~13 minute readBooted Up Any Good Books Lately?
Until recently, interactive fiction seemed to be getting rather stagnant. After all, every company has already gone through the tried-and-true adventure game themes of medieval battles between wizards and dragons, hard-boiled detective stories, treasure seeking a la Indiana Jones in perilous old temples and ruins, and science-fictiony searches through futuristic, but deserted, planets, asteroids and spaceships many times over; things seemed to be getting rather repetitive. Once in a while a really original game would appear, but that was a rare occurence. There's no question that what we needed was an influx of new ideas.
Finding new ideas was harder than it sounds -- even Infocom's Planetfall and Enchanter were -- as far as their plots were concerned -- basically rehashings of old, used concepts. It quickly became evident that companies would have to start looking outside the market for a source of originality. And so, in a fit of inspiration, or perhaps desperation, several companies simultaneously cast their eyes upon their bookshelves.
The decision to make adventures games out of books should not come as a surprise -- players of Dungeons & Dragons-type role-playing games have been doing it for years. Books are wonderful as sources of imaginative escapist entertainment, but too often readers fall into the "I would have done it differently" syndrome. By their very nature, books make readers observers of, rather than participants in, any action that they depict. Only by converting a book to a more interactive format, like a role-playing game or a "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" type book, can a reader truly take part in the events detailed within its covers.
However, both formats have problems. Role-playing games almost always require two or more players. "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" books are very limited, lacking both the element of human interaction and the overall complexity found in a full role-playing game. What's more, such "interactive books" are much too open to unintentional cheating.
Computer adventure games may not yet be able to duplicate human interaction, but the best of today's technology comes pretty close. Certainly, computers can easily mimic the complexity of a role-playing game, and they never allow a player to see the solution to a puzzle before he has found it for himself. The connection was made: What better way to boost the adventure game industry than to take ideas from the boundless imagination of books?
Obviously this train of thought, or one very similar, has been passing through the minds of a number of game designers and industry executives, since over the past few months various types of book-based adventure games have been turning up on the market at a tremendous rate. Epyx was one of the first to enter the field with Dragonriders of Pern, a strategy adventure based on the bestselling sci-fi series by Anne McCaffrey, and Robots of Dawn, a futuristic whodunnit mystery game converted from the novel of the same title by Isaac Asimov. Forthcoming is a second Pern game called Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, also being released by Epyx. Infocom recently released a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy adventure, based on the hilarious cult classic by Douglas Adams. Quicksilva's The Snowman has its roots in a novel by Raymond Briggs. And, of course, the entire Wyndham Classics and Telarium (nee Trillium) lines of adventure games are based on famous books or were written by will-known authors.
The Telarium games are unique in that they depend more heavily on input from the authors on whose books they are based than do the games made by most other companies. Seth Godin, Telarium's founder, explained the company's unusual practice of giving the writers an opportunity to play a major role in the creation of each new game. "These games are very much like movies and books because they are both visual and literary," he said. "We wanted to go to the people who could write that the best. And that's not programmers -- it's authors."
Infocom followed a similar policy when Adams approached them with the idea of a Hitchhiker's game. They gave him a free hand in writing the general story and the various encounters, and had ex-science fiction author and designer of Planetfall Steven Meretzky write it into an adventure game format. The results of this unique collaboration can be seen throughout the game, which is filled with Adams' very distinct sense of humor. Not only does Hitchhiker play well, but it reads well, too. As an experimental way to design an adventure game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a success.
A different point of view is held over at Epyx, where talented game designers and programmers were the ones to create both Pern games and Robots of Dawn with little input by the authors whatsoever. According to Robert Votch, a representative of Epyx, Anne McCaffrey did meet with the programmers to discuss and offer suggestion for both Pern games, the second more so than the first. In addition, she approved the final versions of both games. Still, most of the actual design work and programming was done without McCaffrey's presence.
However, compared with the amount of input that Isaac Asimov had in the Robots of Dawn game, Ms. McCaffrey's might as well have written both Pern games single-handedly. Mr. Votch reported that although the licensing agreement was made through his publisher, Dr. Asimov did participate in the design of the game through a set of guidelines that he sent in to Epyx. Dr. Asimov contends that he hardly even knew of the game's existence until a copy of the finished product found its way to his home -- a copy he couldn't even try out since his computer, which he uses for word processing, is a TRS-80.
Would Asimov be interested in actually writing a game some time in the future? "Not really," he says. "If it were earlier in my writing career, maybe. But as it is, I'm too busy with my writing to start any other projects." (At a rate of about one book every three weeks, Dr. Asimov is one of the nation's most prolific authors.) And his opinion of computer games in general? "We are faced with a new technology, and as always, we must accept the products of that technology."
New technology did indeed play a major role in the creation of these new book-games. Only a few years ago, an adventure was considered complex if it contained more than a dozen rooms. Now, recent leaps in technology have made possible complex adventures with over a hundred rooms, like Telarium's Rendezvous with Rama, a suspenseful game which takes place in a gigantic space complex. Telarium's other games are relatively massive, too; Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a sequel to the acclaimed, world famous novel, is set in a futuristic New York City with a total of seventy key locations to wander through, and the more traditional Dragonworld whose medieval city of Kandesh includes sixty accessible areas.
Similar technical advances have made animated graphic sequences and background music are not only a reality, but a standard feature of many adventure games. The Telarium and Wyndham games, for instance, all boast outstanding graphics and wonderfully atmospheric music.
Byron Preiss, head of Byron Preiss Video Productions, worked on the production of a number of Telarium games including Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Rendezvous with Rama, for which author Arthur C. Clarke wrote a brand-new surprise ending, and Dragonworld which he co-authored as a novel with Michael Reaves. In discussing the games, he explained why it is so much more difficult for an author to write an adventure game than it is to write a novel.
"[When writing an adventure] you have to anticipate a heck of a lot more, to understand the consequences of the characters' actions in more than one way. When you do a book, you can just say, 'Okay, this is how it is going to happen, and that's it'. When you do a game, you have to realize that someone can do many different things in any given situation. You have to pre-guess the players so that the events you put in seem logical."
On the flip side of these problems, celebrated writer Alan Dean Foster, author of countless move novelizations and the popular Spellsinger series (the fourth volume of which, Perturbations of the Perambulator, is being released soon), was faced with some rather unusual difficulties in writing a novelization of the Telarium game Shadowkeep. The game is a hybrid of Wizardry-style action and a typical adventure game scenario, which involves saving a mythical world from destruction at the hands of a menagerie of evil, demon-controlled monsters. The problems that arose came partly from the fact that, because players are allowed to create their own characters to use in the game, the game script that Foster was presented with was sorely lacking in characterization and plot development. In addition, he was faced with the dilemma of having to write the book without revealing too many of the game's secrets.
"This is the hardest book I've ever had to write," said Foster. "I had to describe the game in relation to my characters and the story, without really describing the game. I had to make it work as a novel without giving everything in the game away. On the other hand, I couldn't change things, because I didn't want to do anything in the book that would directly contradict the game."
Shadowkeep is not the only Telarium game that was not actually preceded by a book; Amazon, written entirely by author and filmmaker Michael Chrichton, has no literary ties other than those of its author, whose credits include the screenplay to Coma and the novel The Terminal Man. Amazon, with its highly animated, movie-style, fast-paced game sequences, is easily Telarium's most innovative game. Actually, all of the Telarium games are innovative as each one experiments with its own unique graphic and prose styles.
The Wyndham Classics line of games is similar in general style and presentation to the Telarium line, both being subsidiaries of Spinnaker Software. The major difference between the two is that Wyndham games are intended for young children, and so stray less from the texts that inspired them and are easier to solve. The Wyndham library includes The Wizard of Oz, Under the Root, Treasure Island and Robin Hood. In a similar vein, Quicksilva's The Snowman is also targeted at a young audience.
All in all, book-based adventure games are still in an experimental phase. New concepts are always arising, and changes are constantly being made. The continual evolution of the field can already be seen in the increased involvement that authors are having in all stages of game design -- Ray Bradbury even write the packaging blurb for the Fahrenheit 451 game.
What's ahead for this new breed of adventure game? For Telarium, the answer is simple: more author input, more animation and music, more characterization and character interaction, but fewer typical adventure game situations and fewer logic puzzles. "The games that are being designed now," says Seth Godin, "don't have any logic puzzles in them at all. In the next generation of games, staying in character is more important than anything else . . . we're constantly reinforcing in the games the character that you have to play, and by doing that, we make the player identify with that character more strongly. The ending [to Fahrenheit 451] is such a climax that people have called us saying that they were in tears at the end -- and the reason that they were is that we forced them to believe in the character that they were playing."
For Infocom, the Hitchhiker's game might have been a one-shot deal -- even though the game does end with the definite promise of a sequel. (If you've got the game and don't want to wait until the end to find out about this, try typing, "CONSULT GUIDE ABOUT MAGRATHEA.") The only impediment to the creation of a sequel involves the game's authors; Adams, having just finished the fourth Hitchhiker's book, a Hitchhiker's movie screenplay and this game, may want to take a break for a while. Meretsky might want to try his hand at a different type of adventure, but even if he does want to stay with science-fiction comedy, he already has a commitment to making a sequel to Planetfall, an adventure which many gamers feel is Infocom's best.
On the other hand, even if no second Hitchhiker's game is forthcoming, there's no reason for Infocom to give up the entire field of novel-based games; there must be plenty of authors who would jump at the chance to write an adventure with them. Though Infocom has announced no such plans for the immediate future, making more book-games is something that they should consider. After all, their first attempt was a success, and there is no reason to doubt that future attempts would turn out as well.
Another entrant into the field is Synapse Software, a company long known for its arcade adaptations and popular games like Blue Max, whose new line of games consists of what it calls "electronic novels". Twelves of these unusual text adventures are under development, the first bunch of which are titled *Mindwheel, Essex, Brimstone and Ronin. These games, while not actually based on books, are written by authors; in fact, each game comes with an incomplete hardcover novel which introduces the player to the story and the characters of the game. Also unusual is that these games are focused around character interaction and conversation rather than intuitive reasoning and logic.
The scenarios of the games are also unique. No more dull, mundane dragon slaying -- the Synapse games are really original. Mindwheel, for instance, sends the player into the minds of a rock star, a general, a poet and scientist in search of the information necessary to receive the Mindwheel and save the world. Essex has the player caught up in interstellar intrigue, forced into services as a messenger who has to give a secret document to the captain of a giant space world, a task complicated by the fact that the "world" has a population of 65,000 and no one seems to know where the captain is. Brimstone is another tale of intrigue, though this time the game takes place in various countries on Earth, a true international feel created by having foreign characters speak foreign languages. Ronin places the player in the midst of Japanese feudal society. At press time, no information was available about their fifth game, whose working title is Breakers.
Each Synapse game was written over a period of a year by a design team of the author and two programmers. Mindwheel and Essex were written by Robert Pinsky and Bill Darrah, respectively. As for other companies, other authors and other games, only time will tell. The Wyndham production calendar includes computerized versions of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows. Harry Harrison, who used to be a commercial artist before becoming famous for science-fiction novels like Make Room! Make Room!, just finished writing and illustrating a game for Telarium called Starsmashers and the Galaxy Rangers. Also scheduled from Telarium is a game based on Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber.
However, as far as their long-range plans are concerned, few companies are eager to divulge any secrets. For the most part, the industry's sentiment is echoed in Seith Godin's cryptic comment that, "we've got a few things up our sleeves."
Speculation as to the nature of those "few things" leads one to wonder just what the future holds for book-based adventure games. Perhaps, as Alan Dean Foster advocates, the games will be packaged together with, or at least sold along with, the books that inspired them. Hopefully, the games will branch off into other genres besides science-fiction and fantasy; a mystery adventure by Mickey Spillane or Michael Innes, for instance, would surely have an audience, and play an adventure dreamt up by Piers Anthony or Stephen King would certainly be a unique experience.
The future will probably see descendants of these games being used for educational purposes, maybe even to help children learn to read. Already the games that are available today are exposing computer users to books that they might never even have looked at under other circumstances. In fact, some universities are already using Infocom adventures in remedial reading courses. All adventure games encourage reading, and gamers who would otherwise hardly give a book like Fahrenheit 451 a second glance may be tempted to read it after playing the adventure.
Book-based interactive fiction is a whole new field of computer software that has taken the adventure gaming industry by storm. These games are entertaining, sophisticated and intellectually stimulating, while at the same time being exciting and fun to play. And though one can never predict anything with certainty in the constantly changing computer industry, it seems that these games have a bright future ahead of them. If nothing else, these games have given new meaning to the phrase "computer literacy."
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
