Gromnir

"Because, as many have said, it is just a game, a luxury, and it is certainly not worth 500 SEK (68-69 american dollar) to buy just one game." then don't buy. that is how the system works you know. if you not buy, and nobody else buys, then eventually the price will drop. *shrug* this moralist perspective is an interesting take on economics... how very bolshevik. if a person wants to steal a game they can rationalize by noting that the publisher or developer is getting far too much money compared to labor they invested in product? a big mean developer deserves to be stolen from if he is gonna overcharge. wonder how most consumers would like such return scrutiny. go into store to buy a new pair of levis and have merchant question you

the original question was... confused. jj asked for writer feedback and you gave. he should be grateful... Gromnir is grateful. HA! Good Fun!

perhaps fergie can explain why games is so much more expensive in asia and europe. we do know that people is often a little confused 'bout the relative costs of development v. distribution, but in any case, we has a hard time working up compassion for folks stealing luxury items. *shrug* you know, we spent some time in spain teaching and we was always amazed at how cheap good clothes was... 'specially leather goods like shoes. when we got back to the u.s. we did not decide that we would henceforth steal shoes 'cause we seen 'em cheaper in spain. HA! Good Fun!

that is our point. poor people steal bread. threaten to chop off the hand of a poor person who pretty much has nothing left to lose? is not the impoverished living in the shanty towns of calcutta who is making piracy laws and measures necessary, is it? HA! Good Fun!

"PS: A joke, where it doesn't matter what the punchline is can be funny, because it's stupid. If, you're laughing, you're not laughing because it's funny, but because it's so damn stupid. Now, if it was intentionally so stupid that it makes you laugh, it has sort of achieved it's goal as joke. It's a joke where the joke is the joke. Am I making any sense?" sure you make sense. that is why we brought up example of a joke. as we said, the joke ain't really gonna be funny, but it may afford a moment's curiosity... a painting can do same thing... or maybe a sculpture. how long does it take to notice that the painting or the sculpture or the joke has no point? now, imagine if the joke took 12 hours to tell. would you chuckle when you realized that the punch line was meaningless? as to explaining our lit references... we will attempt to do so in future. HA! Good Fun!

really? "Can you be any more clueless?" maybe you should read fion's post a little more closely. "If the courts listened to your suggestions the already-congested prisons will be clogged with people who download games and music. I really don't think that their offences are any way comparable to a rapist who brutalizes women, child molesterers, carjackers, bank robbers, street thugs and murderers. If such a law goes through, not only would it elevate software piracy to the level of hard crime, but degrade real hard crimes to being nothing more than minor fusses. " is funny 'cause you got backwards. most of the punishments for rapists and murderers is ineffective as a deterrents 'cause those crimes is committed by folks who isn't really thinking 'bout consequences when they contemplate their crime. for instance, it has been shown time and again that the death penalty laws do not deter would-be murderers. reason cited is that murder is a crime of passion

personally we found the pc controls pretty easy to use... and better than xbox for most part. am not a fan of game pad controls, and only difference 'tween kotor and most pc crpgs is that we had to hold down the right button to move in direction we was currently facing. as to kotor2... we feels sorry for whoever does kotor2. james ohlen was damn clever with kotor story and game design. there is loads of negative backlash following the episode 1 and 2 movies, so as a developer it is natural to ask what made the original movies popular and to try and recreate some of the original star wars mystique. james did something that probably would not have occurred to us... ever. james did something so damned simple and obvious

we has met many good writers and most of them not know how to write. sound odd? most folks who write do so intuitively... they not know how they made their characters come to life. your average english class is no help neither 'cause such classes teach writing from wrong end. professors explain what an author did, but they rarely explain how an author accomplished the feat. teaching a class in dickens is dull. reason is 'cause it is easy to see what dickens was doing. takes a couple days to teach students to read dickens. teach students how to write like dickens is not same thing at all. could spend a lifetime teaching students how to write like dickens. look at it a different way... just 'cause you can understand what is going on in a matisse painting or a rodin sculpture not mean that you is gonna be able to paint like matisse or sculpt like rodin, does it? so why does folks seem to believe that 'cause they understand homer or joyce or proust that they is suddenly gonna be more able to write? oddly 'nuff you will find lots of classes at good universities that teach you How to paint or sculpt or compose, but rarely does you find a class that teaches you how to write. why is writing different? why is writers at harvard and yale and stanford and berkeley expected to teach themselves through a process of osmosis. maybe your university has a couple creative writing classes where a coven of freaky folks with funny clothes and bad hygiene tell each other that they like each others stuff but rarely is the process of writing deconstructed and taught. what a joke. don

di is a perfect example of why anecdotal evidence is a joke. is no way in hell that di is representative of your average female gamer... bless her munchkin heart. HA! Good Fun!

"You know, in some strange way that feels so right. It fits quite well with what you stated above. By the way, if your reaction to this is "well, duh!" or "what's that guy smoking?", please take into account that it is late and my brain is not working properly before you pass on any judgements." we agree that it feels right. that is the reason why we ended that way. for what was our goals, it was a suitable and satisfactory way to end post. momentarily you is thinking that we left something missing... you was left hanging, but 'pon reflection you realize that it was probably inevitable that we would end post that way, no? as to keeping on-topic... that is easy. what got us on endings is talk of non-linearity in the first place... or rather "non-linearity" in crpgs, 'cause as we has seen, from a storytelling perspective, you will always gots linearity. those endings is the last thing you will see of a reader's work. now, when you read the end of, "richard iii" or "of mice & men" or even moore's "the watchmen," do you really think that those stories would have been as satisfactory if you had an endings that largely ignored everything that had gone on in the dozens of pages leading up to the conclusion? optional ending 1: richmond meets richard on bosworth field and they make an alliance (diplomacy check.) optional ending 2: richmond pulls out a crossbow and shoots richard from extreme range before battle begins. richard's head explodes in a shower of blood and bone (thanks to a near automatic luck roll and his sniper perk.) optional ending 3: richmond rummages through richard's garbage and finds incriminating documents, but the documents are largely illegible due to large ink blots. richmond manages to lift the ink stains from the documents (science check,) and then uses the documents to: a) blackmail richard b ) depose richard etc. now try to rewrite richard iii so that each of those endings is not only possible, but satisfactory. "The resolution could be anything, really, just as long as it would shatter the illusion of all things being connected." even postmodernism ain't so cynical in approach. pynchon delillo and barth all had something to say or was, at the very least, metafictionists. is like a joke where it not matter what the punchline is... sure, maybe such a thing is a curiosity worth noting, but the joke ain't gonna be very funny is it? "a few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. it had begun to snow again. he watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. the time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. yes, the newspapers were correct: snow was general all over ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the bog of allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous shannon waves. it was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where michael furey lay buried. it lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." -james joyce, "the dead" (is maybe not exact, but is close... whatever errors we make is probably minor grammar mistakes.) after reading, is hard to imagine "the dead" or "dubliners," concluding any other way. HA! Good Fun!

"I can't possibly be the only person here who actually enjoys these kinds of unsatisfactory endings, can I?" depends on what you mean by unsatisfactory. gardner ain't talking 'bout leaving you feeling happy and content with resolution. ending with a world in chaos can very easily be a satisfactory conclusion in that all goals of author is met and all major questions is answered. is possible that the ending should make you wanna howl at the protagonist or the author who wrote 'em, but that not mean that the story fails to conclude properly. ultimately, we thinks that a great ending should be a surprise, but upon reflection, the careful reader should recognize that the ending as written was inevitable as well. 'course, gardner also thought that "The Grapes of Wrath," ending failed, so you can make up your own mind if he was right or wrong. in any event, you probably wouldn't end a sentence in mid thought, so why is HA! Good Fun!

Lots of caffeine. And Chris Parker looming over you like a shadow. pretty much matches our list. HA! Good Fun!

"This is usually the way to do it; you tag the "trigger" event, and then for each option the player has (ooh, nonlinear!) you have a different set of events unfolding, sometimes with more options; it ends up looking like a tree," the problem is that, like the bg2 romances, most of the branches of the tree is dead. you either advanced the romance, or you did not. was no real tree, was there? there was no bifurcation of options. *shrug* so, you is back to the illusions... games that end up getting called non-linear, is simply the ones that has fewer essential plot points. you got lots of non-essential quests that not really impact your character or the main story to any great degree. we has no problem with this approach, but the story ain't really any more non-linear than the ff games. kotor actually did a little different, 'cause they gave an option (albeit only one) that actually had real impact on gameplay following the making of the choice. choice is made on roof of the temple on the forgotten planet, and while end of game is bringing you to same confrontation with malak, you actually does have, for a short time, some completely different plot points and choices. this is the reason why we is generally unimpressed with multiple endings. oh sure, we likes to have multiple endings, and some of them can be pretty imaginative, but they is, ultimately, the easiest of places in game to offer multiple options... 'cause that is where the game ends, or at least the main story does. you not have to contemplate and plan for what the player will do afterwards, 'cause it not really matter no more. oh sure, in the fallout you got to see some results post conclusion, but the story arc was complete... recall that you likened to a tree. at what point is it hardest to anticipate what a tree will look like; is it when you got nothing but a little shoot, or when lookings at a full-grown tree knowing that you has only one final branching? with the typical multiple ending game, two players can play game completely different almost entire way through game, but even so these two players will end up with the same final options that is, for the most part, not dependent on what they did through game... maybe dependent on stats or skills, but not actions. furthermore, folks often ask for good writing in games... but truth is that they not really want good writing. "Toward the close of a novel, the writer brings back

Every game engine handles decision trees differently, and I imagine every writer handles them differently as well on paper. as stated elsewhere and alluded to here, the concept of a non-linear story w/i framework of the model current crpg is largely an illusion... is a misnomer at best. as a writer, you know how story will start, and you know how will end. sure, you can offer 5 or 6 different endings as in planescape, but it is still just an illusion of non-linearity, 'cause ending is still known and is still coming from some script... a script wherein all major plot points was same leading up to that final choice of six. kotor actually did a little different. that game actually does diverge and open up completely different choices 'long the bifurcated tree of plot, but it did so late in game, and it only offered 1 essential choice... choose light or choose dark. up to that point on roof of forgotten world temple, the major plot points remain same regardless of how you has resolved earlier plot points. your actions is largely incidental to the causal chain of plot points. if you got quests, each with its own macguffin, then at the very least, you gots some linearity w/i that quest... as soon as you establish a goal for the protagonist, you is placing limits on plot, and as soon as you limit dialogue options to a handful of prefab responses you is placing limits on character. virtual all literary conventions require some measure of linearity... foreshadowing and symbolism and theme is all dependent on knowing, to a certain degree, who the characters is, and where they is going. a mmorpg w/o no prefab quests is gonna result in a non-linear story, but a modern crpg with established quests and limited dialogue options is non-linear only in the most insignificant ways. you can go read our posts in the "story and exploration" post if you want more detail on plot as 'posed to story. so, we get back to original question: what do you mean by non-linear? is you wanting to discuss facade and ways to make games that is truly non-linear, or is you wanting to talk 'bout non-linear in context of the modern crpg? HA! Good Fun!

Did you have any useful answer to the questions or knowledge from your game design experience that can enlighten people who may be interested? Is it ok if we leave this thread on topic? we read it a few times, and as it is written one can very easily see how pulp or others, inlcuding developers, might not know what you mean by non-linear. is very possible that you coulda' been using in the generic sense especially in light of your examples. as to our feedback on the subject... actually, we was already discussing some of this in another thread on this board, so we not wanna spam. look for the "story and exploration" thread. while our experience ain't in game design, we has considerable experience with writing. am not much of a writer actually, but we does have 'nuff education and creds in the field to impress people at c***tail parties. HA! Good Fun!

again, we is familiar with non-linear story telling and the rather suspect results that has been so far produced, but when you mentions arcanum and fallout in your initial querry (two games that is often mistakenly listed by fans as utilizing non-linear story telling approaches,) we has no doubt that both experts in field and layman would be getting confused as to what YOU meant. if you want good answers, you must learn to frame better querries, and try not to blame your shortcomings on other folks. when pulp asked his question, all you had to do was write one little line clarifying... instead, you suggested that he was ignorant... when, in point of fact, it looks like you was the guy more than a little confused. pulp was polite enough, and even krazy weren't rude... so if you is worried 'bout flamewars n' such, we suggest you look to self first chum. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we also note that you asked for a response from writers OR developers.

interesting reads, but you suggest that terms is commonly known and understood, and ask for writer and developer feedback... after pointing to fallout and arcanum as examples. 'course your commonly understood terms clearly contradict literary notions of non-linearity, so the querry to writers is suspect. also, to clarify, you points to some obscure cs articles dealing with largely experimental approaches (as we said already, we has seen non-linear storytelling, and it is odd,) as a way to show that linearity is a commonly understood term? HA! facade approach bear much resemblance to arcanum and fallout? we is glad that you can google and all, but why not try typing in the words story, plot, and non-linear into your search engine this time and see what kinda stuff comes back. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we see nothing wrong with you wanting to discuss these experimental approaches to storytelling, but you criticize pulp and others for not understanding a commonly known and understood term that hardly matches the examples you give and does not really reflect the common use of the term anyhow. am not sure who it is you thinks looks smarty in this thread, but for once it ain't krazy or Gromnir wearing the harlequin's motley.

according to some news sources, kotor for xbox broke all kinds of initial sales records. within first 2 weeks, kotor had sold over 270,000 units... in fact, the initial release effectively sold out within the first week. publisher was scrambling to make more copies to meet demand. on this board, an obsidian employee responded to a querry 'bout kotor pc sales... said that pc totals for kotor pc had reached 500,000 by the end of the year. kotor pc had only been on shelves since november. ... HA! Good Fun!

actually, we suspect that the term ain't so commonly understood as all that. use linear/non-linear when talking to an author 'bout story and they is gonna have a very differnt notion 'bout what you means than will a game designer. see, regardless of notions 'bout chronological linearity, an author generally starts his story on page 1, and ends on final page, and each page in between is where it is for a very good reason. if you were to ask an author to write a story where the order of pages not make no difference, or where sequence of plot points was purposefully left unimportant so that story would work just as well regardless of order of events, he would probably look at you as if you were nuts. we s'pose that those "choose your adventure" books might be considered literature that is non-linear in a similar sense as is games, but even that ain't quite right. *shrug* non-linear is a commonly misunderstood term. HA! Good Fun! p.s. we has seen some attempts at true non-linear storytelling... and they is... odd.

the most important game element is whichever element the developers failed most badly at incorporating effectively into a given game. obviously the most important element is different for each game... mostly. HA! Good Fun!

is like voting in china... takes all the confusion out of the process with only one candidate available. HA! Good Fun!

we never get a chance to start over. those of us who is optimistic 'bout obsidian is optimistic not 'cause they has wiped slate clean, but 'cause they (we) see something in the obsidian folks that makes 'em believe that you guys can make a good game... and that optimism is based on what you has done in the past. most of us here at this moment is here 'cause of some past history we gots with games made by obsidian folks while they was at bis, and even the name, obsidian, calls to mind the company's past as black isle. there is many folks on this board, and more than a few in this thread, that believe that a good console rpg cannot be made. the reason they believe this is 'cause they has not liked any of the console rpgs they has played in past... or maybe they said they liked 'em at first and then changed their minds for whatever reason. regardless, folks make assumptions 'bout future based on their experience gained in the past. likewise, folks will bring their personal baggage along with them. we has seen folks whose actions on this board has already belied their statements in this thread. is too bad, but so what? was inevitable. hopefully our shared interest in future games will overcome whatever silliness we has created in past, and you got some mods who can step in and crack a few heads if necessary... 'cause it will be necessary. is no chance to start over, but for Gromnir, we not see no need. you gots some good folks working at obsidian, and we is curious to see what you produce... am always more curious 'bout the games being developed than the silly games people play on the boards. good luck. HA! Good Fun!

"Compliments from Grom?" we compliment folks all the time... is not that unusual. however, to see us compliment folks we had previously written off as incompetent is more than a little unusual. such reevaluation is either the result of some sea change on part of the incompetent in question, or requires that Gromnir admit that he was wrong... wrong, wrong, wrong. neither possibility particularly appeals to us, but we concede that the latter is the more likely of the two. HA! Good Fun!

the post script concerning vis was not part of our original post... was a couple posts later in the thread, and we did not want it to be missed. *shrug* does it really matter? HA! Good Fun!

mean? nah, but it was predictable. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!