Since I put out the first draft of Fetch The Engines‘ first chapter, a surprisingly large number of people have asked me the following question. “Why did you do it in StoryNexus? The story you’ve written is essentially Choose Your Own Adventure, so wasn’t it an odd choice of platform?”
My stock reply to that question is: you’ve only seen 20% of what I’m planning to write. And the first 20% is designed to gently ease non-gamers into the StoryNexus world, so it’ll make a lot more sense once you’ve seen Chapter Two. But, actually, I’m dissembling when I say that, because I’d still have chosen StoryNexus even if the whole thing was going to be in the style of Chapter One. In this post, I’ll try to explain why.
One thing to say first: explaining why I did something isn’t the same as asserting I was right. I have no idea just now whether I was right or wrong. Possibly I’ll never know.
Also, it’s worth noting that I didn’t want Fetch The Engines to be parser-based IF (in other words, a game where you interact by typing sentences like PUT OUT THE FIRE). I love parser-based games, but that just wasn’t what I wanted to do. So Inform, TADS, and all the rest of that group were never in play.
With that said, why StoryNexus?
Because everybody loves the cards. Out of the people I’ve asked to try Fetch The Engines, and looking at those who weren’t already familiar with interactive fiction as a genre, about 50% have spontaneously said they liked the idea of turning over a deck of cards. It’s nicely intuitive, it’s easy to explain, and it doesn’t feel too nerdy. It has enough visual impact to seem intriguing – but not so much that the graphics detract from the words.
Because it doesn’t resemble Choose Your Own Adventure. This one isn’t going to make me popular, but I’m afraid it’s true. When I talk to people about Fetch The Engines, almost all of them say “so it’s like Choose Your Own Adventure?”… and they don’t mean that in a good way. Don’t get me wrong here: I have very fond memories of CYOA, and I also completely understand that the state of the art has moved on a lot since the 80’s. But for those who are less familiar with the genre, CYOA equals “books aimed at kids”; and that’s not the kind of association I want to have to overcome.
Because there’s a substantial body of existing work to learn from. That might sound a strange thing to say, for such a nascent platform. But there are still a fair few worlds already written… and Fallen London counts about 10 times, because there are so many experiments embedded within it.
Because the giants made it easy to stand on their shoulders. FBG have always talked a lot about how they designed Fallen London, and they’ve even now collected their design notes together into this wiki. If they hadn’t, I could still have worked it all out by taking a close look at the game itself. But it’s nice that I didn’t have to.
Because the model is inherently powerful, in a way I’m confident about. Call them “qualities” and “branches” if you want to… but I know variables and if-tests when I see them, and they make me feel happy inside. (The warm fuzzies faded when I realised there was no logical OR, but I was committed by then.)
Because it’s fun to experiment. Can StoryNexus be made to work for this kind of story? Fairly literary, tightly plotted, relatively short? There’s only one way to find out!
Those are the “good”, artistically-pure reasons. If I’m going to be completely honest, there’s also a grubbier calculation involved: I’m speculating about where I can reach the biggest audience, and judging which platform I think is at the best point in the growth curve to hop on board. But, well. Let’s not sully the temple of artistry with such awkwardly worldly concerns.
An important footnote: Since people started asking me this question, I’ve spent a lot more time reading (or playing?) works made on Varytale and Inklewriter, and some other platforms too. I’ve enjoyed them, and in a couple of cases I found them extremely thought-provoking. I also admire the elegance of the platforms. So no disrespect to anyone; they’re just not the best fit for what I, personally, wanted to do – at least, not this time around.
