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From: erkyrath@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin)
Subject: Re: More on What IF is...
Message-ID: <erkyrathDyEC8v.5M0@netcom.com>
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References: <xktybi1gvu4.fsf@moe.Myrias.AB.CA> <324802D4.2293@romulus.sun.csd.unb.ca> <529fe0$sk@lex.zippo.com> <xkt3f06hdk3.fsf@moe.myrias.ab.ca> <52dqh4$1lg@news.lth.se> <espen.aarseth-2709961558250001@hdbea.hf.uib.no>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 14:58:06 GMT
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Espen Aarseth (espen.aarseth@hf.uib.no) wrote:
> > And, please, don't try to tell us that we don't know what we're doing,
> > or that we're doing it just because we're hopelessly caught in some
> > outdated paradigm. We do resent that kind of talk, because we *do*
> > know what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve.
>
> A discussion about art should not resemble a business meeting. Artists who
> know exactly what they're doing and where they're going, probably need a
> few insults now and then. 
>
> Those who don't want to encounter dissenting views on adventure games,
> should spare themselves the trouble of reading this group (or use a score
> file). When general remarks about game-making is taken as personal
> comments, offense is inevitable (and a sign that this group, admirable as
> it is in most ways, needs a little fresh air once in a while).

Yeah, whatever.

I read things as they're posted. When I read:

> Yet, we're still throwing "locked-door" puzzles and "not enough room to
> carry" puzzles in our stories instead of working on the
> fiction aspects of it.

(where "we" is, by context, the IF authors and authors-to-be of this 
newsgroup)

...it is a personal comment. It is directed towards me; it is a statement 
about the work I have done, and what I am working on. Furthermore, it is 
false.

In this case, the poster (JHD) continued the discussion -- in an
interesting manner -- in the theoretical terms you are so fond of,
*instead* of continuing to insist that I (personally) am not working on
fiction. So I took the statement as an accident of rhetoric, and let it
pass. 

The fact that his post briefly annoyed me was a bug, not a feature.

How I feel about your post is left as an exercise to the reader.

--Z

-- 

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
