Matt Chat Thread

[TripJack]

Rise of the Dragon, Heart of China, Willy Beamish, The Incredible Machine

you mention all that garbage but no tribes?

shame on you

 

[Destroid]

My only regret is I missed Matt's tweet about the interview and didn't get to send him any tribes questions to make sure they talk about it. Although it would be pretty crazy if they didn't, considering T1+2 have got to be some of his most successful and popular games, and he went on (with others) to found a new company on the basis of their engine and a spiritual successor.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

 

[TripJack]

 

[taxalot]

Answering my own question.

Taxalot
@noahantwiler @RichardGarriott So, when is that interview coming, guys ?

@RichardGarriott
@taxalot @noahantwiler I suggest just after our RTX demo is completed, so we have some meat to dissect.

What the fuck is RTX is left to debate.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Destroid]

I think it would be pretty great to get one of the old Simtex guys on the show, Stephan Barcia or Ken Burd. The only problem is I have no idea how to contact either of them in an effective manner, Stephan Barcia is an executive producer at EA (Vancouver I believe) these days, and Ken Burd is at Turbine working on Dungeons and Dragons Online. I tried mailing their media department, but got nothing.

Any suggestions?

 

[J_C]

Damn, at 2.10 he almost messed up his name.

 

[Infinitron]

In the first slice of my interview with Dynamix founder Jeff Tunnell, we chat about his latest projects, including Contraption Maker and why Jeff doesn't like Apple or Google's app stores. Then we talk about his background and how he met Damon Slye and Ken Williams. Then we talk about Stellar 7 and Arctic Fox, one of my favorite Amiga games.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/5493



Matt Chat 200: Jeff Tunnell on Red Baron, Willy Beamish, and Rise of the Dragon

 

[Destroid]

Good interview so far, I hope they talk about tribes and Garage Games in the next one.

 

[Infinitron]

Matt Chat 201: Jeff Tunnell on Software Patents, Betrayal at Krondor, Incredible Machines

 

[Infinitron]

Matt Chat 202: Jeff Tunnell on Tribes, Torque, and Xbone

 

[Infinitron]

Frayed Knights!

 

[Infinitron]

@Trash, this may be of interest to you:



In the second installment of my interview with Bill Volk, we chat about his days at Avalon Hill and the dawn of the computer games industry. Bill was a programming machine, writing games and ports for TRS-80, Commodore Pet, Atari 400s, and CoCo! We also talk about his games Controller and Voyager.

 

[octavius]

Frayed Knights!

Damned I hate that art work. Which is a shame, since the game looks pretty good otherwise.

 

[Infinitron]

When Activision made adventure games:



In this part of the interview, Bill and I chat about the glorious days of The Manhole, Return to Zork, Aegis, Ports of Call, and much more. Bill shares some great stories about the early days of Amiga and Mac, plus offers his views on the future of the adventure game.

 

[Infinitron]

In this fourth and final installment with Bill Volk, we chat about a variety of topics including the future of the gaming industry (Bill thinks Dragon Blocks is going to make a huge impact), The Fat Man, how Bill saved Activision, the Wayans Brothers' Dozens game, and lots of fun behind the scenes stories.

 

[J_C]

New episode is up about an X3 game.

If you're like me, you spent a great part of your youth traveling between sectors in classic space-sims like Elite and Privateer. This great genre doesn't get the attention of the latest FPS or MMO titles, but it's far from dead. The X3 series is developed by Egosoft, a great German software house that started with Amiga games. It's definitely not "easy to master," but it's one of the most engrossing and satisfying games I've played in a looooong time.

 

[Infinitron]

Hmm, controversy:

When adventure game fans hear the word "implementor," they naturally think of Infocom greats like Meretzky, Lebling, or Blank. However, Mr. Howard Sherman has been proudly carrying the torch since founding his company Malinche Entertainment in 2002, steadily developing and publishing a highly successful line of interactive fiction products for PCs and e-readers. No less a figure than Blank has declared his works "more captivating than ever."

Howard is a controversial figure, frequently clashing with the amateur IF community. However, love him or hate him, he's definitely an entertaining and charismatic speaker, with forceful opinions on a wide variety of adventure game-related topics.

In this tell-all interview, Howard gives his opinions on the state of interactive fiction, including his views on high-profile designers Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin. He also talks about the legal troubles he's had developing his own games, which are sometimes so well-researched that legal authorities get involved!

Check out Howard's games here: http://www.malinche.net/
Check out Howard's blog here: http://www.malinche.net/blog/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malinche_Entertainment

Malinche Entertainment is an interactive fiction development and publishing business founded by Howard Sherman. The company was founded in 2002.[1][2] Malinche Entertainment claims to be working in the tradition of early interactive fiction developer Infocom,[1] seeking an association and using Infocom's logo as a launcher icon for at least one game.[3] Sherman claims to have sold 150,000 copies of his games as of May 2006.[4] He claims the business is profitable.[4] Malinche Entertainment is notable for being one of the last commercial publishers of interactive fiction. Malinche's press activities act as a form of cultural advocacy for interactive fiction, generating headlines with availability of boxed products and availability on new devices.[1]

Malinche Entertainment's published games include Pentari: First Light (March 2003,[4] fantasy), Greystone (2003, murder mystery set in an asylum), Endgame (2004, suspense), The First Mile (2005, horror), and Pentari: The Apprentice (2007, fantasy). All of Malinche Entertainment's games are written by Sherman. They are written using Inform targeting the virtual Z-machine. Versions of some games are also available for iPods,[5] using a hypertext interface. The games have also been ported to the Nintendo DS, personal digital assistants, and the iPhone.[1][6]

Sherman previously worked at RMI.net, then Excalibur Internet Corp.. He left Excalibur in 2003 to work for his own consulting firm and Malinche.[4]

Malinche markets to adventure gamers, the general fiction book market, and blind gamers.[7]

Malinche's The First Mile received a poor review from PC Gamer, being criticised for, "typos," "incorrectly linked objects, caricatured minorities, physical impossibilities, and confusing commands."[3]

Controversy
Sherman has threatened to sue the web publication SPAG for considering to publish an unfavorable review of one of his games.[8] The Malinche website has displayed carefully edited review quotes for games, in order to alter the reviewers' intended meaning ("...mystery story lovers should find the quest for the murderer addictive enough to overcome its weaknesses. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t recommend it for the more wide-ranging hard-core interactive fiction player."[9] was reduced to simply "...Mystery story lovers should find the quest for the murderer addictive..."[10]), and quotations from reviews written decades ago for games by Infocom were presented so as to imply that they described Malinche games.[11]

He also calls himself "the only active Implementor of Interactive Fiction in the world",[12] despite the existence of a thriving hobbyist community and his own acknowledgement[13] of hobbyist-produced games. In fact, Sherman himself was taking part in that community in the very same year that Malinche Entertainment was founded, when he entered a game called "BOFH" (based on Simon Travaglia's Bastard Operator From Hell property) into the 8th annual Interactive Fiction Competition.[14]

Sherman also refers to Malinche as "The World's Only Publisher of Interactive Fiction",[12] despite the existence of at least one other commercial publisher of interactive fiction.[15]

 

[Crooked Bee]

Interesting, I haven't played any of his games but I wonder if they are any good. Because e.g. Emily Short's games are good.

Sceptic Have you played Sherman's games?

 

[Infinitron]

Interesting, I haven't played any of his games but I wonder if they are any good. Because e.g. Emily Short's games are good.

Sceptic Have you played Sherman's games?

Turns out Matt already interviewed the man back in 2008, in old-fashioned text format: http://armchairarcade.com/neo/node/1831

Comments:

The postings by Stu and Bill seem to convey that Mr. Sherman and/or his company is somewhat controversial.
I don't know as I didn't really follow the IF scene for the last two or three years but I had a look at his website and it's loaded with silly slogans ("At Malinche, Customer Service Isn't a Feature - it's a Royal Proclamation!" or "Ranked As The Hottest in Horror by Apple Computer!") and painful photograph captions ("The Grand Implementor with a majestic view of the temple in the background.").
Apart from that his page seems amateurishly designed and I don't like the cover art of the games but this is a matter of taste.

The questions in this interview are good and could lead to good answers but instead he fills them with marketing targetted at the first-time or casual gamer by telling them that
a) he doesn't make games (games = graphics, which he doesn't have)
b) he is the only one publishing games that are not games
c) he makes books you can, well, play *ahem* "interact" with

He also puts stuff in his gameboxes like Infocom did. Well, no microscopic invisible starfleets but the occasional pirate eye patch or a candy bar aren't that bad.

"Some people call us Infocom 2.0 or Infocom: The Next Generation which are very complimentary as well as descriptive."

So calling his company "Infocom 2.0" must be true, though this is (cleverly) only used via citation. The Grand Implementor is humble, too.

We could argue that publishing means "commercial exploitation" (in which case I can name you at least one other text adventure that is still being sold today) or we could define it as "making publicly available" - the latter being done by a large number of people, sometimes with several masterpieces under their belt.
Either way he simply isn't the only publisher in this field.

I can't say if his products are really "bestseller material" as I haven't played them but if he says so...

matt:
"At any rate, though, I don't know anyone who projects more confidence in the future of IF than Howard."

Naturally - as he makes a living from it! I would do the exact same thing if I were in the shoes of the "Grand Implementor"...

Thanks for the funny interview but I like reading your book much better (plug! plug!) ;-)

take care,
Calibrator

(A few years late, but I feel like I should explain why Malinche is so controversial.)

In the modern interactive fiction community (which is surprisingly large), Sherman is known more for his massive ego than his games. He calls himself "the last implementer," ignoring genre giants like Andrew Plotkin, Emily Short, Graham Nelson, or dozens of other acclaimed interactive fiction writers whose works are much better known than his own - and when community members take offense, he strikes back with astonishing vitriol, dismissing their critically-acclaimed efforts as a "collective failure" and proclaiming his own works "nothing less than astonishing." (http://www.adventureclassicgaming.com/index.php/site/comments/219/P10/)

Malinche's games are often panned by reviewers as mediocre-to-bad by modern standards: riddled with typos, buggy, poorly-designed, and confusingly written. Sherman's business practices are shady, as well. He claims massive sales figures but has never provided a shred of evidence to support them. He portrays Malinche as a small group of developers, but there's no evidence anyone other than Sherman himself has ever worked for it. The reviews on his website are cherry-picked and frequently distort the author's original intent. etc.

Meanwhile, the rest of the community goes on its merry way, producing some pretty nifty games: Blue Lacuna; Varicella; Anchorhead; Spider and Web; Lost Pig; Slouching Towards Bedlam; City of Secrets. Memorably, Gametrailers.com gave Counterfeit Monkey a 9.4 out of 10, the same rating they gave Bioshock Infinite. http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/ikyf0p/counterfeit-monkey-review

I suspect the guy is a bit of an extroverted egomaniac, but that he's also taking heat for not conforming to the norms of the modern interactive fiction hipster movement, ie, his games are more "text adventure" than "interactive fiction".

 

[Sceptic]

Sceptic Have you played Sherman's games?

Never even heard of him. And of course now I have to check him out just to see if he's as bad as he seems to be. Sigh.

Not impressed with his ego though, especially if he touted himself as Best & Last at a time when Plotkin, Short and Cadre were still very active.

 

[Little Killerz]

Watch Matt Barton play Tales of Illyria! He makes a couple bad choices that end in lost battles and hilarity. Overall I'm very happy with the video.

Please note there is much more to the game then what is shown...

 

[Crooked Bee]

So, is the PC port still upcoming?