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Most overutilized/underutilized themes?
Posted: Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:36 pm
by Gunness
The thread about horror and supernatural games had me thinking (a dangerous pastime!)...
in your (probably very humble) opinion, what themes have been done to death, and which would you liked to have seen more often in classic titles?
Let me start:
Severely overdone:
- Generic treasure hunts
- Cave exploration/dungeon crawl (I know, I know, it's the one that started it all, but most authors seem to have relied on the same formula)
- Medieval settings. I think Graham Nelson's term "
lazy medieval" is spot on:
anything prior to the invention of gunpowder goes, all at once, everything from Greek gods to the longbow (a span of about two thousand years)
- Science fiction. I deeply love sci-fi, but apart from a few golden oldies such as
Starcross and
Planetfall, very few games have known what to do with the infinite possibilities of space and really made you feel like you were in a new and wondrous world. A spaceship and a few aliens do not by themselves a great game make)
What I would like to have seen more of:
- Satires (I think a classic like
Hampstead had an excellent theme that could have been used far more often)
- "Serious" games with a eerie touch: The world could have had a few more
Trinity and
Mindwheel-like titles.
- Thrillers (especially political ones).
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:09 am
by terri
If anyone can get a hold of Peter Killworth (I tried but couldn't) can you ask him if he ever wrote the game he was intending to write? He said it was to be unusual and even more difficult than Philospher's Quest (please don't beat me up if I got the wrong game and he didn't write it.
Can't remember the genre.
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:31 am
by dave
A quick search on Google brought me to:
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/JRD/PROC/people/pki/pki.html
If you look under RISC OS software he owns up to having rewritten some of his games in inform (and has links).
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:15 am
by terri
Thanks Dave. This e-mail address is different from the others I had. Maybe I'll write him again.
Thanks for clarifying what he wrote. One game, I recall, had a killer sequence in a boat. I believe he literally had to walk me through that one, step by step.
Just checked out Philosper's Quest and found out he did write it. The reviewer said it had a lot of "unfair" puzzles. I presume that means illogical. There are a lot of those around.
Anyway, I enjoyed the games, though I did need help on most (all) of them.
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:20 am
by Gunness
Before this thread derails completely, let me put it back on track
Terri, do you think Killworth writes highly original games or are they more run-of-the-mill, thematically?
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:16 pm
by Mr Creosote
This is a very difficult question, because it mostly comes down to preference of themes - at least for me. If I like a theme, I don't mind it being done again, again and again. If I don't, well, the opposite.
For example, I really like mystery games. That genre pretty much got slammed badly in a RAIF thread about six months ago as 'generic detective fiction' (which 'the community' should 'reject'). Usually, I dislike very generic medieval/fantasy/D&D-like settings, because that genre seems to be built on implicit absolute morals which are never spelt out and which I don't understand (something like killing orcs = good, killing humans = bad).
The main point is, though, I wouldn't call either over- or underused. Both apparantely have their audience.
If one thing is overused in more recent times (you posted this in the Classics forum, but you seem to talk more generally - forgive me if this goes off-topic), I'd say it's a certain pretentiousness in the writing which bothers me. Games trying to be 'important', i.e. pseudo philosophical. While most of them are just... well, crap if they really want to be measured by such standards.
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:16 pm
by Gunness
First off, you're right - this might equally belong in the Modern section. However, I think the problem is larger when it comes to classic titles, where the text is brief and the theme might seem tacked on at times.
I agree that part of this is definitely down to personal preferences. However, I also believe that another part is ideas being mined too often or too rarely.
An example: I really, really like science fiction as a genre. But at some point I've just seen the same type of setting too often, with little variation and no real, creative use of the potential.
Like you, I also enjoy mystery games a great deal - but most of the ones that exist seem to be drawn from the same Maltese Falcon blueprint. For me, at least, this would me another case of overutilization.
But it's probably easier to talk about themes you wish had been used more often than the opposite
As for the pretentiousness - I'm right with you. In particular, I soon grew tired of the tendency to stick in the odd quote here and there, for no other apparent reason than to display the author's stellar knowledge of music and literature. Of course, if done carefully it can enhance the atmosphere of a game.
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:21 pm
by Mr Creosote
Good point about the narrowness of the mystery genre. I'm a big Chandler fan (yes, I know, he didn't write the Maltese Falcon; the basic style is the same), but I also enjoyed Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Josephine Tey and other British authors. So I don't mind more 'hard-boiled' detective games, but I would like more of that other type. Seeing how IF is generally very US-centric nowadays, this comes as no surprise, of course.
As for pretentiousness: I don't mind shallow games. I don't mind deep games. I object to shallow games pretending to be deep. Many modern-age games would actually benefit from more honesty about their shallowness, in my opinion.
Picking up on your initial post again, I'm of two minds when it comes to cave crawls. Concerning the classic age, I agree, it's an overused concept. For modern-age games, I actually find it surprisingly refreshing, because that kind of game usually lacks any pretentiousness - they're just good fun. To generalize: I think modern-day IF should take a few steps backwards in order to learn what made the classic games fun; hint: it wasn't large, depressing textdumps spanning several pages.
As for serious vs. funny, it's obviously a lot easier to make a reasonably funny game than making a truly disturbing or eerie one (in a good way). If a serious attempt falls short, it's usually not easily forgiven. The shortcomings of a humourous games are usually less severe. So on the one hand, I'd like to see eerie thrillers, yes, but only good ones. Imagining the amount of crap I'd have to wade through if more people tried to make these kinds of games, I'd probably prefer sticking with small funnies, assuming the average quality of those will be higher.
Overdone also: One room games and escape games. There's just been this competition for single-room games with an escape theme. Turned out to be very popular - many entries, many by well-known modern-day authors. I thought it was a rotten idea. Haven't played a single game from that competition. Combining two themes which have both been done to death.
One thing I would like to see more often (suggestions welcome): games played from the perspective of a villain. Many people seem to have moral qualms about that; I can distinguish between game and reality

Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 12:25 am
by terri
You folks have played more modern games than I. The few I've played I found to be excessive complicated, not necessarily the puzzles (those too), but maybe that's what you mean by "pretentious".
An underutilized "theme" seems to be humour (not the adolescent type). Maybe it's difficult to write a funny game based on a funny book, for example. Though I did like the ones that had Aunt Matilda in them. Or games that have allusions and references to all kinds of things, like a spoof of various types of games.
Enough from me. I don't really know and shouldn't comment.
Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:45 pm
by df
The best serious theme game I played would be Corruption.
I think treasure hunts and lazy medieval are 'easy' to do. generic fantasy is so open ended you can do anything.
Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 3:00 pm
by Plissken
Great thread!
In my opinion, overused themes are:
-Generic Fantasy. Honestly i've never been a great fan of the genre, but surely the theme is overused and many games lack any resemblance of an original idea.
-Wanna-be psychological: Again, a lot of the games in the genre are messy, generic and confused
I'd like to see more:
-Psychological (but deep).
-Horror
-Detective stories (like the great JB Harold murder club, has anyone heard about it?)
-Sort of life-simulators. I think it could be a very good and immersive idea, but used only in a couple of games (i remember a brilliant one-room game which won an award using this theme).
Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:12 pm
by dave
terri wrote:An underutilized "theme" seems to be humour (not the adolescent type). Maybe it's difficult to write a funny game based on a funny book, for example. Though I did like the ones that had Aunt Matilda in them. Or games that have allusions and references to all kinds of things, like a spoof of various types of games.
Humour's one of those things that's really, really hard to get right for everybody at every time. Many of the adventures I found really humourous when I was a lad now seem puerile to me.
I'm now tempted to replay some of the magnetic scrolls games, as they had a large amount of quite British humour in them

Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 4:31 am
by terri
I'm not sure what games you mean Dave. Notwithstanding, I love to laugh, so send me some neat stuff (that doesn't have solutions), if it really is funny, and I should play it just for the enjoyment (with the solution, of course).
We all come from a different "head space". Adolescents write/wrote many games as they were taken up by the possibilties. "Potentiality" is the name of the game. I believe, at that age, what could you do if/not if, I changed this, what would happen?
Adolescence is a wonderful experience, though I am pretty sure that most of us would not go through it again if we had the opportunity, though the adolescents may not yet realize they are still yet missing something. But if you didn't go through it, would you be the person you are at now?
Enough of my thoughts. Dave, send me what I would like to play.
T.
Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 8:55 pm
by Gunness
dave wrote:Humour's one of those things that's really, really hard to get right for everybody at every time. Many of the adventures I found really humourous when I was a lad now seem puerile to me.
I'm now tempted to replay some of the magnetic scrolls games, as they had a large amount of quite British humour in them

Humour is definitely something that dates fast, but I seem to recall that a lot of the "fun" games in the 80's were already groan-inducing back then. Fergus McNeill's games hold up pretty well, but a lot of other titles seemed awfully contrived.
The MS titles are generally underrated (I think) - I replayed a bit of Fish! recently, and it held up well. I suppose part of the reason is that the humour is better integrated in the writing, and that there's actually some interesting puzzles there, too, to hold your attention.
Plissken wrote:-Sort of life-simulators
Alter Ego may not be a real adventure, but it's damn amusing all the same. I just love playing it as the old, grumpy bastard who sneers at everybody

Posted: Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:14 am
by terri
Humour changes with age, not to mention what people find funny, and I can understand why adolescent-written games lose their lustre. However, humorous games that solely rely on current humour is not what I mean. Yes, the British sense of humour is unique, but it withstands the test of time and changing perceptions. Games that parody previously written games are others that last. Or games that have descriptions of the characters that are stereotypically funny.
OK - maybe humour is in the eye of the beholder.
We probably should drop this vein.