Monday 30 June 2014

This month in AIF (June 2014)

Rather a short post this month. The AIF Central subreddit is now open for business, and will hopefully become the destination for AIF news, since it's far more accessible to new posters than either Yahoo! or this blog. It also has the advantage of broadening AIF's profile, which has already resulted in the 'discovery' of a new game. So if you want to publicise a newly released game, gain feedback for something or if you just have a random thought you want to discuss, I encourage you to make use of the subreddit.
 
With the subreddit becoming the major AIF news source, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to write monthly summaries any more, especially since they're generally out of date by the time I write them. A case in point is the release of Super PAC, which is June's main piece of news and happened three and a half weeks ago as I write this.
 
So, unless someone else decides that they want to take over the job, this is going to be the last monthly summary. Likewise, I'm not going to be automatically setting up posts to announce the release of new games either, although I certainly will on request.
 
ttfn

Monday 23 June 2014

June Open Thread: Immersion


Does a game allow you to feel like you are the character? Should that even matter?

I’ve seen a few references on this blog to ‘immersion’ and it isn’t something I had previously thought about a lot as it doesn’t really matter that much to me. So I’m curious what other’s take on it is. To be clear (as there are multiple ways immersion could be defined, but I’m trying to stick with the context I’ve seen it in), I see immersion as does the player feel like they are the main character.

I don’t have a problem with immersion, but I also don’t find it necessary. If I don’t identify with the character at all it doesn’t really matter. Whether I feel like I am the character or if I am just guiding someone else doesn’t really matter.

So:
How much does immersion matter to you?
What are some good examples?
What are some bad examples?

Monday 9 June 2014

BBBen Game Design

This post was originally supposed to be part a general progress report, but I spent so much time talking about BBBen's game design that I’m separating it into its own post. I’m not discussing any of the content of his games, just the game design he used for PAC and PAF and ways in which it can be expanded/improved.

Saturday 7 June 2014

AIF comes to reddit

Courtesy of jordanb716, we now have an AIF subreddit at http://www.reddit.com/r/AIFCentral/. Hopefully that should overcome the major weaknesses of the blog system, which is that if you want to post something gaining author access is pretty time consuming (since I have to manually approve everyone).

The AIF Central blog will still be here for longer and more detailed posts, but an AIF subreddit should make it easier to quickly share news.

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Super PAC released!

Super Pervert Action: Crisis has been released! You can get the game here: http://bbben.aifcommunity.org/

More info about the game below.

Where we are

AIF Central has been chugging along for almost five months now, so it's probably as good a time as any to take a pause, see how everything is working, and decide on our next destination.

The blog has been averaging over five hundred pageviews a day, which isn't too shabby all things considered. However, the number of new posts has dropped off considerably. That's not too surprising given that most of the original authors also have blogs and/or games of their own to worry about. The bigger problem is that no new authors have come on board after the initial flurry, for which I have to take the blame for not spending more time publicising AIF Central and generally trying to drum up interest. Unfortunately I've had less and less free time to spend on AIF, and what time I do have is mostly spent playtesting (and more recently, actually playing, which is nice).

Anyhow, there are at least three places where we could go from here.

1. AIF Central continues on as a collaborative blog, hosting articles about AIF and stimulating discussion. Ideally that would happen under a new editor who has more time to devote to making it a success.

2. AIF Central changes course and becomes primarily a site for AIF news, such as new game announcements, and so on. I think there would be a demand for this as the changes Yahoo! have instituted (particularly requiring a cell phone number for new accounts) means that there are more people who are unable or unwilling to subscribe to aifarchive (the traditional source of news). Again, this would probably require a new editor who has enough free time to stay on top of everything (i.e. check the various news sources, blogs, etc.)

3. We conclude that AIF Central was an experiment worth conducting but is no substitute for an actual website with functioning forums, etc.

4. Your suggestion here.

Tuesday 3 June 2014

The month in AIF (May 2014)

May was an unusually busy month in the world of AIF. Both Emily: Sister Attraction by Palmer and the final version of Magician's Nephew by Mr Flibble were released, to widespread acclamation.

Emily was initially released as a demo last year, and Palmer has done a good job of both maintaining the level of interest that the demo generated and delivering on it with the finished product, which is probably the best incest-themed game in AIF history so far. Of course it doesn't hurt that Emily makes extensive use of graphics alongside a strong story.

Emily: Sister Attraction is for ADRIFT 5 and is available from http://palmeraif.weebly.com/games.html

Magician's Nephew was released as an open beta almost a year ago. The final version squashes a lot of bugs and adds some extra content for the ending. Perhaps because a lot of people had already played the beta, the final version didn't really receive the reception that it's ambition deserved, but it's an excellent and involving game and I encourage you to seek it out if you haven't already played it.

Magician's Nephew is for Inform 7 and is currently only available from the aifarchive Yahoo! group (where Mr Flibble has also kindly uploaded the source code).

On top of that, towards the end of the month two other authors announced that they had games ready for beta testing. One of them, Minterlint, has set up a blog to chronicle his game's development. Additionally, the first chapter of Pervert Action: Origins by EFon, a three chapter CYOA prequel to BBBen's Pervert Action series, was released and can be found here.


In other news, this year's AIF Minicomp was formally announced. The deadline this year is July 14, 2014. Full rules can be found here.

As usual, if there are any news items we've missed, let us know via email or the comments below.