Fine Writing (January 1995)
by Gareth Rees

   Proposition: adventure games don't encourage beautiful prose. Reasons:
    1. It is much more difficult to read prose on a computer terminal
       than it is to read prose on paper;
    2. adventure games develop their story very slowly by comparison with
       ordinary fiction, and every effort needs to be made to ensure that
       it's no slower than it absolutely needs to be, and long
       descriptive passages are unhelpful in this regard;
    3. the prose in a game consists in the main of detailed descriptions
       of objects, rooms and actions, the sort of descriptions that in
       ordinary fiction would be dull and distracting from the plot; and
    4. players are conditioned to regard everything that's mentioned in a
       description as essential in some way, or at least worthy of
       investigation in case it should be significant.
       
   For example, in Curses you definitely need to be aware that not
   everything casually mentioned in a room description is just
   descriptive scenery: 
   
     Old Furniture
     Scruffy old furniture is piled up here: armchairs with springs
     coming out, umbrella stands, a badly scratched cupboard, a table
     with one leg missing... You try to remember why you keep all this
     rubbish, and fail. Anyway the attic continues to the southeast.
     
     > examine armchairs
     That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this
     game.
     
     > examine umbrella stands
     That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this
     game.
     
     > examine table
     That's not something you need to refer to in the course of this
     game.
     
     > examine cupboard
     You peer at the scratched cupboard, which is open and contains a
     bird whistle, a gift­wrapped parcel and a guaranteed­unbreakable
     medicine bottle with a child­proof lock (which is closed and
     contains a red tablet).
     
   But consider the poor player who finishes Curses and then embarks upon
   The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Erica Sadun: 
   
     Windswept Field
     You are standing amidst the tall grasses in a windswept field. Above
     the sky is blue. A small kill winds its way around granite boulders
     down the mountain. Purple and white peaks surround you on all sides,
     as does the forest. Within the greens of the summer mountain are the
     brown scores where loggers were and will be again. Blue herons pass
     occasionally overhead and gentle deer stop -- to eat the summer
     berries or drink from the kill water. Small frogs jump in and out of
     the kill and insects skim over the top, never breaking the surface.
     There are grey and silvery fish darting below the sun bleached
     rocks. You are surrounded on all sides by wild bushes. A narrow
     thorny gap lies to the west.
     
     :examine grasses
     That's just scenery.
     
     :examine sky
     That's just scenery.
     
     :examine kill
     I don't understand.
     
     :examine boulders
     I see no boulders here.
     
     :examine peaks
     That's just scenery.
     
     :examine trees
     I don't know the word "trees".
     
     :examine blue herons
     I see no blue herons here.
     
     :examine gentle deer
     I don't know the word "gentle".
     
     :examine summer berries
     I don't know the word "summer".
     
     :examine frogs
     That's just scenery.
     
     :examine insects
     That's just scenery.
     
     :examine fish
     I don't understand.
     
     :examine bushes
     That's just scenery.
     
   [A `kill' (as is reasonably clear from the context) is an American
   dialect word for `stream', from the Dutch. The author explains that
   `the windswept field is a real place; this is Grog Kill, NY'.] I don't
   want to pick on this game, because it's generally of good quality, but
   it seems to me that the puzzle­solving nature of adventure games makes
   such long room descriptions unwise. A player can never afford to relax
   and treat them as just `elegant prose', because they might conceal
   subtle hints. My own feeling is that it's sufficiently difficult to
   produce clear, sharp, crisp, accurate, terse, lively prose for all the
   functional text in an advanture game that it's not worth trying to
   write beautiful descriptive passage that the player is likely either
   to skip and hurry on towards the next puzzle, or else scour for clues
   and then discard when none are found.

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