PAX, closed.

More details and thoughts will doubtless follow in a more orderly fashion, but I wanted to say now: this weekend has been made of dense-packed AWESOME. Seeing our panel make an audience of hundreds with extra people outside? Well, I feel bad about the guys that didn’t get in, but whoa, that was awesome. Having Don Woods hang out with us and suggest cogent new ideas for IF in the present day? Awesome. IF suite absolutely packed, all weekend long? Awesome. Having intense discussions with many people I knew only as internet entities? Awesome.

So yeah: if you were here, thanks for coming. Even if I didn’t get a chance to say this to you individually, it was great to meet you all. I had a wonderful weekend.

Transmission from the front

PAX East is awesome, though with the frustration that rooms are too small and things fill up before everyone gets in who wants to. I was sorry to miss the Wil Wheaton keynote, which was reputed to be cool.

I was also sorry (though kinda surprised!) that there were a bunch of folk standing in line who got turned away from the IF storytelling panel. I’m assured that the panel was recorded and will be made available in the future, though; and there are some notes online courtesy of Jenni Polodna.

In other news, if you’re at PAX East and would like to chat with IF people, you should come on up to the IF suite. (Open Saturday from noon to midnight or thereabout.)

That’s in the Hilton, room 2305. (Leave the Hynes in the direction of the food-courty stuff, go through the Sheraton, cross the street to the Hilton. No, I don’t know the compass directions. You don’t need a PAX badge to get in.)

Conscript conversation scripting

At GDC I picked up a copy of the latest Game Developer magazine, and then forgot about it until a couple of days ago someone mentioned that that very issue contained an article by Brent Friedman on conversation coding that mentions Inform 7 and TADS 3, as well as outlining his own system. HELLO. So I did a little luggage archaeology and had a look.

Friedman outlines (and provides code samples of) Conscript, a language he’s developed for scripting conversations.

First of all, for those curious about the IF coverage, what Friedman says is fairly brief, and potentially misleading. For both TADS 3 and Inform, he describes a way conversation might be implemented in that language, while implying that it’s the sole way possible — footnoting, for instance, just one of the numerous I7 code examples on the topic.

All the same, I was happy to see IF mentioned as a place where this work is being done, and also happy that Friedman didn’t feel the need to explain in detail what IF is. (But then, I got the impression from GDC that modern IF is a bit better known among professional developers than I would have expected.)

Second, as to Conscript itself, I had mixed feelings.

Game-writing from the pros

I had the privilege of participating in the AI Summit at GDC 2010, which also bought me an All Access pass to the rest of the conference. I went to some of the other AI sessions — all very interesting, though many of them focused on aspects of game design that have little to do with interactive fiction — but I also hit a number of other tracks, taking in panels on independent and serious games, on art and design and writing. Especially writing.

I went to a writers’ round table session run by Richard Dansky, and lectures/panels given by Dansky, Susan O’Connor, and Marianne Krawcyzk; and I chatted informally with several people going that route professionally.

Several things in the writing track resonated with me as being potentially useful to revisit here for IF authors. In all the talk about work practices, there was a certain brutal pragmatism: the perfect is the enemy of the finished; projects have to end sometime; it’s better to write down something mediocre than to write down nothing. You can revise later.

One of my most popular posts (judging by my site stats, anyway) is the one where I talk about ways to get from idea to implementation on a project. But there is more to that process than planning. I find that even in my hobby work, I’ve moved toward treating my game writing like a job — and that sometimes means taking on both the role of writer and the role of the lead designer, creative director, or other project lead, and consciously managing myself.

Here’s what that tends to mean, for me:

Latest PAX East Stuff

Due entirely to the efforts of people who are not me, PAX East has even more IF content than expected.

– The Get Lamp screening will be accompanied by a panel featuring Andrew Plotkin, Brian Moriarty and Steve Meretzky.
– The recently-announced PAX schedule also includes a session of ACTION CASTLE, an RPG where the GM plays a human IF parser.
– The IF hospitality suite will host a panel on IF outreach to the indie and casual gaming communities featuring Jason McIntosh and Andrew Plotkin with Chris Dahlen (who has written up some IF for the Onion AV Club) and John Bardinelli (regular contributor to Jay Is Games coverage of IF)
– There will also be an unofficial panel on adaptive difficulty strategies, featuring Jim Munroe and Aaron Reed talking with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games. Gilbert’s work includes a number of excellent graphical adventures, including Emerald City Confidential.

I’m especially pleased about the latter two events: it’s cool to revisit IF’s roots, but we want to look forward as well as back. Thanks to everyone who’s worked on putting this together.