copies in its heyday roughly twenty years ago. That was an incomprehensible
achievement in the 1980s and remains a very impressive milestone today.
All of those fans are out there and we’re reaching out to them.
JA – Let’s talk now about
Pentari: First Light (PFL). On Malinche’s web site you
acknowledge that the game is in the line of the classic Infocom’s
games. In which points Pentari is in debt with games such as
Zork or Spellbreaker? On the other hand, which innovations
has Pentari added to the genre?
As a genre, I stand
on the shoulders of the Infocom Implementors that forged the path
that I am honoured to follow. PFL contains humor in a similar
vein to what you’d find in an Infocom title with cute responses and
snappy comebacks to silly things the adventurer may try. At the same
time, the writing has received excellent reviews as being excellent
in its own right, another hallmark of Infocom. And just as Infocom
never stood still with regard to their technology, neither has Malinche.
Thanks to modern computers, PFL is larger than Zork 1,
Zork 2 and Zork 3 combined while simultaneously adding
commands and features that didn’t exist in Infocom’s day. Such commands
as LOOK NORTH (which gives you a room description of the area north
of you) or EXITS which quickly and succinctly tells you all the possible
exits out of the room you’re currently in.
Back to the capacity
of modern computers, nearly every item appearing in PFL is
ornately described in detail. In nearly every Infocom game the computer
capacity just wasn’t there to elaborate on anything but the most important
items in a game. Take Zork Zero for example. It’s an excellent
game by anyone’s standards and one of the largest ever produced by
Infocom. Even so, object descriptions were virtually non-existent.
Go to the throne room and examine the sceptre of Lord Dimwit Flathead
the Excesssive and all you get is “There is nothing noteworthy
about the sceptre.” Of course we all know that can’t be true.
Stephen King, when advising aspiring authors, always urges you to
tell the truth. That may seem paradoxical when talking about fiction
but it really isn’t if you think about it. In truth, the sceptre IS
noteworthy and should be described accordingly. I don’t fault Infocom
for this even one bit; they made the most of what they had at the
time. Computers of that time just couldn’t support the kind of Interactive
Fiction that is being written today by Malinche. Heck, I had to “thin
down” PFL to run on the PalmOS since even the Dragonball
CPU at 33Mhz had a tough time struggling with the immensity of First
Light.
JA – If someone who has
never played IF before asked you about what does PFL has to
offer for him/her, What would be your answer
I could borrow right
from Malinche’s website in that regard. PFL reads like a novel
but demands decisions be made by the reader. PFL offers the
neophyte adventurer a rich, deeply woven story combined with the freedom
of choice on the part of the “reader” with regard to where
they will go, what they will do and who they will talk to and what
they will say to those people. Reading a book is 90% passive and 10%
active. Passively, you’re reading the story already laid out for you.
Actively you’re wondering “whodunnit” or where the evil
ogre may be hiding. With IF the ratio is roughly inverted. 90% of
the time you’re actively contemplating your next move and 10% of the
time you’re reading the prose that describes people, places and things.
