1- Jumping right in: what's your favorite work that you've done?

 

Nautilisia. I had some very specific goals for that game, and it accomplished those goals more or less completely. It means exactly what it says, if that makes any sense. It's definitely not the best game I've made, but (to me) (in a very specific artistic sense) it is perfect.

 

 

 

2- What's your favorite work of IF overall?

 

So impossible to say! But here are a few that I really love and which shaped my understanding of the medium: Curses!, which tries to do (and successfully does) everything; Afflicted, which hits numerous sweet spots of scale, tone, and the game/narrative tension; and I-0, which is really fun.

 

 

 

3- Tell us a little about your process for minimally implementing only what's important in a game. 

 

I am about to tell you more than a little.

 

When I start to do concrete work on a game, one of the first things I write down is the critical path. Not a detailed walkthrough, but the major plot beats. I guess I basically write a spec script for the game.

 

Around the same time, I draw up a map. Among other things, the map does a lot to determine the pacing of the game, so it and the plot outline have to evolve together until they work for each other.

 

When I have the map ironed out, I turn to the next page in my notebook and give a half-sheet to each room in the game. In this space I write down the details that belong in each room: stuff required by the plot outline, stuff that will make the setting more realistic, stuff that I think will be fun. Then I type all this into Inform 7, in the form of section headings for each room and comments for each room's contents. Then I implement it.

 

(Often while I'm doing the real work of describing and coding I will think of another thing that would be fun and implement it on the fly. So I'm not sure I agree with the premise of the question. I'm pretty sure all of my games have things implemented in them that aren't important?)

 

The short version of this explanation is "I write an outline first."

 

 

 

4- Regarding your podcast, Clash of the Type-Ins, how do you handle the challenge of playing text adventures over Skype while keeping it interesting?

 

The challenge of playing text adventures over Skype is interesting in itself! The format of the podcast is such that we essentially introduce a second text parser, a human text parser, who by turns eases and increases the players' difficulties, and upon whom we inflict the indignity of presenting his or her work "live" and "in person". And it's usually a game the author hasn't looked at in a while, which is always painful.

 

So I don't think we make any special effort. We just play games and gab with each other, which is an extremely interesting thing to listen to, for some people. Those people are our target audience.

 

 

 

5- You made a Seltani world, Bluedorn.  Was there any particular reason that it's a museum?  What was your inspiration for Bluedorn?

 

In my hometown there's a science museum called the Imaginarium. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, because its exhibits are mostly aimed at kids, but I still take friends there once in a great while. It's not quite the same place that I remember: It's older, and I'm older. My early memories of the Imaginarium are from the perspective of a herd of noisy first-graders, but when I've been there recently, I and my guests have been the only people around, and it's extremely quiet. I end up feeling very aware that whomever I'm with doesn't see the exhibits the same way I do.

 

The concept of Bluedorn is more or less a joke. In Seltani, in the Ages of Myst, you can visit any world you can imagine. In one of the games (or ancillary materials?), Atrus writes about carefully describing a world where dozens of heavenly bodies will careen into each other and explode in a fantastic cosmic fireworks show, and once the description is complete he's able to just go there and watch it all happen. This kind of fantasy is especially potent in the textual environment of Seltani, where description and creation really are identical. But I decided to describe a museum, in which the wonders of the universe(s) were all reduced to a more than manageable size. It is underwhelming, and there are usually popcorn crumbs on the floor.

 

 

 

6- Tell us about the stuffed animals you make.

 

I started making felt creatures during the winter of 2011-2012, when I decided to explore a new artistic medium in order to avoid working on my MA comps. Now I sell them at a local gift shop/art gallery place. 

 

My favorite kind of dolls to make are completely original characters, with only a name to give any context, that leave you completely free to imagine what kind of world this little thing came from and what adventures it’s had. This is my ideal experience, as a consumer, and I want to provide it to others. From what I’ve learned in trying to sell these things, though, most people prefer to buy a critter that already has plenty of context built in.

 

The felt I usually use is made from recycled plastic bottles. I am led to believe that more serious crafters consider it a scrub’s material, but I like it just fine.

 

 

 

7- You have an unusual narrative voice in your works.  Is this by design or by accident?

 

I was not aware that I had an unusual narrative voice in my works. So, by accident, apparently.

 

 

 

8- Does the office conflict in Someone Keeps Moving My Chair come from real life?

 

The office conflict in that game comes from the They Might Be Giants song of the same name. Most of the details in that game exist to serve as references to They Might Be Giants songs. Can you find them all???

 

 

 

9- Do you play the ukulele for your podcast?

 

I recorded all the music used in the podcast! The outro music is indeed performed on 'ukulele. There's an alternate outro (I think it's used in the first parts of two-part episodes) that is performed on guitar and melodica. It always has my voice on top of it, so you can't really hear it, but it might be my favorite. The intro is just an electric keyboard.

 

 

 

10- How is it working with Jenni Polodna?

 

Weirdly I don't think of the stuff I do with Jenni as working with her! One of us says "we should do [some type of a thing]!" and the other says "Yeah!" and then we either do that thing, and have fun, or we never get around to doing the thing. Recording a podcast is adding the merest semblance of structure to what otherwise would be understood as "goofing off."

 

Editing the podcast—syncing tracks, removing dead air and background noise—is hard work, and not fun.

 

 

 

11- Last book read:

 

My friend gave me this book The Art of Procrastination, and I have not finished reading it. That sounds like I'm making it up.

 

 

 

12- Favorite book:

 

That would be my volume of Borges’s collected fictions. I am pretty sure this is true of every IF author.

 

 

 

13- If you could be a tree, what kind of tree would it be?

 

I don't know anything about trees, but as I think about it, the prospect of being a tree strikes me as unappealing: Trees are always outside. They are stuck in one place. They are covered in insects. Being a tree would be torture.

 

 

 

14- What brought about your book, Motorcyclus?

 

In the dusk of some September evening, I happened to see a motorcycle, dramatically backlit by the setting sun. I said to my dad, "That's a spooky motorcycle." He said to me, "You should write a story about it." So I did that, and the name of the story was "Motorcyclus." The original version is still online at this URL: https://plus.google.com/+RyanVeeder/posts/9nN3ZLRmoDj Later I wrote many other horror stories, and I collected them in a book called "MOTORCYCLUS" and Other Extremely Scary Stories.

 

 

 

15- You seem to keep busy with various outlets.  Is there one that you enjoy most overall?

 

While I am working in a given medium, it (usually) seems far superior to other media to me. But after I’ve spent enough time on any one type of thing, I tend to get burnt out, and working on something else—anything else—starts to look real nice.

 

My favorite outlet, therefore, is that type of project which takes just long enough to finish that I start to burn out on the medium just as I finish it.

 

 

 

16- What do you want to be when you grow up?

 

There is a very small island in the Pacific ocean. Its interior is a lush tropical forest with only a few buildings and dirt paths. Around its coast is one long, smoothly-paved road that follows the curves of the beaches and connects the island’s handful of small towns. The road is close enough to the shore that it remains very flat, all the way around.

 

My job is to ride my bike across this island and deliver things from town to town. Sometimes I deliver messages; sometimes I deliver food. Only very rarely are the deliveries urgent, so I’m almost never in a hurry. I bike until the sun sets, which is when it starts to rain.

 

 

 

17- What first got you into the world of interactive fiction?

 

Like many text adventure fans, I started playing IF with the Infocom catalogue. My first game was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which I sought out because I liked the books so much, but that’s about as interesting as that story gets. The story of how I started writing IF is probably more unique, and definitely stupider:

 

I spent many years alternating between playing text adventures and forgetting that they existed. In June of 2011 I realized I needed an interpreter program for my new computer. The only application name I could remember was “Inform,” so I found and downloaded it without really paying attention to what it was supposed to do. When I saw that it was for writing rather than interpreting IF, I said, “Well, heck. I guess I can probably figure this out.”

 

 

 

18- What's your one big goal you'd like to accomplish?

 

I am averse to discussing large-scale specific goals in a public setting, and even to confiding them privately. It seems to me that announcing your plan greatly diminishes the odds of that plan coming to fruition. This sounds like magical thinking, but I dimly remember the theory being borne out in some sort of study or something, a few years ago, maybe.

 

My general goal is to distract people from their problems.

 

 

 

19- How will humanity end?

 

Man, why would you ask me this? This is a depressing question. I’m skipping this question.

 

 

 

20- What question did I not ask that I should have asked you?

 

I’m in no position to make pronouncements about what questions you should or shouldn’t ask. If you didn’t mind adding a mercenary undertone to the interview, you could have asked something like “If I or someone reading this wants to purchase a copy of your book of scary stories or commission a doll from you, how would I or that person go about this?”—to which the answer would be, “Go ahead and email me at rcveeder@me.com and we’ll work something out. Easy.” But whether you should have asked me such a thing is not for me to say.