Interview with Joel Finch I first came across Australian adventure writer Joel Finch's name when he was the co-author of the intriguingly-titled Whatever We Decide To Call This Game which was one of the runners up in the 1990 AGT Adventure Writing Contest. In the following year, his next adventure, The Multi-dimensional Thief, was joint winner of the contest. We first got in contact by letter during 1993 when I wrote to him to see if he would be interested in being interviewed but he's been very busy in the intervening months and this is the first chance we have had to get it organised. I'll let him tell you what's been taking up his time, but first ... @~SM: Hello, Joel. Could you start by telling us a bit about @~yourself? JF: Well, I'm 20-something, and currently a student of Information Technology at the University of Queensland, here in Australia. I started out in Engineering, but switched after I realised that a computing course would suit my interests better. @~SM: How did your interest in computers start? JF: I think the first computer I ever saw was an Apple II when I was about ten. I thought it was great. I also had friends with Commodore 64s, and I would spend hours at their houses, playing games at every opportunity. I was enthralled by what could be done with a computer - my first program was written in basic for a school project in grade 7. It was quite simple, just a big collection of PRINT statements, really, but it impressed the teachers no end. @~SM: What was the first adventure you played, and who are your @~favourite authors and adventures? JF: The first adventure I ever played was Zork (surprise!), on a TRS-80 at our school fete. It was 50 cents for a 15-minute turn, and I think I got -20 points because I died several times. Not an auspicious start. I was really fascinated by the game, though, and (much later) bought and beat the whole Zork trilogy. My favourite text games are from Infocom; those people were utterly brilliant. I'd say my favourites are The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the original Zork series, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and Zork Zero, because it added a nice graphical element, but retained the depth of play found in a normal text game. At the time, I never paid much attention to who actually wrote these games. All that mattered was that it was fun. @~SM: How lively is the Australian adventure writing market? JF: (incredulous) There's an Australian adventure writing market?! As far as I know, there are few, if any, text games being written here. I know people in several game-writing groups, but none of them is working on anything even remotely resembling a text game. Commercially, it seems the text game and the complexity of interaction it allows has taken a back seat to arcade games with slick graphics, vibrant sound, and about 20 minutes of gameplay. @~SM: Was Whatever We Decide To Call This Game the first adventure @~you wrote and where did the idea for it come from? JF: Yes, The Game (as we abbreviated it) was the first real game of any kind that I wrote. It came out of the boredom caused by a late lecture at University. Myself and two friends decided afterwards to write a game where we could take our revenge on the University, and our lecturers. Also, that was our first year of University, so we included many of the things that we found difficult or annoying about being new at University. Although the University itself is fictional, many of the location and characters are based on real places and people (but don't tell them that!). @~SM: How easy (or hard!) did you find it to write a game with @~other people? JF: I found it really easy. The three of us would sit around with a computer and some paper, and throw ideas around. I'm sure we did more laughing than we did writing of the game. It was great fun, and I think that shows in the humour in The Game. Incidentally, The Game wasn't intended for widespread release; we didn't mind, but it was really only intended for our friends, who would recognise the situations and characters in it. That it was picked in the AGT competition was a something of a surprise to us, since we considered it a bit obscure for general distribution (and I still do!). @~SM: What about Multi-dimensional Thief? How did you get the @~storyline for that adventure? JF: Thief started out as just a single idea, to see whether I could implement a "portable hole" object in the AGT language. As it turns out, it was possible, although it wasn't terribly simple, and the game grew from there. I wanted to avoid the usual "rescue the princess", "collect the treasure" type of game, and still have a somewhat plausible reason for being in the situation. So I decided that the aim of the game was simply to pass a test, which explains why everything is set up the way it is. Most games have puzzles which are clever and fun, but there's no real reason why a character would be in a cave with three buttons on the wall, a silver lever and a tiny keyhole. Who put all those things there, and why? So I chose a situation where everything is very deliberately arranged, and I could get away with almost anything I wanted. @~SM: Thief was distributed as 'postware' where you asked users to @~send you a postcard if they were playing it. Did you receive @~many? JF: Well, there wasn't a great flood of them, but I have received about 40 postcards to date, mostly from the U.S.A. Some people have also written back more than once to ask for a clue or offer a suggestion. I'm constantly surprised that they keep coming. I received two more only a week ago, despite the game being over two years old. I suspect there were a great many more people who played the game than those who actually sent a postcard. Shame on all of you, shame! @~SM: There are several adventure writing utilities available. Why @~did you choose AGT to write The Game and Thief, and what do you @~think of it? JF: At the time, AGT was the best utility I knew of, so there wasn't really a big choice. I had seen other game-creators, but none of them produced games as close to the Infocom style as AGT. The AGT language was simple to learn, and had all the features that I wanted. Its parser was perhaps a little more limited than those I'd seen in commercial games, but since it was so simple to create the game, that wasn't a big disadvantage. I suspect that if it had been more powerful, it would also have been more complicated to write a game. Overall, I found AGT a good game-creator, although I did start to find it restrictive as I started trying more and more complex things with it. @~SM: Now - I know you are working on your own adventure creator, @~The Text Game Compiler (TGC), and have recently rewritten Thief @~with it. How does TGC differ from other adventure writing @~utilities? JF: I wrote TGC because I wanted to remove some of the restrictions that I was finding with AGT. I wanted something which was as simple as AGT to use, but with the capability to do some of the more involved effects that were difficult or impossible with AGT. The "portable hole" object, for example, is much easier to implement in TGC than it was with AGT. I also wanted to add the option of a graphical interface to the game, in a similar style as Zork Zero, or the Legend games such as Gateway or Eric the Unready. TGC also creates smaller games than AGT, which means that you can put more into the game before running up against the limitations of the system. You can have a game with more locations and objects which still fits in the same space. The main game section of the re-written version of Thief, for example, is only half the size of the AGT version (although adding illustrations takes up more space, naturally). I think the graphical interface the most important improvement over other game-creation systems. Although some people are still interested in plain text games, people generally seem to want some sort of illustrations in the games they play, so to get people interested in text games, I think they will have to become more like the commercial competition. @~SM: TGC and the new version of Thief are going to be marketed as @~shareware. How hopeful do you feel about the shareware @~principle? JF: Well, I'm actually amazingly hopeful, but whether that turns into a lot of registrations remains to be seen. I think Shareware is an excellent way to distribute a product - the user can test the software, find out if it works properly on their computer, see if it is something they like, and all without having to pay anything unless they keep it. That's something you just don't get from a normal shop, and as a result, it is nearly impossible to get ripped off by Shareware. The prices are usually lower than commercial equivalents, too, because of the reduced packaging and distribution costs. I hope people will support those Shareware products that they use, mine included! @~SM: You've also set up a company, Electric Sheep - great title! @~I'm sure you'd like to tell us some more about it ... JF: Well, no actually, I can't. You see, we're doing top secret military research into the psychological effects of computer games on the attitudes of today's youth. Well... we'd like to be, anyway. Really, Electric Sheep is currently only a small company, just two of us at the moment with a few extra people to help out on a semi-regular basis. We're interested in producing all types of games, not just text adventures, and not being locked into one particular style of game. We're also committed to producing games which are a cut above the average - I really think there are enough games being produced which suffer because they are made primarily for the money, without us adding to the heap. @~SM: What are your future plans? JF: Electric Sheep has plans for quite a number of games in the future, including a detective game with a similar layout and animation style to Flashback or Prince of Persia, and a scrolling spaceship shoot-em-up. Our current project is a pinball simulator, to rival and perhaps beat the commercial products. Eventually, we would like to have a large range of top quality products, appealing to a wide audience. Then perhaps in a few years we'll make a takeover bid for Microsoft... @~SM: Thanks very much for taking the time to do this interview. JF: My pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity. @~The new version of Multi-dimensional Thief is reviewed this @~issue and the registered version can be purchased through me - @~full details in the adverts section. The Shareware version is in @~the library. - o -