Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More

Re:Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More by sparkpeasy on Saturday February 18, 2017 @03:59AM (#13674116)

I praised Loom for its inventive simplicity, and how it avoids text towards direct interaction, and you refute that by referencing Neuromancer, a game with, in your words, a "(comparatively) complex interface."

Neuromancer is riddled with complex text interfaces for every interaction. Every choice demands a read through, along with several text selections to decide from. Here's a video of how awful it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNMdbq_Z7w

How is that more simple?

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Re:Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More by Baeocystin on Saturday February 18, 2017 @04:15AM (#13674147)

Awful? Those few minutes of example show more player agency than the entirety of Loom combined. This is not a novel criticism- it was one of the main complaints levelled against Loom when it first came out.

There's a difference between text you read, and text you have to guess at/type (ie, the find-the-synonym frustrations of Infocom games).

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Re:Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More by sparkpeasy on Saturday February 18, 2017 @04:45AM (#13674200)

Player agency in a medium without unlimited outcomes is a Choose Your Own Adventure, where the trick is done in plain sight and therefore unconvincing. Loom is just trying to tell a linear story in a convincing manner with the tools it has available, and it elevated the tools available. That's my only point.

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Re:Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More by Baeocystin on Saturday February 18, 2017 @05:09AM (#13674277)

Fair enough.

(Although speaking of Choose Your Own Adventure: http://io9.gizmodo.com/remember-inside-ufo-54-40-the-unwinna... had a fun "choice".)

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Re:Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More by coroxout on Saturday February 18, 2017 @09:01AM (#13674811)

I had that book. Very weird and trippy to my pre-teen mind.

After many, many readings, both legitimate play-throughs and cheating flip-throughs, I don't think I realised what the article points out.

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