Gamasutra Interview: Emily Short

Posted by Derek Yu Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:56:00 GMT

Gamasutra

Speaking of Interactive Fiction, Gamasutra has an interview with Emily Short, who wrote Floatpoint, a two-time winner at last year’s XYZZY Awards, and Savoire-Faire, which has won four awards, including Best Game of 2002.

The interview itself is excellent, mostly due to the thoroughness with which Emily answers questions about her design process. Not surprisingly, she’s quite adept at explaining how she sets out to create good pacing, rewarding challenges, and interesting narratives. Even though she works with IF, her methodology could easily be applied to other types of games with great success, I think.

I personally haven’t had much experience with IF other than a brief stint with Colossal Cave Adventure as a kid, followed shortly thereafter by some prepubescent amusement with the hilariously-titled and really poorly-made Madame Fifi’s Whorehouse. But after reading this interview I think I’m going to give Savoire-Faire a spin.

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Comments

  1. Radix said about 2 hours later:

    The secret is feelies.

  2. leave url/email =) said about 5 hours later:

    “Speaking of Interactive Fiction, Gamasutra has an interview with Emily Short, who wrote Floatpoint for last year’s XYZZY Awards (and won two of them),”

    I don’t think you write games for the XYZZY Awards. I think all IF-games released during 2006 were considered.

  3. Echo said about 6 hours later:

    Derek, from what I know of your style, I think you’d really like Adam Cadre’s stuff.

    http://www.adamcadre.ac/if.html

    Photopia and Varicella in particular.

  4. whitebrice said about 7 hours later:

    Yeah, if you’re just starting with if, play photopia.

  5. Derek said about 12 hours later:

    Thanks, guys! I’ll give them a spin. :)

    (Fixed the wording in my post, also.)

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