Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Examine is evil!
Message-ID: <CLJzsD.Fux@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Summary: Mom! Dad! Don't examine it! It's evil!
Sender: nntp@acsu.buffalo.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: pegasus.cs.buffalo.edu
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 02:48:13 GMT
Lines: 38

     Interactive fiction should do away with the verb "examine"!

     We've all suffered from abuses of "examine" and its variants,
like having to "look behind the machine" or "look under the bed"
when neither "search machine" nor "search bed" gives you any clue
to do so.  Just as bad are requiring the player to search something
two or three times.  But I claim that "examine" itself, that favorite
way of introducing clues and hidden objects, should be done away with.

     As long as we require the player to examine every object, we have
only two choices:

1. Put her in an impoverished world with few objects.

2. Submit her to the tedium of examining everything.

     If we ever want to advance beyond Scott Adams, to where we can
have rich room descriptions and an interesting environment, we
have to write games in which the player can act like someone actually
would in that environment -- namely, he would not pick up and
scrutinize every useless pencil, search every pile of litter in the city,
or look under every bed.  The important things should be apparent,
or the player should be able to figure out what to look for or look at.
Obviously I'm going to want to examine the Cray Z supercomputer
[weren't you disappointed when they wimped out and called it the Cray 3?]
or the Cursed Violin of Incredibly Bad Music, but not "the grass" or
"the tree".  But "examine violin" should be implicit in any
command such as "get violin", "play violin", or "burn violin",
so there's no need for "examine".

--
Phil goetz@cs.buffalo.edu

For my part, I think it very imprudent for man, who is commonly deceived in
actual and immediate everyday affairs, and who is constantly surprised by the
unexpected in things most familiar, to seek to limit the possible and judge
the future.
                - Alexis de Tocqueville, _Democracy in America_, 1835
