Gamasutra Interview: Emily Short

By: Derek Yu

On: April 11th, 2007

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.

Posted in Developers, Interactive Fiction, Interviews

Radix

The secret is feelies.
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“Speaking of Interactive Fiction, Gamasutra has an interview with Emily Short, who wrote Floatpoint for last yearâ€™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.
http://www.distractionware.com Echo

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.
whitebrice

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

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

(Fixed the wording in my post, also.)