{"id":208,"date":"2013-06-21T05:49:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=208"},"modified":"2013-06-21T05:49:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T12:49:31","slug":"j-robinson-wheeler-on-best-supplemental-materials-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/?p=208","title":{"rendered":"J. Robinson Wheeler on Best Supplemental Materials 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

J. Robinson Wheeler writes on the feelies for Muggle Studies<\/a>,\u00a0Marco Innocenti\u2019s cover art for all the Andromeda games<\/a>, the\u00a0CYPHER<\/a> website and other materials, and the covers for Cover\u00a0Stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Whenever a new IF game comes with feelies, which thankfully\u00a0many still do these days, they are naturally the first things I\u00a0look at, before I even load the game. Feelies can start to put\u00a0you into the world of the game, into that special headspace\u00a0that a player is about to share with the author for a few\u00a0hours. This is the first place the general tone of the adventure\u00a0can be set up, lightly comic, tongue-in-cheek, serious,\u00a0mysterious, what have you.<\/p>\n

Feelies used to serve another purpose, password-protection\u00a0and the like, so that you would have to drag them out and\u00a0fiddle with them during the game just to keep playing,\u00a0something that fortunately doesn\u2019t happen any more. There\u00a0is still the mid-game use of them as something to fiddle with\u00a0and glance through again when one is stuck looking for what\u00a0do to next, or mentally knotted up over a puzzle. Usually,\u00a0I find that feelies don\u2019t actually contain any helpful hints,\u00a0by design — they\u2019re designed to start things off, not spoil\u00a0what is actually going to happen. Often, too, they are, as\u00a0this category suggests by its name, supplements only. A bit\u00a0of extra creativity on the side, not really part of the gameexperience but perhaps part of the game-world.<\/p>\n

In any event, I can\u2019t judge these supplements on how they\u00a0fare as something to review during the course of the game,\u00a0because my job is only to review the supplements only, and\u00a0the assignment came in rather at the last minute, too late to\u00a0play all of the games in question (in one case, an absurd task,\u00a0as it comprises multiple adventures).<\/p>\n

The feelies for Muggle Studies<\/em>, by Flourish Klink<\/h3>\n

The feelies for Muggle Studies<\/a><\/em> are sort of the classic\u00a0Infocom package: a manual and two extra bits, in this case\u00a0a handwritten letter and a brochure, both of which factor\u00a0into the story and, in the case of the brochure, make an\u00a0appearance as an examinable object within the game itself,\u00a0in the first scene. The manual introduces the game a bit, and\u00a0then contains a primer on how to play IF, concluding with a\u00a0sample transcript. It\u2019s as standard as an IF game\u2019s manual\u00a0gets, in terms of format. One wonders when we can finally\u00a0stop writing the \u201chow to play IF\u201d section of these things,\u00a0now that people have been playing them since 1979. We still\u00a0need to explain this? (This is not a dig at the Muggle Studies<\/em>\u00a0manual, just sort of a lament to the heavens.)<\/p>\n

I looked at the McGonagall letter.jpg first. It\u2019s a simple jpeg, a\u00a0grayscale scan of a handwritten letter on \u201cHogwarts College\u201d\u00a0letterhead. The question that floats over my head upon\u00a0seeing that (\u201cCollege?\u201d) is answered fairly quickly within the\u00a0game. So, in a way, it\u2019s doing its job as a feelie by making me\u00a0think about this. The handwriting is done freehand in cursive,\u00a0and so the writing wobbles up and down on each line. I have\u00a0this image that Minvera McGonagall would have fastidious\u00a0handwriting that, even without visible rules, would stay true\u00a0horizontal on the page. That\u2019s just my impression, though. It\u00a0qualifies as a nit I\u2019m picking, though.<\/p>\n

The other extra is a charming little faux brochure advertising\u00a0the Hogwarts school to prospective parents of magical\u00a0children. Crowded with trivia from the books and stills from\u00a0the films, it\u2019s tastefully done, and serves to remind one that\u00a0yes, this is definitely the world we\u2019re going to be playing\u00a0around in. One detail of note is a specific mention in British\u00a0pounds the tuition at Hogwarts — nearly 10,000 — and in\u00a01990\u2019s currency values, not adjusted for inflation. And that\u2019s\u00a0without buying an owl, a broom, a wand, a cauldron, and\u00a0textbooks!<\/p>\n

The manual is thorough, as I mentioned, and features several\u00a0nice black and white illustrations. On the second page, below\u00a0the table of contents, there\u2019s the image of a young woman\u00a0seated at a computer, chin in hand, thoughtfully pondering,\u00a0perhaps, what to do next in the IF game she\u2019s engaged in\u00a0playing. Reminds me of a drawing I made once, of a young\u00a0woman seated at a computer, chin in hand, thoughtfully\u00a0pondering, perhaps, what to do next in the IF game she\u2019s\u00a0engaged in playing. Just saying.<\/p>\n

Flipping through the feelies for Muggle Studies<\/em> made me\u00a0want to give the game some more play than I did upon its\u00a0first release. I got cheesed off that my very first command,\u00a0\u201cTAKE ALL\u201d, was rejected by the game. However, if I had\u00a0read the feelies through thoroughly at the time, as I did\u00a0today, I would have noted before loading the game that the\u00a0manual specifically states (even while listing >TAKE ALL as a\u00a0standard IF sample command) that the game does not accept\u00a0\u201cALL\u201d as a command-word. That might have saved me some\u00a0disgruntled feelings as a player. See how important it is to\u00a0actually read the feelies you get?<\/p>\n

Cover art for the Andromeda<\/em> series, by Marco Innocenti<\/h3>\n

These actually make a beautiful, tasteful set of science fiction\u00a0story covers, thematically linked by design elements and\u00a0suggesting stories in the same series and same universe. The\u00a0one I like the most, apart for one element of typography, is\u00a0the Andromeda Dreaming<\/em><\/a> image. A skillfully done, artfully\u00a0chosen image of a woman\u2019s head, angled downward so\u00a0that her dreams float up from her mind — with a nebula as\u00a0an idea-cloud within her mind — I really think this is a great\u00a0cover image. The highlight-glow along the curve of her neck,\u00a0with shadows fading to the starlight behind, is just smack\u00a0in my appreciation zone for how to blend this photographic\u00a0image into the whole panel. The neon-cursive of the word\u00a0\u201cdreaming\u201d sticks out for me, slightly sorely to the eye, but in\u00a0a smaller thumbnail and maybe at a second glance it\u2019s not too\u00a0bad. It does not distract enough to make me fail to appreciate\u00a0the rest of the composition and list this as my favorite.<\/p>\n

I also like the Tree and Star<\/em><\/a> image, for the stark beauty of the\u00a0blue-white snow leaves of the tree and its trunk\u2019s alignment\u00a0with the glow of the star overhead, in alignment with the\u00a0linking imagery in all four covers, of the set of three red\u00a0glowing orbs aligned to a central vertical.<\/p>\n

The downside to the Andromeda Apocalypse<\/em><\/a> art is that it\u00a0looks like an earlier version of Andromeda Dreaming that\u2019s\u00a0not finished yet, because it features the same nebula. The\u00a0downside to the fourth, Andromeda Awakening<\/em><\/a>, which has a\u00a0really nifty steely-orb planet-like addition, is that its image on\u00a0IFDB is really small compared to the others, which have more\u00a0full-sized uploads that you can really take a look at, like LP\u00a0album art reduced to CD size.<\/p>\n

All four covers also share a starfield background, looking\u00a0Hubble-like as a source. High resolution and high quality,\u00a0looking at the four covers makes me curious to delve into\u00a0the world of these interactive stories, even though I\u2019d never\u00a0heard of them before. If I saw four books lined up on a store\u00a0shelf with these covers, I\u2019d be equally tempted to browse\u00a0them, flip through a few pages, and consider taking one of\u00a0them home with an option to buy all four.<\/p>\n

One could be more of an art critic here than I\u2019m being,\u00a0perhaps saying that there\u2019s not much new here, that it\u2019s fairly\u00a0standard Photoshop work, lens flares over a background plate\u00a0and some other element layers superimposed, but they\u2019re\u00a0neither overdone nor underdone. I guess that\u2019s why I said\u00a0tasteful right up front, they\u2019re a simple idea done simply, with\u00a0a good eye for what doesn\u2019t need to be there as well as what\u00a0does, if this is what you\u2019re going for.<\/p>\n

Website and other materials for CYPHER<\/em>, by the Cabrera\u00a0Brothers<\/h3>\n

I started with the cover art as shown on IFDB<\/a>: and it\u2019s good,\u00a0movie-like. Actually, videogame-like, where the videogame\u00a0wants to suggest a suspense-and-action-filled cyberpunk\u00a0type movie that you\u2019d watch on a Saturday night. (That\u2019s the\u00a0night to watch this kind of movie, it always seems like. Like\u00a0I\u2019m going to watch, say, Resident Evil: Apocalypse on a Sunday\u00a0afternoon? Come on.)<\/p>\n

On to the website<\/a>. And, okay, wow. It\u2019s a long scroll, this\u00a0website. It\u2019s actually about 14 web pages strung together\u00a0vertically, each with a different advertising-copy and buy-itnow-enticement per slice, like a scrolling billboard. Having\u00a0traversed it, I can say that, while it\u2019s a bit on the busy side,\u00a0they had a lot they wanted to say, and if they\u2019d made it 14\u00a0individual pages, I wouldn\u2019t have even scanned all of it. But,\u00a0like they thought, I was willing to scroll down and pick and\u00a0choose, and then, if further interested, scroll some more and\u00a0read some more.<\/p>\n

The first thing I stopped on was a YouTube trailer. Being a\u00a0movie guy, I thought, ok, let\u2019s see what kind of video they\u00a0have. I was actually pretty impressed by it, after a slightly\u00a0shaky start. What came across was a notion they were selling,\u00a0not just about the cyber-world of the game, but that anyone\u00a0who hooks into playing it (or jacks in, I suppose I might say),\u00a0anyone getting into the whole interactive-fiction-with-extrazazz type of game experience these days, is sort of the same\u00a0type of character as those inhabiting the fictional world of the\u00a0game they\u2019re selling. IE, you\u2019re part of the whole cyber world\u00a0if you\u2019re into this game. The video shows a guy booting into\u00a0the game and starting to play it. And then getting more and\u00a0more into it, as he keeps unlocking things: a key opens a\u00a0suitcase that unlocks a plasma gun that you can grab onto\u00a0and then … who knows what happens after that. In essence,\u00a0this video provides the same sort of IF tutorial (what\u2019s it like\u00a0to actually play this, how do you play it, what kind of\u00a0commands are you likely to enter) demo that the Muggle\u00a0Studies<\/em> booklet provides, except — and I know this is a\u00a0dreadful clich\u00e9, but it shows it rather than telling it. It edits\u00a0together hyped-up canted-angled fast-closeup-cut images of\u00a0someone entering commands to play an IF game, and does it\u00a0pretty efficiently with a lot of snazz.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I was fairly impressed by that, enough to keep\u00a0scrolling. The video also demonstrated the existence of\u00a0feelies, lots of them, that includes a chart of \u201chand-gesture\u201d\u00a0commands to be used in the game, typed inside brackets at\u00a0the standard command prompt. I scrolled down and read\u00a0a whole section on feelies, titled \u201cFeelies Are Back!\u201d And\u00a0showing that the Deluxe edition of the game comes with a\u00a0whole bunch of stuff to browse through, look at, and refer to\u00a0before and during play. Also, that nobody is left behind, you\u00a0can download it with digital copies that you print and trim\u00a0yourself with scissors, so that everybody gets feelies. Which,\u00a0yes, good idea, well done.<\/p>\n

I also noticed that the art in the game — or rather, in the\u00a0video of the game, and on the website itself — was pretty\u00a0good. Scrolling further, there\u2019s a short whimsical bio of\u00a0the two Cabrera brothers, one of whom is apparently a\u00a0professional illustrator and game artist, the other of whom is\u00a0apparently a professional web designer. Together, they create\u00a0websites that sell games where there\u2019s cyber crime, which\u00a0presumably you fight. But they\u2019re not messing around, they\u00a0do have chops.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m thinking, as I look at the dedication that went into all this,\u00a0that maybe it\u2019s over-busy or a little on the too side of too-too,\u00a0but that it\u2019s well done, and that geez, anyone who goes this\u00a0far should get some kind of award. No apologies to Muggle\u00a0Studies<\/em>, which won the XYZZY in this category, although I\u00a0wonder if more people ordered the CYPHER<\/em> game and got the\u00a0feelies, either pre-made (I think maybe that was the deluxe\u00a0option?) or print-and-cut-your-own, whether more voters\u00a0might have thought, ok, yeah, these guys really did go all-out\u00a0on the feelies and they\u2019re kind of cool.<\/p>\n

I guess the IF world now has its own version of the\u00a0Wachowskis. The website kind of visually overflows like the\u00a0Speed Racer<\/em> movie did on the mostly empty screens it played\u00a0to. I wonder if someday we\u2019ll get some IF Coen or Duplass or\u00a0Farrelly brothers to go along with them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad they got nominated.<\/p>\n

The covers for Cover Stories, by various<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s difficult to review the collective cover art for the Cover\u00a0Stories minicomp\/game jam<\/a>, because what do I really say\u00a0about a collection of images that just plain did the trick, did\u00a0what they were supposed to do: inspire authors to write\u00a0games based on seeing a single image that captured their\u00a0imagination and spun a game out of it?<\/p>\n

I could almost recuse myself because I almost wrote a game\u00a0for this comp. I found an image I really liked, and wrote a\u00a0short game that had a central puzzle based around it, but I\u00a0didn\u2019t finish anything except a rough prototype that a few\u00a0testers had a quick look at, and then I realized it wasn\u2019t living\u00a0up to my ambition. Certainly not living up to the image that\u00a0inspired me, but it was still good to have done.<\/p>\n

Despondent over my own lack of sticktuitiveness, I didn\u2019t\u00a0play any of the dozen finished games that were released, so\u00a0I can\u2019t assess how well the imagery inspired each artist or\u00a0to what extent. I can\u2019t even comment, art-critic-wise, about\u00a0any individual piece of cover art (making me nigh-useless in\u00a0this capacity as a reviewer), because it only matters how well\u00a0the art inspired the author, and, as I just said, I can\u2019t speak to\u00a0that.<\/p>\n

The only comment I can make, like a total buffoon, is to\u00a0wonder aloud that the art for IFDB Spelunking<\/em><\/a> (image by Sam\u00a0Kabo Ashwell) looks like a mirror-image of the art for Monkey\u00a0Business<\/em><\/a> (image selected by Rowan Lipkovits, presumably\u00a0altered by author Benjamin Sokal). Presumably this is just a\u00a0coincidence, but it\u2019s the only cogent thing I can remark on,\u00a0just to kind of point and say, \u201cHey, did you notice this?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J. Robinson Wheeler writes on the feelies for Muggle Studies,\u00a0Marco Innocenti\u2019s cover art for all the Andromeda games, the\u00a0CYPHER website and other materials, and the covers for Cover\u00a0Stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,2],"tags":[74,101,36,93,95,97,94,98,92,96,75,99,100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xyzzyawards.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}