XYZZYnews
May/June 1995       Issue #3

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HOLLOW VOICE
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There's a room in my new apartment that we call the Featureless Cubicle.
If that sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the room with the same
name in The Legend Lives!, which is what I was playing the day we were
trying to come up with a name instead of just calling it "the office" or
"the guest room." It's fun to have something in my real life that's
reminiscent of a text adventure, since so few constructs from the IF
worlds work well in everyday life. A friend once said to me he's glad
people don't act in real life the way they do in text adventure games;
otherwise, if they came over to your house they would just look in
everything, look on everything, look behind everything, and look under
everything. Then they'd try to take everything that wasn't nailed down,
then ask you about and try to show you various objects. I have to agree.
Those people would try everything they could to get past any locked
doors in your house. How rude! And watch out if they stumble into a dark
room; they might never find their way out! If you can think of any other
good examples of how an IF code of conduct differs greatly from societal
norms, please send me some email!

--------------------------
IF Competition
--------------------------
In recent weeks, the most popular topic on the rec.arts.int-fiction has
been discussion of a proposed IF competition. Despite a lack of
consensus on rules, judging, and even timing, most of those posting
expressed a desire to get on with it, write a short game, and worry
about the rest later. As the editor of XYZZYnews, I'd like to donate two
prizes: one is $100 in U.S. currency or the equivalent in another
nation's currency, as appropriate, minus bank fees. The second is a
one-year (6 issue) subscription to the print version of XYZZYnews
including the games disks. Either one is a pretty snazzy prize, if you
ask me! If you're not familiar with the competition, I encourage you to
subscribe to r.a.i-f and get caught up on the subject and the
rules-in-progress.

Happy gaming!

                                                          Eileen Mullin
                                                   [email protected]

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Contents:
Tales from the Code Front
Letters
Sneak Previews
Update to the Infocom Bugs List
Newsbriefs
Interview: Volker Blasius
Character Gender and Interactive Fiction
Game Reviews
 Klaustrophobia
 The Gorreven Papers
Book Reviews
What's on the Disk


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LEGALESE
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XYZZYnews is published bimonthly by Bran Muffin Communications, 160 West
24th Street, # 7C, New York, NY 10011, USA. Email: [email protected].
Send all inquiries, letters, and submissions to the address above.


Contents (c) 1995 XYZZYnews.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America.


Electronic versions: There are currently two versions of XYZZYnews made
available online. One is in ASCII and can be viewed with any text
reader. You can also download a .PDF file that mirrors the layout of the
print version. Use the Adobe Acrobat Reader (available for Windows, Mac,
DOS and UNIX) to view the .PDF file; no special fonts or linked graphics
are needed. You can obtain Acrobat Reader from ftp.adobe.com in the
pub/adobe/applications/Acrobat folder, or
http://www.adobe.com/Software.html. You can also read this issue of
XYZZYnews on the World Wide Web at http:www.interport.net/~eileen/
xyzzy3.html


Subscriptions: Both electronic versions are available at no cost. You
can obtain either one by FTPing to ftp.gmd.de. To be added to the
mailing list, please write to [email protected] and specify text-only
or .PDF version. The print version includes a 3.5" Mac or PC disk and is
$21 (U.S.) for one year (6 issues) or $3.50 for a sample issue. For
print subscriptions outside the U.S. or Canada, please email or write
for rates.


All products, names, and services are trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.


Editorial deadline for Issue #4 is June  30, 1995.


Editor:
    Eileen Mullin

Contributors to this issue:
    Doug Atkinson
    Stuart Beach
    GreenPagan
    C.E. Forman
    Greg Soultanis


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TALES FROM THE CODE FRONT: WHAT XYZZY DOES
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What XYZZY Does

Experienced IF game players know that successful strategies or solutions
for puzzles in one game are often worth trying again in other games.
Experienced game developers learn the value of coding special responses
in anticipation of players trying out these strategies that worked for
them before! My favorite example, obviously, is the magic word XYZZY
from the game Adventure. Even if you don't want the command to work as
your players hope it will in your game, it's much better to code a
special response than have your parser kick in with a default like "I
don't know the word 'xyzzy'." Below, in alphabetical order, is a
round-up of popular text adventures that do make use of special
responses to the command XYZZY. How many of these have you seen?

game title               What "XYZZY" does
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Curses                   For a moment you can almost hear a hoarse voice
                        say something to you. But it passes.

Enhanced                 Suddenly you find yourself in exactly the same
                        room you were in before! It's magic!

Horror of Rylvania       You speak an ancient word of power. A hollow
                        voice says, "No chance, chucko. This is a
                        serious adventure. Shape up and fly right!"

MacWesleyan              A hollow voice says, "To order XYZZYnews, the
                        interactive fiction newsletter, send e-mail to
                        [email protected]."

Unnkulian Unventure II   You invoke an ancient word of power. So
                        ancient, in fact, that it no longer works.
                        Nothing happens.

Waystation               Actually having you magically teleport upon the
                        utterance of that word would violate what
                        little continuity exists in this game. Sorry
                        about that.

This compels you to do more coding, I know, but the payoff is really
high in terms of delighting your players with an inside reference to
other text adventure games. Let's hope we see more of these in the
future! :)

--Eileen Mullin




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LETTERS
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To: XYZZYnews

Yay! Issue #2 hath arrived!
    Just the other day I was talking to my wife about how I was
thinking of getting her a vanity plate reading XYZZY for the van.
Heh! Heh! Now I know that word really works! (I had to explain it to
her, though, as she is more the Tetris type. There's still hope,
though!)
    Thanks for issue #2. Now I got to figure out how to make my boss
think it's work so I can read it...
    One thing, though. Could you keep the line lengths to 80 chars or
less? That would really make it easier to read.  I can adjust the size
of the window, but not everyone can, and if I want to print out a hard
copy... (Actually, I transfer it to my trusty HP100LX and read it
there.)
    Thanks for the issue!

Bill B.
[email protected]

------------------------------------------------------

To: XYZZYnews

I was thrilled to find your magazine and the ftp.gmd.de site this week!
I've been playing text adventures off and on since about 1980, but I
still haven't finished the first one I ever played. It was called
Pyramid and was written for the TRS-80 Model I. I've looked quite a bit
for hints but haven't had any luck...maybe one of your readers might
have an idea. I with you and your magazine all the best. Thanks for
brightening up my day!

Richard Merryman
[email protected]

------------------------------------------------------

Eileen,

Just one comment on your remarks about women and text adventures. I
can't speak to the subject of women and programming of text adventures,
but regarding women and playing of text adventures: I have tried to
interest one ex-wife, one girl-friend (after the ex-wife), and two
daughters in text adventures, with no success. Perhaps they don't relate
to the subject matter (grues, sorcerers, spaceships, pyramids -- rather
arcane stuff perhaps) or perhaps it's the interface. Whatever the case,
I would very much enjoy seeing them (especially my daughters) utilize
their imaginations, and I would certainly enjoy their company on my
adventures -- I just don't know what it will take to get them there.

Greg
[email protected]

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To: XYZZYnews

First thank you for the nice article on GobblerNet. I've achieved my
goal of being the largest text game BBS, with over 350 entries, probably
approaching gmd.de in completeness.
    And congratulations on the rest of the issue -- a fine job,
something to read more than once.
    But I take slight exception with one statement you make: But the
lopsided M-to-F ratio in the game programming world is consistent with
the larger general computer programming industry.  So what would
encourage more women... etc.
    I work in the computer industry, in fact I'm MIS manager for a
medium size energy company, and my division has about 75 staff members.
Now, I'm an over-40 white male, conservative and a believer in
traditional values, so perhaps you would expect not quite the best. But
I take great pride -- in a corporate culture that has not been kind to
women -- in having championed equal pay and opportunity. I have four
section managers reporting to me; two of them are women. I chose them
not because they were (or were not) women; I chose them because they
have the skills and talent and were the right people for the job.  And
they are paid equally to their male counterparts (actually a little more
since they are superior contributors). I learned something really
important, that it is not only morally correct to treat women and men
equally, but it's good business. If you don't promote and properly treat
talented women, you are utterly wasting a valuable resource. So, not
everywhere in the industry is the ratio lopsided!
    Now, if only I could get some of the other managers to follow
suit...

Best wishes,
Bob Newell
[email protected]
gobblernet classic games bbs (701) 222-0429

------------------------------------------------------

To: XYZZYnews

I know this is going to sound like a stupid question, but... I have a
slew of old Infocom games, but the problem is that over the years I have
lost the important documentation for them. Particularly, I lost the map
that was included with Starcross, and I lost the decoder wheel that came
with AMFV. Now, is there any way short of buying new copies of these
games to get the docs I need? If anyone can help I would really
appreciate it!
    (I know it sounds like I pirated these games and am just trying to
get over, but I got these things when I was much younger, and so haven't
really kept track of where all the stuff went) If anyone can help,
Thanx!

--Dave
[email protected]

------------------------------------------------------

Hi Eileen,

I've just picked up copies of editions 1 & 2 of XYZZYnews and had a
great read.
    (Caution -- flame follows:    <grin>)
    By the by -- it comes as a big relief to know that imagination is
still alive and well out in the big, wide world. As one who was dragged
up on text games I was getting worried! (My first two purchases for my
first real computer (Apple ][) were Colossal Cave and Zork. I'd played
so much of the latter in the shop while trying to screw up the courage
to lash out an obscene amount of money for a machine that I was up to
about 100 points before I got the kit home!
    There are a number of (perfectly adequate) Mac magazines in the UK,
but they reflect the needs (prejudices?) of their target audience.  A
recent review of LTOI 1 gave it a very low score. The review went along
the lines of "I know this is going to be hard to believe chaps -- but
there aren't any graphics at all in these games and you have to type in
words...!" (Wow!)
    Call me old-fashioned if you will (and many do!) but I can't help
feel that current (graphical) adventure games are at the equivalent
stage they were a little over ten years ago, when machines couldn't
handle graphics and text. Remember The Wizard and the Princess or Time
Zone? The graphics were pretty crude and there was one line on which the
player keyed in instructions to the parser. How I wish this route had
been followed. Today's graphics are fantastic, but the interfaces make
me weep.
    Return to Zork (which I bought out of 'loyalty') reduced me to
incoherence with the way in which everything had to be done
step-by-(expletive deleted)-step, with layer upon layer of commands to
be built up before being able to execute what should have been a simple
command. Whatever happened to 'Get the blue rope then tie the rope to
the green dwarf then strangle him'? (Ah, the good old days, what?)
    The graphics have come on by leaps and bounds, but we seem to have
retrogressed by an equal amount interfacewise. Ho hum.
    Flame off (Mostly...) (I do get carried away -- sorry about that.)
    So why is it that I really loved Myst yet hated King's Quest V? Not
just me, but several other (old-timers) I know? I wonder if it's because
of the thought that went into the design, perhaps? Maybe there's hope
for graphics and 'proper' adventures yet, eh?
    What do other Xyzzy'ers think?

Peter Kemp
[email protected]


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SNEAK PREVIEWS
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Perhaps everyone who's entering the quasi-organized IF competition is
just keeping mum about their games-in-progress. Or maybe those academic
types are just swamped with finals right now. Whatever the reason, we
have an abbreviated column for "Sneak Previews" this issue, with the
inside scoop on just one upcoming game (but it sounds really cool...):
    In "The Resident: You Just Visit the Net, I Live Here," by Mike
DeSanto ([email protected]) you play a man who was assassinated, almost. A
wealthy person has kept your brain alive in a tank and given you direct
and permanent connection with cyberspace. He promises you a cyborg body
in return for some work.  You will have your hands full doing his
errands while trying to find out who had you killed and why. Ultimately,
the fate of the world is in your disembodied hands. The release date for
this game is still up in the air. "The Resident" will run only under
OS/2 with REXX installed. DeSanto has created his own interpreter,
called REXX-Adventure, which uses a point-and-click interface and an
object oriented structure.




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UPDATE TO THE INFOCOM BUGS LIST    Compiled by C.E. Forman
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



After "The Infocom Bugs List" appeared in XYZZYnews #2, we received
several additions and corrections to the list. Some were new bugs we
hadn't seen before, and others clarified which version numbers of the
games in which certain bugs were present. Thanks to all the contributors
(listed below) who took the time to set the record straight!


---------------------------------------
Bureaucracy
---------------------------------------

In the PC version (I don't know about any others), if you type RING THE
DOORBELL in front of the Mansion, it works fine. However, you can stand
in front of your own house and type RING DOORBELL, and you get the same
results as if you were in front of the Mansion.

    --Doug Atkinson


---------------------------------------
Deadline
---------------------------------------

Version 26 of Deadline does not have the "two Dunbars" bug (as reported
in XYZZYnews #2). It was fixed in an earlier version.

The "bathroom door" bug only exists in release 19/820427. Later versions
had it fixed, while earlier versions hadn't had the south closet door
added yet.

Two of the bugs mentioned in the New Zork Times Exterminator columns
were never fixed. All versions of the game fail to recognize the player
as being in the room when he is sitting on a piece of furniture.
Likewise, all versions of Deadline look only at the first six letters of
each word, so the confusion between GARDEN and GARDENer was never
resolved.

    --Paul David Doherty


---------------------------------------
Enchanter
---------------------------------------

The bug that lets you fill the jug and get spells anywhere in the game
is not present in release 10 (as reported in XYZZYnews #2), only earlier
versions.

    --Paul David Doherty


---------------------------------------
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
---------------------------------------

This isn't exactly a bug, but sort of an excessively long way to go to
avoid having to add another feature to the game: The software is very
unwilling to let you take the portable transport into the mad
scientist's house on Venus. He'll even "drop" it from within another
container.

    --John Payson

The "purple button" (described in XYZZYnews #2) bug is only in the Solid
Gold versions. None of the earlier releases had this problem.

    --Paul David Doherty


---------------------------------------
Sorcerer
---------------------------------------

I had stated before that in Sorcerer, it was impossible to GNUSTO the
GOLMAC spell, since you couldn't get into the room that held the GOLMAC
scroll if you were carrying your spell book. But someone on
rec.games.int-fiction pointed out that, if you cast the GASPAR spell on
yourself, and then leave the room without picking up the scroll, you'll
reappear in the room after you're resurrected. When this happens, all
your possessions will be intact, and you'll be able to take the scroll
and GNUSTO GOLMAC. Unfortunately, the Infocom programmers never planned
for this, so casting it elsewhere in the game doesn't accomplish
anything. Interesting trick, though.

    --C.E. Forman


---------------------------------------
Suspect
---------------------------------------

Last issue's "Infocom Bug Report" inaccurately stated that the bug
allowing players to reach the office before Veronica's murder had been
fixed in the LTOI release. Actually, this one is still present. To make
it work, you have to get to the office by going west 3 times, south 6
times, west twice, and then north twice. This will get you to the office
at 9:13 P.M., where you will see the fairy mask, but not the description
of Veronica's body. Although Veronica actually reaches the office at
9:11, two minutes earlier (which can be confirmed by playing the game
using ZIP for DOS with the -o switch active), her description doesn't
turn up until 9:14. Typing "LOOK" the turn after you enter the office
will cause time to pass, making it 9:14, and Veronica's body will
suddenly appear out of nowhere.

    --Paul David Doherty


---------------------------------------
Trinity
---------------------------------------

Saying "ROADRUNNER, DROP ME" results in "The roadrunner drops yourself
at your feet." The room description then says "There's yourself here."
Leaving the location and coming back does not change the situation. And
strangely, referring to the dropped "yourself" is interpreted by the
game as an attempt to interact with the roadrunner. The roadrunner will
only drop "you" once -- trying it again causes the game to say "The
roadrunner doesn't have that."

Carrying the splinter into the bottom of the reservoir also reveals a
small blooper. The room description talks about the lantern's beam, even
if you are carrying the splinter instead of the lantern. Evidently the
author never considered the possibility of someone going to the Trinity
site without solving all the other puzzles first.

The "shining" bug, which involves getting a string of garbage from
shining the splinter without specifying an object, is not present in the
LTOI version. Earlier versions should have it, though.

    --C.E. Forman


---------------------------------------
The Witness
---------------------------------------

The bug allowing you to get a drink anywhere in the game is still
present in the LTOI version.

    --Paul David Doherty


---------------------------------------
Zork II
---------------------------------------

If you time it right, you can blow up the base of the volcano while in
the balloon. This requires dropping the bomb on the ground and lighting
it, then crawling into the basket before it explodes. If you do it
right, the computer should tell you that the balloon settles to the
ground, followed by "You can't go that way."

    --John Payson


---------------------------------------
Zork III
---------------------------------------

I found this bug in Zork III, but it also exists in most Dungeon/Zork
ports. While you're shoving blocks around to solve the Royal Puzzle,
drop the gold card in the slot to open the door, then move a block in
front of the door and leave the usual way (via the ladder). Walk around
to the side door and you'll find it's not blocked! You can walk through
the solid stone block back into the puzzle, but you can't leave that
way. I reported this bug to Infocom many years ago, but I doubt it was
ever fixed.

    --Dave Newkirk




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NEWSBRIEFS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

-----------------------------------------
Jumping in the IF MUD: An Update
-----------------------------------------

The first issue of XYZZYnews included a look at two multi-user dungeons
(or MUDs, as they are commonly called) based on the fantasy world of
Zork. At the time, both MUDs were at least partially operational. But
things can change rapidly on Internet, and the situation is now quite
different, making an update necessary. This time around, we take a brief
look at two other MUDs presented in the style and format most familiar
to the interactive fiction community.
    First, an update on the MUDs reviewed in XYZZYnews #1. ZorkMUD
(lestat.shv.hb.se 7890) is currently undergoing a major parser overhaul,
but it is still up and running, and visitors are welcome to telnet in
and check it out. Since the parser is still under construction, I was
unable to get the game to respond much during my visits, but hopefully
it should be up and running smoothly by the time you read this.
    Sadly, ChicagoMUD (also mentioned in XYZZYnews #1) has been shut
down recently, and writer and operator Nino Ruffini has no current plans
to reopen it. Opening in the Zorkian city of Borphee, ChicagoMUD was
full of well-known and obscure references to Infocom's classic fantasy
series. This was due primarily to the efforts of Ruffini, whom many of
you may recognize as the author of the Encyclopedia Frobozzica included
with Return to Zork.
    For a different online IF fantasy experience, you might try MUD_II
(iplay.interplay.com). Although it's not based on Zork, or any of
Infocom's works, MUD_II is a decent example of multi-user interactive
fiction, with story-building being its main goal.  Access for
unregistered users is limited to 30 minutes per day, for 15 days, after
which players' accounts are either upgraded or eliminated. Registered
players have unlimited access.
    Finally, you may find it worth your while to check out DUMII
(dum.ts.umu.se 2001). Like MUD_II, the basic goal is the solving of
various quests, with character-building a minor part of gameplay.
Complex character ratings are not present in DUMII. The only statistic
that is advanced during play is your character's experience level.
According to the operator of DUMII, "Combat is part of some of the
quests but in most cases some thinking can make the fights easy." This
aspect of the game strongly reminded me of Infocom's Beyond Zork,
although DUMII is set in a different fantasy world.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ed. note: If you have any information about noteworthy or newsworthy
happenings in the interactive fiction community, please pass it on to us
at [email protected]. We're always interested in releases of new
versions of design tools, innovations in new games or other new
software, and related Web sites or BBSes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


-----------------------------------------
May/June Top 10 Picks
for IF on the World Wide Web
-----------------------------------------

The Virtual Multimedia Interactive Mystery Theater
    http://www.coolsite.com/intro.html

Ancient Anguish
    http://www.bedrock.com/Ancient_Anguish/aa.html

Adventure Authoring Systems FAQ
    http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/
          usenet/games/adventure-systems/faq.html

Zarf's List of Interactive Games on the Web
    http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/andrew/org/kgb/www/zarf/games.html

Your Wacky World Wide Web Adventure
    http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~hubick/adventure/adventure.cgi

Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive
    http://www.tiac.net/users/baf/if-guide.html

Web of Twisty Pages by Stephen Van Egmond
    http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~svanegmo/if-index.html

Halloween - A Text Adventure on the Web
    http://www.dash.com/netro/fun/hol/hlw.html

John's Interactive Fiction Page
    http://speedracer.nmsu.edu/~jholder/intfiction.html

Infocom Fact Sheet Compiled by Paul David Doherty
    http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/
         user/wsr/Web/IF/infocom-info.html



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
INTERVIEW:  VOLKER BLASIUS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Browse through any of Usenet's rec.game newsgroups, and you'll see that
nearly any question beginning "Where can I find a copy of a text
adventure  called..." is answered with "Check out ftp.gmd.de." How did
this vast IF archive  get started anyway, and who do we have to thank
for it? We tracked down the  maintainer of the IF archive, Volker
Blasius, to find out how this all came to pass...

Q.  What is your computer background?
A.  I have a degree that's probably equivalent to an MA in mathematics
   in the U.S. because that was the only degree available here at that
   time (1970) for people who messed around with computers. We had
   developed a time sharing system for an IBM mainframe running OS/360
   MFT (long before IBM came out with TSO) and the work I got my degree
   for was something like PC Tools or the Norton Utilities for this
   mainframe: a fully interactive disk browsing and hex editing
   utility, written all in assembler language.

Q.  What was the chain of events that led you to establish the IF
   archive?
A.  During one of the radical changes in my working career at GMD I was
   thrown into Unix and the Internet, and while browsing through Usenet
   I somehow found the rec.*.int-fiction newsgroups. I had grown up
   with IBM mainframes (well, not actually "grown up," but all my
   computer experience was with mainframes) and considered everything
   else a bulky and particularly useless form of pocket calculator, so
   I totally missed the Infocom era -- the only computer game I knew
   for a very long time was ADVENT on the mainframe, but it fascinated
   me thoroughly. These newsgroups were a revelation to me, and I
   gobbled up whatever I could.
      Very soon I noticed that many good things were available on the
   Net but they were almost hopelessly distributed all over the world.
   I didn't like Unix very much at the time, so I thought I might get
   better acquainted with it if I had a reason for really using it. I
   thought building an archive with IF stuff might be such a reason. I
   asked our ftp administrator whether I could have some disk space and
   a directory of my own on the ftp server, and I asked Dave Baggett
   (whom I knew from playing the Unnkulian Unventures and a few
   discussions about them) for his opinion. He thought that a central
   interactive fiction archive would be a great idea and offered his
   help. We copied the files we had to GMD's ftp server (ftp.gmd.de)
   and announced the archive in November 1992, inviting everyone to
   upload whatever they would like to see there.

Q.  Most text adventure fans probably don't know what GMD is. What do
   the initials stand for? What is your involvement with the computer
   center?
A.  GMD is a research establishment sponsored by the German federal
   government and two states where branch offices are located. It was
   founded in 1968 under the name "Gesellschaft fuer Mathematik und
   Datenverarbeitung mbH Bonn," which means something like "Mathematics
   and Data Processing, Inc." The obvious acronym for that was GMD.
   Bonn was appended to the name because the initial staff (including
   me working part-time as a student) was recruited from the
   mathematical department of Bonn University and GMD was not located
   in Bonn -- so if Bonn wasn't part of the address, at least it should
   be part of the name. Last year it was renamed "GMD -- Forschungs-
   zentrum Informationstechnik GmbH" for German-speaking countries and
   "GMD -- German National Research Center for Information Technology"
   for the rest of the world. This time they dropped Bonn but kept the
   old acronym as part of the new name.
      From the start GMD consisted of several computer centers, each
   equipped with different brands of mainframes and located in
   different cities or even states. I used to work in the IBM center,
   first on the Birlinghoven Castle campus, where GMD headquarters are,
   then in a new branch office in Bonn. I then helped establish another
   IBM computer center for GMD and was head of the system programming
   and administration department there for 15 years, until this
   computer center was closed down because nobody needed mainframes any
   more. When GMD's IBM mainframe era ended in '89, I helped set up a
   PC support group, but that was in turn deemed unnecessary in '92 and
   I was transferred to the central Unix support group back here at HQ.
      What I'm actually doing now has little to do with Unix support:
   mainly odd jobs that need a good amount of expertise in a number of
   different areas and that nobody else can do or wants to do, but
   which everybody wants done and done well.

Q.  How did the archive develop from that point? How did word about it
   spread?
A.  I received very favorable comments from the very start, and soon I
   was asked about a mirror image in the USA. So I contacted Chris
   Myers at wuarchive and asked if he would be willing to mirror the
   IF-archive. He agreed at once and began mirroring the archive in
   January 1993. We had 12 MB then, and I estimated that it would
   eventually grow to about twice as much -- I was a wee bit wrong
   there, I confess, we're well over the 140 MB mark right now. :-)
      Several people then asked me to post the changes in the archive
   to the Net, so that they wouldn't have to pore through the
   ever-expanding archive all the time to avoid missing anything. I
   began to do that -- I post my announcements in the IF groups and in
   several more general computer game groups, too, and I think this
   reached a lot of people who haven't yet discovered the
   rec.*.int-fiction groups. At first, I also read those general
   groups, answered questions about IF, and pointed people to
   rec.*.int-fiction and the archive, but in the meantime a lot of
   people started doing that (some of whom I know and some I never even
   heard of), so I stopped answering those questions. This suited me
   fine, because other activities began demanding more and more of my
   time.
      In October 1994 I received a letter from nic.funet.fi in Finland
   telling me that they had started mirroring the archive, too, and
   that's the current state of affairs.

Q.  How much time do you spend in a week maintaining the IF archive, on
   average? What kinds of problems crop up most frequently with the
   files that are uploaded?
A.  I've never kept a record of how much time I actually spend on the
   archive, but I think my method of keeping up with uploads takes
   about 20 hours a week on average. Of course this isn't just for
   moving the files around a bit; I download the files to a machine
   that can handle them (I have a PC, a Mac and an ancient Sun here in
   my room), unpack them, read the documentation, run them if they are
   executables of some sort, write up a summary for the index file in
   the archive and my announcement on the Net, and finally decide on a
   destination directory and move the file there.
      The problems I encounter through that process almost always have
   the same cause: inadvertent code conversion caused by passing the
   files through machines of different architectures. The most common
   manifestation are uploads of binary files in ASCII mode; this may
   work for some files if only Unix machines are involved, but if
   anything else happens to be in the way, this is sure to corrupt the
   files by translating between character sets, CRs, LFs, and CRLFs and
   by truncating files as soon as some kind of EOF code happens to
   occur in the binary file. A particularly nasty problem I had the
   other day was a PC executable that had been stored on a Macintosh;
   we eventually ended up with the original source code and the
   particular compiler version needed for that source being sent to me
   from different locations so I could recompile it here to create a
   distributable file. :-)
      Other problems arise that aren't directly related to the uploaded
   files themselves. There are newbies asking for help, which isn't
   difficult but time-consuming and kind of boring in the long run.
   Also, uploads tend to arrive in large batches rather than at a more
   or less constant rate. People tend to be busy and creative during
   their vacations, and when they return to the Net they all send me
   their work at the same time. If this happens to coincide with a time
   when I'm busy with other stuff (like early this year and up to now),
   a huge backlog quickly forms, which is quite disheartening to look
   at. Just check my "unprocessed" directory. :-(
      There are very few other problems -- from time to time someone
   will use our incoming directory to distribute something we don't
   want, but unknown files are soon deleted, anyway. There isn't much
   free space in that file system, so there's very little room for
   abuse. No problems with commercial software; people are very
   scrupulous there.

Q.  How do you juggle maintaining the IF archive with the rest of the
   work you do at GMD? How long do you expect to continue doing it?
A.  The time between jobs I can spend on maintaining the archive varies
   greatly. Officially I'm not supposed to do it at all. The people in
   my department here know it all, of course, and they appreciate it
   because it gives GMD and its ftp archive a good name all over the
   world (together with the music archive a friend here maintains in
   much the same way as I do), but upper management doesn't know about
   it and it doesn't appear in official papers. I hope they won't read
   this. :-)
      How long will I continue to do it? Frankly, I don't know.  I
   would be glad to hand it over to someone else with more time than I
   have and a fresh mind, but such a person will be hard to find, I'm
   afraid. Any volunteers?

Q.  Do you keep track of the statistics on the most frequently accessed
   files, or where in the world callers are dialing in from?
A.  All the calls to the archive are logged and the aforementioned
   friend wrote a program to extract data from the log files. In 1993
   we had 76,155 downloads from the archive, steadily growing from
   3,942 in January to 11,005 in December. By far the most popular file
   in that year was games/pc/softporn.zip, the original of Leisure Suit
   Larry I. :-)))
      For the month of April 1995, the total number of downloads was
   24,838. I just glanced through last week's log file to see if
   there's an obvious winner, but the current trend seems to be to
   download whole directories in one fell swoop, with solutions and
   solutions/uhs occurring most often, but info, games/pc, and
   programming/inform are very popular, too. Most callers are from the
   USA, but there are many from all over the world, some with country
   codes I never heard of. This world is really growing together!

Q.  What kinds of problems crop up most frequently with the files that
   are uploaded? For example, are there repetitive uploads of the same
   games, or does anyone ever try to upload commercial software?
A.  Apart from the technical problems mentioned above, there are very
   few problems -- from time to time someone who uses our incoming
   directory to distribute something we don't want, but unknown files
   are soon deleted, anyway, and there isn't much free space in that
   file system, so there's very little room for abuse. No problems with
   commercial software; people are very scrupulous there.

Q.  Let's say the authors of a new text adventure wants to upload their
   new game to the if-archives; could you give some pointers for how
   they should go about submitting their file, and what information
   they should email to you?
A.  * ftp to ftp.gmd.de under the name of "ftp" (which is much more
     convenient than "anonymous") and with your email address as
     password.
   * cd to incoming/if-archive (not incoming; the files there will
     be deleted).
   * type "bin" to change to binary mode and upload your file.
   * type "dir" and compare the file length with your original.
   * disconnect and write email to [email protected] with the
     following information:
     -- your name (if it's not in your standard header)
     -- the name of the file you uploaded
     -- an informal description of the file's contents for me:
        what is it (a game?), its full name, what's it about,
        who wrote it, status (copyright? shareware?)
     -- a more formal short description (one to three lines) that
        I can use for the Index file will save me a bit of time
     -- anything else you want to tell me. I'll answer this letter
        after I've checked the file and moved it to its final
        directory.

Q.  Do you have any desire to program your own IF game, or to invent
   your own development system?
A.  To be honest, no. I don't think I have the talent and imagination to
   conceive a game anyone might want to play, and the days when I tried
   to develop my own programming language are over (I'm 51 now).

Q.  Do you play all of the games that get uploaded to you? What are your
   favorites?
A.  No, due to lack of time. As part of my file checking process I play
   a few moves, wander around a bit and try to find the first puzzle
   and solve it to get an impression of the game, but then I usually
   stop and forget about it. Among the very few I really played are
   Unnkulia 1 and 2 by the Daves (Leary and Baggett), which I finished
   and liked (and registered!), Doug McDonald's World, which I liked
   even better but never quite finished, and Graham Nelson's Curses,
   which absolutely fascinated me, but when I had reached 120 points or
   so I was interrupted for several weeks and I never picked it up
   again. :-(

Q.  What's the most difficult part about organizing the files on the IF
   archive?
A.  Keeping a sensible and intuitive structure, or at least something
   that looks like that to me. From time to time, when a new category
   of files shows up or a directory turns out to contain files that
   should be separated, I rearrange the directory tree a bit, and this
   takes some careful thinking to arrive at a structure that makes
   sense and will probably survive for some time -- frequent
   reorganizations will only confuse the users.

Q.  Have you noticed any trends on the IF archive or the newsgroups over
   time?
A.  I already mentioned the irregular pattern of contributions, which is
   quite understandable since most IF writers are members of the
   academic community who are kept busy with other stuff during terms
   and mainly have their vacations to work on their favorite projects.
   What astonishes me most is that the development systems are as
   popular as the games; I can understand that for a programmer writing
   a game seems to be as attractive an adventure as playing it, but I
   would have expected that the players (i.e. consumers) would vastly
   outnumber the writers.

Q.  As the keeper of the archives, you must have a unique perspective on
   changing interests and the level of activity in usage of any one
   language development system.
A.  The only thing I've noticed from my black hole of vanishing time is
   that public interest seems to be shifting from TADS to Inform. TADS
   is still the favorite of the professionals, but new writers seem to
   tend to Inform -- maybe because it's freeware. I'm not sure, but I
   think people have very subjective views on the relative heights of
   thresholds to things they want, and the example of ALAN makes me
   suspect that just to have to ask for something that you will get for
   free is quite a threshold indeed.
      (ALAN, the Adventure LANguage, is a text adventure development
   system that is given away for free, but you have to ask the authors
   for it; they want to keep track of its usage. I have the manuals and
   the interpreter in the archive and a note on how to get a copy of
   the compiler from the authors, and all the reports I heard about it
   were rather favorable -- but I never heard of a game written with
   ALAN. There are some coding examples in the archive, but not one
   complete game, if I'm not mistaken.)
      The success of AGT in the CompuServe GAMERS forum shows that
   non-programmers like to write IF, too, and that some of their
   results are really good -- why should programmers be the only people
   with creative potential? Dave Malmberg has dropped the support of
   AGT, leaving a gap for people who are just plain afraid of modern
   programming languages like TADS or Inform, so maybe someone will
   invent a new programming system that doesn't look like a programming
   system and so doesn't scare writers off before they take a second
   look. After all, writers do use computers to compose their works,
   but they certainly wouldn't use them if they had to code a novel in
   C.
      I don't think interest in IF will diminish; almost every day
   there is someone asking in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure, "What
   about text adventures? I think they are great, but are there new
   ones?" You can't make big money with text adventures any more, of
   course, that's why IF depends on a more or less free niche here in
   the Net, but the interest is there and the idealists are, so IF will
   continue to live.



++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Top 50 files downloaded from GMD's IF-archive for the month of
                            April, 1995

Ranking / # of DL's / directory path and filename

1.  161  if-archive/games/pc/softporn.zip
2.  113  if-archive/solutions/uhs/uhsdos.zip
3.  104  if-archive/solutions/uhs/uhswin.zip
4.  100  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/release_note.txt
5.   81  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/library/grammar.h
6.   81  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/library/changes.txt
7.   79  if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/zip203.zip
8.   78  if-archive/solutions/Curses.solve
9.   76  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/manuals/
                    designers_manual.plain_text
10.   75  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/examples/balances.inf
11.   75  if-archive/info/rec.arts.int-fiction.FAQ
12.   74  if-archive/solutions/hints.many
13.   74  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/library/parser.h
14.   72  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/library/verblib.h
15.   68  if-archive/infocom/info/gameinfo.txt
16.   66  if-archive/programming/general-discussion/Graves.2
17.   66  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/examples/toyshop.inf
18.   66  if-archive/info/adventure-game-history
19.   65  if-archive/solutions/non-IF/cheatlam.txt
20.   65  if-archive/infocom/patches/InfocomPatches1.1.txt
21.   64  if-archive/info/TADS-vs-Inform.FAQ
22.   62  if-archive/infocom/info/fact-sheet.txt
23.   62  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/executables/i54p386.zip
24.   59  if-archive/magazines/XYZZYnews/XYZZY2.TXT
25.   53  if-archive/games/infocom/curses.z5
26.   52  if-archive/unprocessed/crypt.txt
27.   52  if-archive/solutions/uhs/kq7.uhs
28.   51  if-archive/unprocessed/mazedoom.txt
29.   51  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/manuals/
                    Technical.Manual.tex
30.   51  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/examples/advent.inf
31.   51  if-archive/games/pc/drive-in.zip
32.   50  if-archive/rec.games.int-fiction/FAQ
33.   50  if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/wzip11.zip
34.   49  if-archive/unprocessed/riddles.txt
35.   48  if-archive/infocom/hints/invisiclues/Bureaucracy.inv
36.   48  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/examples/shell.inf
37.   47  if-archive/solutions/uhs/t7g.uhs
38.   47  if-archive/infocom/hints/invisiclues/Trinity.inv
39.   47  if-archive/infocom/hints/invisiclues/AMFV.inv
40.   47  if-archive/games/infocom/busted.zip
41.   46  if-archive/scott-adams/scott.zip
42.   46  if-archive/mapping-tools/mapper.zip
43.   46  if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/xzip130.tar
44.   46  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/source/
                    Bugs.In.Inform.v1404.txt
45.   46  if-archive/infocom/compilers/inform/examples/
                    adventureland.inf
46.   46  if-archive/info/if-bibliography.txt
47.   46  if-archive/games/pc/pcu10.zip
48.   45  if-archive/solutions/Curses.step
49.   45  if-archive/games/pc/hobbit.zip
50.   44  if-archive/unprocessed/artparts.txt
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Character Gender in Interactive Fiction
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

by Doug Atkinson ([email protected])

Caveat lector: In this article I discuss many classic Infocom games, as
well as several currently available shareware games. Though I try to
avoid specific spoilers, I do refer to puzzles that may spoil some
surprises.

  Joe's Bar
  An undistinguished bar, yet the social center of Upper Sandusky. The
  front door is almost lost amidst the hazy maze of neon that shrouds
  the grimy glass of the south wall.  Doors marked "Ladies" and "Gents"
  lead, respectively, northeast and northwest. You feel an urge.

  >NW

  Gents' Room
  This filthy bathroom belies the existence of disinfectant.  A single
  toilet and sink are the only fixtures.  More breathable air can be
  found to the southeast.
                         --Leather Goddesses of Phobos (Steve Meretzky)

-----------------------------------------
I. Introduction
-----------------------------------------
One of the more intriguing issues in interactive fiction design is that
of character identity. In many of the classic IF games, the player
character has no specific identity beyond being "the adventurer" or "the
detective" or whatever. This allows a wide variety of players to put
themselves into the shoes of the title character.
    There are a few fundamentals of identity that every (human)
character must have, though, and one of them is gender. How is this
handled in IF?

  What next?
  >PUSH THE EYE
  The dragon's eye glows red.  A voice comes from a hidden speaker.  It
  says: "Please announce yourself.  State your title -- such as Lord or
  Lady, Sir or Dame, Mr. or Ms. -- and your first and last name."
  >DAME AGATHA CHRISTIE
  "Did you say your name is Dame Agatha Christie?"
  >YES
                               --Moonmist (Stu Galley and Jim Lawrence)

  Other games take the attitude that anyone who turns up can play, as
  themselves, with whatever gender or attitudes (and in a dull enough
  game with no other characters, these don't even matter).
                     --Graham Nelson, "The Craft of the Adventure Game"

-----------------------------------------
II. The Androgynous Hero
-----------------------------------------
Roughly half of Infocom's 33 classic text adventures have a main
character with no specified gender. These range from the Enchanter
Trilogy to Suspended and Nord and Burt Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It.
This generally works best in games where there is little social
interaction between the character and the NPCs, or when the character's
clothes don't have to be mentioned in detail. The player is free to
imagine the main character as anything they want (and even to envision
themselves as the hero).
    Ten games have explicitly male main characters, with some being
special cases. Four of these, Sherlock, Arthur, Shogun, and The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, are adaptations of works of fiction
with male main characters (one can't very well consider Dr. Watson's
gender undecided, Rex Stout notwithstanding).
    Sometimes it takes some reading between the lines to tell the
character's gender. For example, there is only the faintest clue that
the detective in Witness is male -- there is a brief reference to
flirting with the telephone operator.  (Occam's Razor favors a male
detective in any event -- I don't know how many female police detectives
there were in the 1930s, and it's a genre piece in a genre predominated
by men.) The adventurer in the Zork trilogy is male, but you only find
this out from the description of him in ENCHANTER -- there's no evidence
for it in the trilogy proper. (In fact, in ZORK III you wind up fighting
someone who's your exact duplicate. The game accepts both "man" and
"woman" as synonyms for this character!)
    Two special cases are A Mind Forever Voyaging and the
aforementioned Hitchhiker's Guide. In AMFV the main character (Parry
Simm) is technically neuter, being an artificially intelligent computer,
but he has a masculine persona in Simulation Mode.  (This is one of the
cases with a great deal of social interaction.) In HHGG, you start out
playing Arthur Dent, but in the course of the game you become other
characters, including the female Trillian for one scene.
    The final game with male main characters is Border Zone, where all
three characters you play are masculine. This is really the only one
where the character is clearly male but didn't have to be; the
businessman in part I could easily have been a woman, or just left
vague.
    Additionally, I have a suspicion that the main character in The
Lurking Horror is male, although there's nothing about it in the game.
Two reasons: 1) Technical schools are notorious for having male
majorities, so the odds favor a male. 2) LH is a genre piece, much like
The Witness or Plundered Hearts.  Specifically, it's a Lovecraft genre
piece, and Lovecraft never had any female protagonists. This doesn't
mean that the character can't be female, of course, just that I have a
harder time imagining it.
    Suspended is an unusual and special case, because the main
character never does anything, just orders around the robots. The robots
are half male, half female, although since they're only robots this
affects nothing except minor touches in their programming.
    Five games allow you to choose your character's gender -- Ballyhoo,
Bureaucracy, Beyond Zork, Leather Goddesses, and Moonmist.  (Some of the
choosing sections are quoted as section headers.) These range from the
elegant -- in LGOP it's possible to not even notice that you're making a
choice -- to bluntly asking if you're male or female.  Even in cases
where the game just asks, it's frequently worked into the game (e.g., in
Ballyhoo you punch a circle on your ticket).
    The effects this has on the game range widely, although it has no
real effect on the puzzles. In Bureaucracy the only effect is one thing
the Hacker says to you ("Wait! Can I go out with your sister?" vs.
"...with you?"); the effects in Beyond Zork are similarly small, mostly
there so the other characters can use pronouns in referring to you,
although I recommend playing as a female and asking the shopkeeper about
the Potion of Might.
    In Leather Goddesses of Phobos, on the other hand, virtually all
the characters' genders are based on yours. (A few don't, and this puts
an interesting twist on one scene in the endgame. Hint: the game's title
remains the same in both modes.) This is unsurprising, since the game is
a sex farce, after all, and one couldn't expect the main character's
gender to change while everything else remained the same.
    Finally, one game, and only one, has a set female character. That
game is PLUNDERED HEARTS, and I'll deal with it separately.

  "My lovely," Jamison says huskily.  His eyes burn intently, their
  blue like the sea on a summer day.  A shiver of warmth flows through
  you, and you tremble at his touch.  The pirate's hands, warm and
  exciting, caress you, searing through the thin linen of your chemise.
  His lips near yours, his breath softly scented. "May I kiss you?"

  >KISS JAMISON

  You lean into his arms, face lifted. Tender is his kiss, soft his
  lips as his body presses hard against you.  You drown in the tide of
  your passion, swept like the sea against the rocks of the shore.
                                        --Plundered Hearts (Amy Briggs)

  "Ur-grue?" asks the only woman Implementor.
  "Ur-grue," nods another.
                                         --Beyond Zork (Brian Moriarty)

-----------------------------------------
III. A Heart Forever Plundering
-----------------------------------------
Plundered Hearts is an anomalous Infocom game in a number of ways. It's
the only one published in the romance/adventure genre. It's also the
only one where you play a female character (with no choice in the
matter), and the only one written by a woman (although Hollywood Hijink
does credit Liz Cyr-Jones with the original concept).
    The choice of a female player character is unusual enough to be
worthy of comment. It seems likely that this adventure was written to
appeal to women (being grounded firmly in the romance novel genre, one
whose readership is traditionally mostly female). Still, forcing one
gender on the character is unusual for Infocom regardless of which one
it is; the only ones that have blatantly male player characters and
aren't adaptations are Border Zone and A Mind Forever Voyaging.
    This is the result of the way this particular adventure is told; it
places the emphasis on the "fiction" part of Interactive Fiction (as BZ
and AMFV do, as well). Puzzle games like Zork and Infidel don't concern
themselves with characterization, character interaction, and much plot;
the character is just trying to get rich. Story games have a much higher
ratio of prose to puzzles; in fact, once you've solved the problems in
PH you can dash through the adventure very rapidly. They have much more
personal interaction, and concern themselves more with characterization
and storyline.
    For this reason, having a specific character becomes much more
important. The Zork adventurer really has no personality or motivations
beyond greed.  The detective in Deadline is just doing his/her job. In a
story where goals are more personal, however, the motivations can't be
so generalized, and that means having a particular player character.
Once you have a specific character as your hero, personal details begin
to matter. We don't know anything about the life of the Zork adventurer
before he appeared outside the White House; we don't know where he comes
from, who his parents are, if he's married, or what his hobbies are
(besides collecting treasure, that is). In a game where you're someone
specific, and are expected to act in character, these details take on a
much greater importance.
    After these details are settled, character gender takes on a whole
new significance, because the player's interactions with the NPCs will
be strongly affected by this. It's significant that the two games with
the most plot and fewest puzzles, PH and AMFV, are also the hardest to
imagine with main characters of opposite genders. (In Border Zone it
seems to have been a conscious decision on the programmer's part to use
male characters; interestingly, the sample game transcript from BZ
featured a female spy.)
    These games feature a great deal of interaction, and how characters
act towards each other will change somewhat if their sex does. In Zork,
making the thief, troll, wizard, demon, etc. female would change
nothing. In LGOP, characters can be interchangeably male or female
because they're not very deep. Conversely, PH simply would not work with
a male main character, female pirate, etc.: the motivations and
character roles would go all askew. The constant threat of becoming
LaFond's unwilling plaything would be much less credible. (That's also
the result of its being a genre piece.) The same is less true of AMFV,
but the interactions with Parry's family would be different if Parry
were a woman.
    The upshot of all this is that, the closer IF gets to being a
story, the more clearly defined its main characters become. And
character gender is not required for clear definition, but it helps
considerably.
    As for the other aspect of this game -- the fact that the character
is a woman -- see the next section.

  Are you male or female? [The default is male.]
  >FEMALE

  By what name will this character be called?
  [The default is "Buck Palace."]
                                         --Beyond Zork (Brian Moriarty)

-----------------------------------------
IV. Character Roles and Player Roles
-----------------------------------------
Overall, very few Infocom games require you to play a character of a
specific gender. (I don't quite count the Zork Trilogy, since the clue
about the Adventurer's gender comes in another game.) Why, of those that
do, does only one have a female hero -- and in a game aimed at females,
at that?
    It's worth disposing of the adaptation games, first. They can't
really be faulted for using male heroes (and HHGG does let you play
Trillian, however briefly). It could be argued that Infocom should have
adapted from a source with a female hero at some point, but that's
really a minor point -- especially given how few adaptations they did,
total.
    And to put their approach in perspective, look at the games
released under their name after Activision bought them out. Except for
Journey, which features a team, every one of them has a male hero. In
both Battletechs and Mines of Titan you lead a team, but the leader and
hero is male; in Circuit's Edge, you play a man, but CE is another
adaptation of fiction. Infocom cared much more about inclusiveness than
Activision does, apparently.
    Why the effort towards androgyny in the games' heroes? Adventure
gamers like to use their imaginations; why not let them imagine
themselves as someone totally different?
 The header quote from Beyond Zork is telling, and says a lot about the
assumptions made by the Implementors (or at least Brian Moriarty). It
could mean one of two things; either the assumption is that IF players
are more masculine than feminine and prefer playing men, or a default
was needed (the same way one's given for name) and "male" was chosen at
random.
    While not meaning to attack Infocom or Moriarty, I think some of
the former was at work both in Beyond Zork and Infocom's approach to
design. (Whenever I discuss Infocom, remember that I consider them to
be one of the better companies in this respect; but they weren't
perfect.) There are two assumptions there; the assumption that male IF
players outnumber women, and the assumption that, if they must choose,
they prefer playing men.
    The first assumption we can dispense with quickly. That women do
play IF there can be no doubt; this article was inspired by Eileen's
editorial in XYZZYnews #2 on the very subject. My mother and sister have
both played Infocom games, and I have a female friend who's as devoted
to Infocom as I am. However, there is a tacit assumption that men are
more interested in computers, and computer games, then women are. This
is partially a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the companies using this
assumption will then produce games that are aimed at men. (Classic
example: pinball. Women play pinball, too, but look at the number of
pinball games with scantily-clad women on the cases. Even if this
doesn't actively drive women away, it doesn't do a lot to encourage most
of them to play.)
    In any event, even if there is a male majority (and IF seems to
hold more interest for women than, say, fighting games), it should be
obvious that alienating women cuts out slightly more than 50% of the
potential buying audience. Since IF hasn't been the dominating force in
software for some time, it becomes doubly important to consider the
audience. (Or, rather, it would if there were any real IF being produced
commercially right now -- role-playing simulations and GUI-heavy CD-ROMs
seem to have killed it as a commercial concern, leaving it in the realm
of shareware alone.)
    What about the second assumption? Do more players prefer playing
men, or does no one really care?
    It's difficult to generalize, but I have a suspicion that (some)
males have more difficulty playing female characters than vice versa. It
seems to go back to childhood; girls are allowed to take an interest in
"masculine" things, but boys who try the equivalent are scorned.
("Tomboy" isn't a particularly pejorative term, compared to "sissy".)
Whether this is the result of an assumption that masculinity is the
state to aspire to, or a double standard in which males get shafted, I
won't attempt to judge, but it does seem to be true.
 Combined, these factors probably explain why Infocom's only female-
character-only game was one that was written by a woman and aimed
especially at women. They preferred not to force players to take on
specific roles, but in the few cases they did the male role won out over
the female.

-----------------------------------------
V. The Shareware Revolution
-----------------------------------------
That's how Infocom handled gender in its games. A decade later, the IF
banner is mostly carried by independent programmers writing games for
distribution via FTP. How do these neo-Implementors handle the issue?
(And bear in mind that they don't have to worry about the audience quite
as much, since they probably don't depend on sales of the game for their
livelihoods.) I'll consider only the major and noteworthy shareware
games, since there are so many out there.
    Overall, fewer games take the genderless option these days. Most of
the Unnkulian series does, as far as I can tell, as does John's Fire
Witch. Graham Nelson's Curses also takes this tack; this makes his quote
at the head of section II somewhat ironic, since Curses is by no means
dull and has plenty of other characters. However, you aren't interacting
with them in a social or romantic way (try kissing Aunt Jemima sometime,
however) so it's not an issue.
    Save Princeton and Busted, both college games, feature characters
who are implicitly male but not quite explicitly so. (In Save Princeton,
your roommates are male, so you probably are as well.) Busted (well, the
parts I've seen so far) leaves a strong impression of a male main
character without actually saying it.  The note you find (presumably
addressed to you) has a man's name on it, and your girlfriend shows up
on the fifth turn, not that that proves anything in itself.)
    In The Legend Lives!, you also play a male character; although I
haven't played it myself (hardware incompatibilities), I gather that
it's a plot-heavy game.
    Veritas and CosmoServe take the choice option. Both do so by asking
you straight out, but CosmoServe works it into the game (you're asked so
you can be provided a gendered body in virtual reality) while Veritas
just asks straight out. (Veritas also gives the impression of having
been coded first for a male character, with the female bits added later;
a description of something belonging to your roommate -- who's always
your own gender -- refers to the roommate as "he" in both modes.  On the
other hand, in female mode you can have sex during the game, though it's
about the least thrilling sex scene in all of IF.)
    CosmoServe deserves special attention, because it has one slightly
unusual feature; it's the only IF game I know of that lets you determine
your own sexual orientation. It makes about as much difference as gender
usually does -- it affects one piece of dialogue and the gender of one
set of minor NPCs -- but it's an interesting touch. Incidentally,
CosmoServe is written by the only woman I know of who's currently
writing shareware IF, Judith Pintar.
    As I mentioned above, programmers of shareware don't have the same
worries about their market that commercial programmers do. The FTP
distribution system means that 1) anyone in the world with Internet
access can get a copy, and 2) getting a copy isn't a major financial
decision; apart from the download time, you have ample opportunity to
experiment before you shell out any money. Therefore, shareware authors
don't seem to let the prospect of driving away potential customers worry
them as much as do commercial programmers, leaving them freer to write
games with specific main characters.
    In some ways you'd think this might encourage software with more
female characters, and indeed this might happen if there were more
female programmers. It would be interesting to see more programmers give
this some thought; if nothing else, it would broaden the range of
potential stories.
    Part II of this article will examine NPC genders in IF. As a
preview, ask yourself: Are there *any* female NPCs in the original Zork
trilogy?

(This is the first of a two-part article.)



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
GAME REVIEWS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Klaustrophobia
Parser: AGT
Author: Carol Hovick
Availability: ftp.gmd.de:/if-archive/games/pc/ directory (klaus.zip);
             CompuServe
Supports: AGT ports

A winner in the 1994 AGT programming contest, the three-part epic
"Klaustrophobia" chronicles your exploits as you leave on a two-week
vacation from ICON Inc., your place of employment. Although strongly
influenced by Infocom's "Bureaucracy," both in its humor as well as its
events and puzzles, "Klaustrophobia" remains a very original, very
challenging, and at times extraordinarily frustrating adventure.
    This is also one enormous game. It's so large, in fact, that it's
been divided into three separate segments, apparently due to
restrictions in AGT. When you reach the end of one section you can save
your status and go on to the next portion, but you can't start from
Parts 2 or 3 until you've solved the sections prior to them. The menuing
system for this behaves rather strangely, though. Selecting to play the
whole game at once, then typing "QUIT" in one section, will move you to
the next rather than exiting the game entirely.
    Unfortunately, the game also serves as a perfect guide to the
restrictions of the AGT system. IF fans familiar with the AGT parser
know that it's unpleasantly quirky under the best of circumstances and
can be absolutely infuriating in others.  "Guess-the-Verb" games are not
uncommon.
    To be fair, though, the author seems to have realized the
restraints of her development system, and in most cases has made a
serious effort to deal with them, or has at least attempted to cover
them up. "Klaustrophobia" really pushes the limits of AGT, and the
tremendous effort that went into it shows. The writing is also extremely
well-done, with references to "Bureaucracy," "Hitchhiker's Guide," and
the novels of Douglas Adam.
    Like the author, you're a female by default in "Klaustrophobia,"
but you can elect to change and become a male at any point in the game
(with humorous results in a few special circumstances). Your character's
sex has almost no impact on the game's story or puzzles, though.
    Part 1 of the game starts you off on your trip to Hollywood, where
you've been selected to appear on a game show. As might be expected,
though, absolutely nothing goes right. From the game's inception, you'll
be barraged with every annoying situation possible, from constantly
having your flight rebooked, to being given the runaround when trying to
pay bills, to never being able to find a pen when you really need one.
    Compounding your problems is your evil cat Klaus, who, if not kept
happy, will ruin your trip by shredding all your important mail and
using your new Wafer-Stomper boots as his litterbox. Taking care of
Klaus and running a million last-minute errands makes the first scenario
an exercise in effective time-management.
    A more difficult task is the unrealistic amount of foresight a
player is sometimes required to have.  It's quite likely that you'll
overlook something early in the game and not realize it until later,
when your progress grinds to a halt and there's no way to backtrack
aside from restoring. In this respect, "Klaustrophobia" encounters the
same problems inherent in "Bureaucracy," although the puzzles' solutions
are far less obscure.
    For the benefit of maze-haters, I should also mention that there
are quite a few sprinkled throughout the game. Almost all of them are
relatively straightforward, though, requiring only one or two moves in a
single direction to get through.
    Once you've finally managed to reach your destination, you'll enter
Part 2 of the game, which moves you from TV gameshow to TV gameshow in
much the same manner as Part 1 did with airports and planes. Eventually,
you'll win a free trip to Mexico for the grand prize, thus moving the
game into its third and final phase.  The ending tells us that a sequel
is planned.
    Registering "Klaustrophobia" provides the player with numerous
resources to draw upon, the most helpful being a set of pop-hints,
similar to Infocom's InvisiClues. If you're anything short of an expert
player, you'll probably need them, because this game is hard with a
capital H.  The difficulty stems equally from the puzzles -- most of
which are very good (I loved the MacGuyver bit!) -- and the AGT parser's
limitations.
    Intelligent, hilarious, and occasionally so true-to-life that it's
scary, "Klaustrophobia" deserves a place in every I-F hobbyist's
library. Until someone decides to port the game to Inform or TADS,
though, it's likely to remain every bit as aggravating as the situations
it makes fun of. But when one looks at the game itself, apart from the
system it was developed on, "Klaustrophobia" is excellent.
                                                       - C.E. Forman

------------------------------------

The Gorreven Papers
Author: Derek Jones ([email protected])
Availability: ftp.gmd.de/games/archetype
Requires: Archetype development system, available via anonymous FTP from
         ftp.gmd.de (runs on PCs only)

The Cold War may be over, but you can relive the intrigue of being a spy
imprisoned behind enemy lines in "The Gorreven Papers." This game could
be described as a "snack-sized adventure, " to use John Baker's term,
since it only contains about 30 locations. But I was really captivated
(no pun intended) by this game's danger-at-every-turn setting, the
author's eloquent writing, and the good interaction with the game's
NPCs.
    In The Gorreven Papers, you play a spy with a straightforward
mission: outsmart your captors, obtain the top-secret documents that
give the game its name, and make a safe escape.
    The game is a great choice for beginning players, because of its
short length and the hints available during play. If you ask for a hint
at any point during play, you'll receive a clue that's relevant to the
area of the game you're in or the puzzle at hand, which is very smart.
    If you make a wrong move during the game, you're instantly made
aware that you've blown it, and you may be given a hint for what you
should've done instead. So even though there are several "instant death"
situations, you're unlikely to make the same mistake twice.
    The text descriptions for each room and event during the game were
richly detailed and always fun to read. My only gripe about the writing
was the sparseness of the endgame. Why was there so much description
earlier but such a brief ending?
    Interestingly, the game's author devised the game's entire parser
and development system, called Archetype. The Gorreven Papers is one of
several games included when you download Archetype from GMD. The game's
parser is well-developed and could understand complex sentences. The
parser's responses weren't always as sophisticated as those I've come to
expect from TADS or Inform games. The game's vocabulary, too, is rather
limited; you can prompt the game to tell you the verbs it understands,
and there were not very many that it did.  Additionally, there were many
verbs I expected the parser to recognize that it didn't, like SHOOT
(since you use a gun during the game). Also, the game didn't seem to
recognize the concept of "me" at all, as in EXAMINE ME. This I found
very interesting, since The Gorreven Papers is written from the
first-person perspective ("I'm standing by the north fence"), instead of
the second-person perspective common to so many other text adventures
("You are standing in front of a white house."). I found the change of
perspective very interesting; since it was so novel I can't really say
yet if I really prefer it.
    One operational difficulty I encountered was that I couldn't figure
out how to restore saved gamefiles. I know that this is possible since
Archetype did allow me to use the SAVE command, and did in fact create
files with those names when I asked to save them.  But I simply found
myself unable to open or restore any of my saved games, either from the
command line or from within The Gorreven Papers.  As a result, I wound
up having to play the game all the way through in one session in order
to win. This wound up being OK since, as I mentioned, The Gorreven
Papers is a relatively short game. Of course, I was frustrated when I
walked into a deadly situation and made the wrong move, since I'd have
to start all over again, but it I think it made me play with more
concentration. But some clearer user documentation that clearly
explicates how to restore saved game files would be a real bonus to all
potential players.
    There are a fair number of red herrings planted throughout the
games. This made the puzzles not as easy to solve as they seemed at
first glance.  But hey, you're a spy trying to escape from enemy hands;
it's not supposed to be a piece of cake! It was also difficult at first
to determine which found objects you might need later in the game, but
this is a common gripe in all text adventures that limit the amount you
can carry at one time in your inventory.
    It would be great to see a TADS or Inform port of The Gorreven
Papers, since Archetype is only designed to run on PCs so far.  Although
I'm incredibly impressed with the author's ability to program his own
development system, I don't think it poses a challenge TADS or Inform as
the programming language of choice for new game developers.
    The Gorreven Papers displays richly developed text descriptions and
some clever but not difficult puzzles; it would be a treat to see more
games from Derek Jones, no matter which development system was used.
                                                       - Greg Soultanis


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BOOK REVIEWS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Entertainment in the Cyber Zone: Exploring the Interactive Universe of
    Multimedia
by Chris McGowan and Jim McCullaugh
Random House Electronic Publishing, 1995. $19.
390 pages, includes glossary and discography.
ISBN: 0-679-75804-6.

"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.
Around you is a forest. A path leads away from the building to Day of
the Tentacle, Ultima, Lands of Lore, Dark Seed and King's Quest."
    The first two sentences are from William Crowther's Adventure, the
first text adventure, while the last line might describe the trajectory
of a new book called Entertainment in the Cyber Zone: Exploring the
Interactive Universe of Multimedia.
    Here, for the first time, is the history of PCs, text adventures,
RPG games, video games, interactive narrative, CD-ROM and multimedia,
all in one volume. There have been other books published recently that
touch on one or more of these topics (such as Understanding Hypermedia,
The Cyberspace Lexicon, and The Magic of Interactive Entertainment). But
Cyber Zone ties it all together in one impressively comprehensive
volume, with a staggering number of interviews with gaming and
multimedia gurus.
    This is not an overly technical book, and it does not include an
accompanying CD or tips for programmers. But it should be of interest to
both consumers and developers, as it has hundreds of CD-ROM reviews (of
all types), many great anecdotes, and extensive quotes from people like
Rand and Robyn Miller (Myst), Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros (The 7th
Guest), Roberta Williams (Sierra Online), Joel Berez (Activision),
Michelle Em (Return to Zork), Pepe Moreno (Hell Cab), Vince Lee (Rebel
Assault), and Drew Huffman (Iron Helix), plus music-film-book
celebrities such as James Cameron (the Terminator movies), Terry Gilliam
(The Fisher King, Brazil), Ray Manzarek (the Doors), Bruce Sterling
(cyberpunk leader), Arthur C. Clarke (2001) and Todd Rundgren. An
especially entertaining part of the book is that many developers reveal
their favorite CD-ROMs!
    The book is well-organized, and each chapter delves into the
history of a particular genre. "Action Games" takes us on a journey from
Spacewar and Pong to Sonic and Rebel Assault, while "The Movie-Game
Continuum" moves from interactive theater and fiction to landmark
CD-ROMs such as Spaceship Warlock and Myst.
    The "Mind Games" chapter is especially noteworthy, as it has a long
section on the history of text adventures and RPGs. It begins with
Crowther's Adventure, jumps to Donald Woods (who expanded the game,
which then became known as the Crowther and Woods Adventure or The
Original Adventure), travels to Infocom's Zork and Sierra's Mystery
House, and leaps from computer floppy-disk quests to today's adventure
CD-ROMs such as Return to Zork.
    The book doesn't have exhaustive coverage of every game category,
but it highlights many of the best and covers many different multimedia
categories, including "The Movie-Game Continuum," "Electronic Books,"
"Multimedia for Children," "Expanded Movies," and "Music and
Multimedia." It obviously can't include everything in any one area, but
it gives a fascinating overview that sheds light on many hitherto
invisible connections between people, companies, and technology.
    My favorite sections were the interviews with developers, the
various "historical" passages, and the "Cyber Jargon" glossary. The
Cyber Zone is an enlightening look at where multimedia came from, what
it means, and where it may be going.
                                     --Green Pagan ([email protected])



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
WHAT'S ON THE DISK
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The companion disk for XYZZYnews #3 contains the following game files.
It's a good deal for people who have slower modems - at 2400 bps, it'd
take from two to three hours to download the contents of the companion
disk. It's also a good deal for people with limited or no access to FTP
sites or online services as a source for new games. If you're reading an
electronic version of this issue, you can obtain this games disk with a
print copy of XYZZYnews #3 by enclosing $3.50 for postage and handling
with the coupon on the bottom of this page. If you play and enjoy these
games, please pay the shareware fees as applicable.


WAYSTATION -- While driving home one night, your car mysteriously dies.
You get out, pop the hood, and wham! that's the last you remember...
until you wake up trapped in a cell. With no idea of how you got there
and no one to ask, you must escape and find out why you were kidnapped.
This TADS game is available as freeware.

LOST -- As this TADS-based science fiction adventure begins, you spot
what you think is a meteor crashing to the earth. When you go to
investigate, you discover an alien spaceship that can take you to
far-off worlds. You'll soon find yourself lost in time and space,
battling hostile environments and solving various puzzles as you strive
to find your way home. Shareware, US$10.

SAVE PRINCETON -- You're a prospective student visiting Princeton
University, growing increasingly bored with the student tour you're
taking. As you slip away from the group, hiding in a nearby dorm room,
you hear the sound of gunfire coming from outside in the courtyard. Soon
you learn an invading army has taken over the campus and declared
martial law. Princeton's only hope is for some brave soul to oust the
occupation government and restore the college president to his rightful
place. Are you up to the challenge? This TADS-based adventure is
Shareware, US$10.

BUSTED -- This Inform-based game is set in a collegiate environment
where crackdowns on drug possession are on the rise. Your friend has
already been arrested and it's up to you to find and destroy all
incriminating evidence pointing to you before you wind up in the same
sorry state yourself! (See game review in XYZZYnews #1.)



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
XYZZYnews Magazine/Disk Order Form
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Checks and money orders preferred. Please send coupon with payment to:
Eileen Mullin, XYZZYnews, 160 W. 24th Street, Ste. 7C, New York, NY
10011.

O  Please send me a copy of the print version and companion games disk
  for XYZZYnews Issue #3. I have enclosed $3.50 for postage &
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