Forums > Submission Feedback > [Interview] Aaron Reed

Reading this article before and after actually creating a few games for myself leaves me with entirely different impressions. It's good to see this article on HG.

I also can say, his book rocks, and he's been helpful when I emailed him. I'm still amazed at the help and resources available to someone who wants to make a game, and when I read he wrote BL in his spare time, it puts my procrastination in perspective.

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

A complete shit and utter waste of time. This is why a lot of people are glad that Team Bondi closed down. Bloated garbage with minimal game mechanics.

"Hey, i'm a fourth-rate novelist, i'm shit at my profession. My favorite writers are John Grisham, Sidney Sheldon and Stephen King. No, i have never heard of Leo Tolstoy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Do they make thriller or horror ? Anyway, let's cater to the lowest common denominator like, i don't know, gamers, because they are as dumb as a bag of marbles and won't know a good story ,if it takes a dump on their chests. Maybe i'll win a VGA instead of a Pulitzer"

Yeah, people, as long as garbage like Heavy Rain or Metal Gear Solid 3 is considered as a masterpiece, you know our opinion as a whole doesn't count.

This chronic-masturbating piece of shit probably never got passed the first level of Super Meat Boy and Bayonetta.

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Silly runningfree; no one thinks MGS is anyone's opus.

Good bile though. Well played.

For us. For them. For you.

Yeah, Aschultz, I debated for a long time whether to bring the interview over to HG, now that Gameroni's pretty much dead, and finally decided it was still a relevant story. Aaron really did do something cool in Blue Lacuna and, as you say, the fact he basically did it in his spare time might give hope to aspiring writers.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."

I remember when I used to go around to sites to troll non-stop. I just couldn't help myself. I was 16 or so, though.

I can avoid death by not having a life.

Hm, I was wondering if that one post was in the wrong thread or something. It made me forget to reply. That's a great way to win an argument with me in person, by the way. Change the subject completely. Not to say regular logic won't work, either. Anyway.

This article was definitely worth pulling over--it still baffles me how much work is being done to make writing text adventures simple and how worthwhile it is. I think one of the things I like about them is that I can sit on the bus and fill in a detail and it'll be right there--I won't need to convert it into code or learn an algorithm or anything, and I know people who've come before me will have extensions that make certain things easier. I can say "wouldn't it be neat if a story could..." and then I go do it. Whether it is neat or not is another matter.

I could go on about my own efforts at text adventures as a youngun (this brought back memories that were painful and amusing) but suffice it to say that even in a medium as apparently simple as text adventures, there's so much possibility and flexibility with, best of all, zero requirements to learn a graphics package or install a special library.

By the way, I don't know if you've played/seen/built Sand Dancer, but that is a great example (to me) of showing how to build a game. It's certainly less intimidating than BL.

My principal said, 'Emo, Emo, Emo.'
I said 'I'm the one in the middle, you lousy drunk!'
-- Emo Phillips

Was Sand Dancer also by Aaron Reed? That name sounds familiar.

After interviewing Reed and reading his book, I really got back into interactive fiction. The programming is even enticing, for the reasons Aschultz mentions. I ended up falling away from the genre due to a lack of time. Programming one of those games combines all the difficulties of writing a novel with the difficulties of coding. Playing one is great, and it similarly takes a lot of time. Mostly because I think you really have to shut off our more active mind, the one that's been built up by years of television, the internet, and movies to expect constant visual stimuli. There's an almost meditative peace in shutting that off, but it's hard to achieve and impossible, I find, to do it in between other commitments.

Blue Lacuna I never finished, though I got very far, because school started up again and I couldn't find that peace of mind. I need to take a weekend and just play it with a nice drink at my elbow and the first winds of summer blowing in through my window.

Note to gamers: when someone shoots you in the face, they aren't "gay." They are "psychopathic."