DVD Thoughts: Get Lamp
Feb. 18th, 2014 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI heard a while ago about a documentary on DVD about text adventures, featuring interviews with notable figures from the past and present of those games. Although I continue to be aware I'm interested in those games without now making the time to play them, I kept more or less daydreaming about watching the documentary until all of a sudden I checked its official site and saw it was no longer being shipped internationally. That awareness of a missed opportunity oppressed me for a while, until I checked the site again and saw I'd once more be able to get a copy. At that point, I didn't waste any time in ordering "Get Lamp." On beginning to watch the disc, though, I did sort of run up against an issue with technology constraining a storytelling experience...
I had already read on the official site that the documentary would begin with a history of interactive fiction to the end of the "commercial era" and then let you pick which of three different follow-ups to that you wanted to see. With my DVD player, though, once I'd watched the opening segment I couldn't get the following menu to work, and in dropping back to the main menu I went straight to two additional features, one an extension on the meditation of how Will Crowther's original Adventure was a simulation of an actual cave he'd helped explore and the next a dedicated history of Infocom. That might have fit in with a comment I have a recollection of noticing (although I can't remember where) that the documentary might have given too great an impression of being about a "vanished time" and not something still being developed in its own way.
It turned out my Blu-Ray player was better able to get through the menus, though, and I did manage to watch the three follow-ups, one about the experience of playing text adventures (with an edifying explanation of how they're a type of computer game the blind can enjoy), one on puzzles (some of the people interviewed like them and some of them don't) and one in the middle on the modern experience. I did sort of wish for just a bit more "history" there of how people online had started writing works that couldn't find space on the shelves today (although there's quite a bit of discussion on the thought of once more being able to earn money writing them), and from that wondered a bit about how where Will Crowther is notable for not giving interviews Graham Nelson, who reverse-engineered the "virtual machine" Infocom used to make its games cross-platform and wrote a new programming language, didn't show up in the documentary. There, too, I have to admit the impression eventually struck me there weren't many women and very few if at all any visible minorities interviewed.
With the first disc finished, I watched through a second disc of bonus features on my computer so that I could also access the DVD-ROM folder of example works. As befits bonus features, they're a collection of brief bits of footage on various topics that might have not fit into the complete documentary. All of it took a bit of working through "twisty passages," but it was good enough to remind me I could yet make more time to play the games themselves.
I had already read on the official site that the documentary would begin with a history of interactive fiction to the end of the "commercial era" and then let you pick which of three different follow-ups to that you wanted to see. With my DVD player, though, once I'd watched the opening segment I couldn't get the following menu to work, and in dropping back to the main menu I went straight to two additional features, one an extension on the meditation of how Will Crowther's original Adventure was a simulation of an actual cave he'd helped explore and the next a dedicated history of Infocom. That might have fit in with a comment I have a recollection of noticing (although I can't remember where) that the documentary might have given too great an impression of being about a "vanished time" and not something still being developed in its own way.
It turned out my Blu-Ray player was better able to get through the menus, though, and I did manage to watch the three follow-ups, one about the experience of playing text adventures (with an edifying explanation of how they're a type of computer game the blind can enjoy), one on puzzles (some of the people interviewed like them and some of them don't) and one in the middle on the modern experience. I did sort of wish for just a bit more "history" there of how people online had started writing works that couldn't find space on the shelves today (although there's quite a bit of discussion on the thought of once more being able to earn money writing them), and from that wondered a bit about how where Will Crowther is notable for not giving interviews Graham Nelson, who reverse-engineered the "virtual machine" Infocom used to make its games cross-platform and wrote a new programming language, didn't show up in the documentary. There, too, I have to admit the impression eventually struck me there weren't many women and very few if at all any visible minorities interviewed.
With the first disc finished, I watched through a second disc of bonus features on my computer so that I could also access the DVD-ROM folder of example works. As befits bonus features, they're a collection of brief bits of footage on various topics that might have not fit into the complete documentary. All of it took a bit of working through "twisty passages," but it was good enough to remind me I could yet make more time to play the games themselves.