March 14, 2006
IF Awards and Articles
Congratulations to Jason Devlin, whose IF-Comp-winning Vespers brought him the Best Game XYZZY award and three others, and congratulations to the other XYZZY winners. See the full list of winners; there’s also a transcript of Sunday’s online ceremony.
Lara Crigger’s article on IF is out (in print only) in the April 2006 Computer Games. Yes, as pointed out on the newsgroups, the piece does tend to follow, to some extent, the formula Jeremy Douglass laid out for how to write a popular press article about IF. But despite that and the emphasis on Infocom’s decline, it manages to give a sense of the history of IF, unusual aspects like feelies, and the fact that there is still innovation going in, all in the fairly short space alloted. And hey, nice plug for Grand Text Auto, too. Stephen Granade posted the full text of the interviewes Lara did with Andrew Plotkin and Emily Short, which are good reading – much more interesting than what said when speaking to Lara. I suppose there may be a reason, related to interview quality, why other people are sometimes sore about not getting quoted extensively and I don’t tend to be.
Finally, I was really pleased to see a thoughtful and positive review of Twisty Little Passages recently appear in a literary magazine, Gambara. Adding to that delight, the reviewer and the editor (as I learned) also played Book and Volume. I’m glad for all sorts of interactors to engage with Book and Volume, but as I’ve long worked to create IF that has the power and rings with the resonances of contemporary literature, this was particularly heartening to hear.
July 25th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
[…] ocom” is now in The Escapist. The piece is by Lara Crigger, who also wrote the April Compuer Games cover story on IF. Like many such articles, it casusally mention […]