> > I hope that really tough puzzles are the main reason people aren't finishing FQ,
>
> I've got news for you: people are sissies when it comes to games these days. And that's because games these days tend to be far too simple. It's not just puzzle games (though ultra-easy stuff like Myst sure has hurt what used to be a tough genre -- play Myst and then try going through Zork). People aren't used to having to actually think or getting stuck in games. Especially with the growth of the internet where you can go grab a guide after you get stumped for more than 30 seconds, people just don't seem to have patience for things like gameplay.
>
> It makes me sound old saying this, but growing up playing video games I know that way back in "my day" games were cruel, frustrating and very unforgiving. Now, a lot of times this was due to poor design, but you just expected a game to be tough (and you complained if it wasn't). Nowadays there's a lot of emphasis on graphical glitz and making games user friendly to the point where they're not tough at all.
>

I'm glad to read this from you, and the remarks that follow this post in the thread. I've been spending a fair amount of time combing the usual 'Net sources for IF, like Xyzzynews.com, the Interactive Fiction Archive, etc., looking for articles on making games challenging and satisfying without making them so frustrating that players simply give up. I was interested to read in one article that a survey of IF game players revealed that the vast majority of players seek hints and help at least once for every game, which sort of corroborates what you've said here.

I also appreciate Sam's take on what the significance of the Hall of Fame should be. For some reason, it hadn't occurred to me that the HoF should be treated as a particularly special group of people, but in reality, FQ's Hall of Fame is just that: 39 people out of well over a thousand who have had the patience to work through the entire adventure. Seeing the HoF that way makes me a little more willing to make my own game difficult enough that its Hall of Fame can be seen as a fairly exclusive list of "the elites".

I don't know to what extent thinking about all of this is really going to alter the final product, but I'm getting very excited about my game. My only big concern (apart from dread of hitting the coding stage) is that I may be trying to straddle genres too much and force a character-driven bit of fiction into the framework of an adventure game, or vice versa. I've chucked a lot of the original ideas in favor of more exploration, discovery and puzzle-solving, but I still hope to make the characters into persons that the player will actually want to find out more about, since unraveling their history and secrets is still the primary motivation for the player-character. We'll see how it works.

One more question to toss out to everyone. What do you think of the idea of developing intentionally short games, somewhere between the length of The Trainer and Fantasy Quest? Something more like a vignette than a full story or epic adventure. My guess is that it would be appealing to a lot of people to have a handful of short adventures to play if they don't happen to care for a longer and more tedious one. The Halls of Fame for the longer adventures would remain more or less exclusive, but the patience-challenged would also have something to satisfy them. Also, the idea of making my next AGL game (if such a thing ever comes to be) a short one is very appealing, after exhausting so much effort (okay, with long stretches of idleness) on this current project. Feedback? Ideas? "Yo-Mama" cut-downs?

Iss "talk amongst yourselves....I'll give you a topic..." achar