Winning the Internet

I like to play with the Internet and I suspect you do as well, oh Faithful Reader. I watch for interesting things and I forward them along to amuse, enlighten, and inform my friends, family, and followers. If I'm really good and very lucky, I'll do all of it to all of them at the same time.

I aspire to Internet greatness. I want a Google Footprint that can be seen from Outer Space. I want Wil Wheaton to ask me for tips on how to get more followers, I want George Takei to ask me to pass a funny picture along for him. I want to crash web servers faster than Neil Gaiman. I want to be in videos with Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day (and who doesn't?). Let's face it, like all the rest of you, I want to win the Internet.

I think everybody who wastes too much spends a lot of time on the Internet has their own way of winning. Let's face it, there are good Internet days and bad ones. For me, the good ones include laughing at something clever that my friends did or saw (or in some cases wrote or invented), contributing an idea or two here and there, and maybe getting a new friend, follower, groupie, or tweep.

I have my little strategies, I will set aside time in my busy day (Busy doing what, you ask? Well, Girl Genius isn't going to read itself after all, and Super Hero Squad Online has a hold on me that neither love nor money can break) to surf for good material to share. I am very lucky to have a wide and varied group of online friends and correspondents so my reach is long and my surfboard is mighty.  Also I cheat by checking out sites like Neatorama. Incidentally, Neatorama is where a friend of mine recently found this little gem of a Gotye Filk, The Star Wars That I Used to Know.

As a savvy Internet user; when a friend (or even the occasional fan) passes me an interesting bit of news, trivia, information, or political/social commentary, I spend a few minutes tracking down another source for corroboration. It's embarrassing to pass along a hoax or an outright lie. I'm not saying I haven't done it. In fact, posterity will show some real howlers of mine. I'm saying I try not to do it. A quick side trip to Snopes or Wikipedia has saved me many a #webfail. Sometimes I so desperately want that Onion article to be true. Alas, they have always been just a joke. So far.

Next I check for coverage. Maybe someone else in one of my social circles has already posted this and I can re-share their post.  A side benefit of re-sharing something from a friend is giving them credit. If I can help someone win their own Internet, a winner is I. Besides, it's fun to come up with four or five different synonyms for shared. I stole this from Bob, who ganked it from Jane, who bogarted it from Mabel, who can reliably claim to have liberated it from Todd in a Leverage/Sneakers style high tech caper. Incidentally, on precisely two occasions I have posted a thing before the social media big fish found it and blew me out of the water. I take my celebrity where I can find it. Oh, and I've learned the hard way that if George Takei posts it, that $#!7 is covered.

It's not all work, though. Believe it or not, you can play around a lot on the Internet too. And I'm not just talking about games either. I like to play with the Internet itself. I'm hardcore that way. (And yes, that is probably the only way that I'm hardcore.)

One of my favorite Internet games is Media Racing. I post some allegedly juicy tidbit on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter at the same time and then bask in the glow of my own ego as I see which outlet reposts, shares, +1's, and likes it fastest. So far Facebook is the most frequent winner, but I think that's been established elsewhere, and besides, it's fun just to watch them run.

I also like to watch the sales on my various personal creations. I've got an e-book that sells irregularly through numerous channels and I have an interactive novel/game thingee for both iPhones and Androids. I like to watch them race too, especially because races where you make actual money are even more fun. It's like watching people fill out online invitations to my birthday party, which by the way always makes me feel simultaneously popular and obsessive-compulsive. And for those who are curious, right now Verdigris for the Android is winning, but I still love all my literary children equally.

Speaking of Verdigris, I really get a kick out of corresponding with folks who have played it and asking them which choices they made and why. One of the best parts about role playing games is getting live feedback from the players, and Verdigris is my chance to play a role playing game with everyone who ever reads it. Or should that be everyone who plays it? I'm never sure what verb one uses to describe the experience of an interactive novel. Read this game? Play this story?

But I digress.  Where was I? Oh yes, how I play the Internet... This very blog is my favoritest favorite way to play the Internet. It is here that I speak directly to you, oh Faithful Reader. Getting the occasional comment or even discussion going here make me feel like a Social Media creator and not just a pass through. So even though my output here is less frequent than I would prefer (I'm still pretty darn lazy and easily distracted ... mostly by the Internet, but I think I'm digressing again) I'm still here and I'm still trying to win the Internet.

Nuts and Bolts

With the recent (and long-awaited) release of Verdigris for the Droid platform I thought this would be a nice time to talk about my approach to writing multiple choice interactive fiction in general and Verdigris in specific. I grew up on the Choose Your Own Adventure game books as well as great computer games like Zork and its many cousins and descendents.

These games were and are great fun and I cannot recommend them too highly. Actually that's not quite true, if I were to say that playing interactive fiction games would forever end the threat of nuclear war in our lifetimes, I would be recommending them too highly. But short of that, they are pretty dang nifty. The thrill of interactive fiction (hereafter occasionally referred to as IF to save space and delay the inevitable onset of carpal tunnel) is much the same as that of role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and all of its cousins and venerable descendents: Stepping outside of your own head and your own life, creating an alter ego and having adventures, solving mysteries and just generally dealing with problems that aren't the same old mundane ones you have to deal with in Real Life. As most people who have met me know, I am no great fan of Real Life.

The problem with a lot of interactive fiction games is that they are mostly constructed out of frustration. Many IF games require you to learn the language and structure of each game. That takes time and can be painful and - wait for it - frustrating. Anyone who has played an IF game has had screaming arguments with their computer that go something like this:

Computer says: You see an interesting umbrella, you should pick it up
Player types: Pick up umbrella
Computer replies: I don't see an umbrella here
Player types: Pick up parasol
Computer replies: I don't see a parasol here
Player types: Look around
Computer replies: You see an interesting umbrella, you should pick it up
Player types: Pick up the freaking umbrella!!!!!
Computer replies: There's no need to get upset here, I'm just doing my job. Did you want to pick up the umbrella?
Player types: Yes!
Computer replies: I don't understand what you mean.

At this point, Player often throws his computer through a convenient window. But once you get the hang of each program's specific quirks and requirements they're a lot of fun. Trust me here. But what Team Verdigris wanted to do was create a vibrant interactive world with lots of real choices and real consequences that was as close to frustration-free as we could manage. Unfortunately, that meant front-loading all the frustration onto ourselves. We used a structure that allows the players to choose whatever missions they want in pretty much any order they choose, and because it's all multiple choice, there was no need to learn the program's idiosyncratic language.

The consequence of this choice was what we began calling zombie chips. Small spoiler here: the consequences of your choices in the game can lead to the deaths of some of the characters you interact with. The problem with this is that some players will move forward in the game with a particular character being alive and others with that same character being dead. This was a ticklish logic problem that led to a bit of a walking dead problem, or in some cases, a bit of a lying down living problem. It's hard to keep a good character down in Verdigris, even when they're dead.

The other problem we had was the vanishing button conundrum. Many of the missions in Verdigris feature several different investigative paths that all lead to the same conclusion (more or less, your choices matter) but some require that the player follow every lead to piece together all the information. For these, we created structure that lets the player follow the leads in any order they choose, mostly because it's more fun that way. When each track was completed, the player is sent back to a central screen where they report back and then choose the next track. In theory, the button that leads to the tracks they've already completed will no longer appear. This is all well and good, but sometimes it led to a player getting back to a screen that had no buttons at all. There was literally no way out other then jumping around using the map mechanic or actually restarting your game. This may be my first game, but I rapidly concluded that this was a design flaw.

Tracking down the logic errors that causes these vanishing button dead ends was a mystery as challenging as any in the actual game. Some of these central screens have over 60 discrete code elements and figuring out which one is buggy ... well Dear Reader, it ain't easy. Team Verdigris has spent hundreds (and hundreds, and hundreds) of hours playing the heck of the game trying to find and fix all of these pesky problems. Did we get them all? Probably not. Will we fix them when players find them? Absolutely. Will it be easy? That would be a big nope. Is it worth it? I said is it worth it? Hello? Is this thing on? Anybody? Is it worth the late nights, the early mornings, the lonely SOs, and the crushing poverty?

...

Only you, Dear Reader can answer that question for us. Play Verdigris and let us know. That is all.

March 23, 2012
Chelmsford, MA