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Are Parser Games Making a Comeback? (Guests: Julia Minamata, Phil Fortier, Kevin McConnell)
17 Plays1 month ago
Joined by guests Julia Minamata, Phil Fortier, and Kevin McConnell — three developers who have all recently released modern-day parser games — we delve into the simple questions: What makes the parser better or worse than typical point-and-click adventure games? And are parser games due for a comeback?
Check out Julia's game, The Crimson Diamond: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098770/The_Crimson_Diamond/
Check out Phil's games, Snail Trek: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/5818/Snail_Trek_Collection/
Check out Kevin's game, A Lively Haunt: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2567670/A_Lively_Haunt/
Originally published: Oct. 9, 2024
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Backgrounds
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Backseat Designers. I am the Space Quest Historian, which is a fancy name for a twat who runs a YouTube channel. And with me today, as always, is my lovely co-host, who has the power to induce a coma simply by talking about his favorite 70s prog-rog bands, Mr. Frederick Olsen. Hello. Hello.
00:00:51
Speaker
And with us, or at least in spirit, is a man who has been known to look up pictures of venereal diseases whenever he needs a good laugh, Dr. Gareth Millward. Now, the good doctor has an actual doctorate but is somehow unable to work his computer, so he's off rebooting at the moment and is therefore unable to come up with a pithy reply to my horrible introduction.
00:01:15
Speaker
um we We dare not waste any more time because we also have three illustrious guests in the room. um I'll just quickly introduce you and you can um correct me if I get something wrong, which I inevitably will. First of all, we have the lovely Julia Midamata who recently released The Crimson Diamond to amazing ah reception. How are you doing, Julia? I'm doing really well, thanks.
00:01:42
Speaker
Great to have you here. We also have the lovely Phil Fortier, ah who, did I pronounce that correctly? I feel like it should be French. I was going to ah commend you on your pronunciation. That was accurate. o Thank you. Phil is the creator of a number of interesting games. The released ones, so far, are apart from a few Adventure Jam games, are Snail Trek, Volume 1, 2, and 3. And he's also the co-creator, or at least, I believe, the actual creator of SCI Studio. Is that right? SCI Companion. SCI Companion. Fuck. Yeah, that's OK.
00:02:19
Speaker
I'll edit that bit out. And lastly, we have the ah very much also lovely Kevin McConnell, who created a what I believe is the first ever hot seed multiplayer parser adventure game. Kevin McConnell, how are you doing? Hello, thank you. It's an honor to be here.
00:02:41
Speaker
ah That honor will quickly diminish as we go on, I think. you um And we are very happy to see that our friend with the doctorate, Gareth, has joined us. How are you doing? I'm doing very well, if you can hear me. We can, unfortunately. I can hear.
00:03:01
Speaker
um And oh, I should probably mention that Kevin's game is called A Lively Haunt. And it certainly did haunt me within the first 20 seconds of the opening, where a faceless woman walked by in the forest and then mauled me to death. So thank you very much for that. Thank you.
00:03:20
Speaker
um And of course, if you if anyone's listening to this, you can of course look in the video description to find these lovely people's games and please go and play them. They are fantastic, all of them.
What is a Parser Game?
00:03:33
Speaker
um I thought we'd kick off this episode with a quick rundown of what a parser game actually is, because we will be spending the next hour talking about parser games and their potential resurgence in the inventory game sphere. So I've asked our good doctor if he can come up with a short but enlightening description of what is a parser game.
00:03:57
Speaker
I can because as I was traveling home on the train today, my wife asked, oh, what are you going to be talking about on the podcast? And I said, pass the games. And she said, what the hell is that? So um in in essence, it is the way of interacting with the game world when you're doing an adventure game instead of doing the usual I say usual for certain generations become usual point and click things with icons and various other things you actually type out the commands that you want your player to do so and if you want to look at a vase or something you type in look vase
00:04:30
Speaker
and it will then give you a description of the vase. One of the advantages of course of this as we'll get on to in a minute is that you can create very rich worlds and you kind of end up being in a kind of a dialogue with the game. You're sort of typing commands and it's giving you feedback and you have to try and then ask questions that are based on the feedback that you get.
00:04:47
Speaker
and But I think as we'll get on to one of the real problems of that is that that requires an awful lot of writing and having to guess what your players are likely to try and do in any environment that you create. So that is in essence a parser game.
00:05:02
Speaker
Thank you very much for that. I also love that because it is ah mostly a text-based interaction, it will not scold you for incorrectly pronouncing the word vase.
00:05:15
Speaker
um so i That depends on which side of the Atlantic you're on, I believe. I was going to say, I could have chosen a better word that is absolutely fair. I just i just love you went with ah with a vase and not any other household object imaginable. ah Are you currently staring?
00:05:33
Speaker
um um had At a vase in ah in a sort of seductive manner. Well, he's staring at the vase. Oh Yeah, I have nothing to ah Contribute. No, he is pantsless at the moment. Anyway, I thought um we'd get a quick roundtable going with our three illustrious guests because I want to get the boring question out of the way first and So all of our three guests have released games that use the parser interface in this modern era of ours that, as Gareth said, involves usual you know interactions with the mouse and pointing and clicking on stuff when you
Why Create Modern Parser Games?
00:06:11
Speaker
play an adventure game. But these three ah lovely people have released parser games in the modern area. So I quickly want to ask each of you, ah perhaps starting with Julia, what on Earth possessed you to release a modern game with a parser interface?
00:06:25
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, yeah. ah Why did I do it? I did it because I i think it's more fun to to play games where you need to work a little bit more for that payoff, you know? um Yeah, it's funny to think about back in like the late 80s, early 90s, when it was text parsing, we moved on to the pointy click more pointy clicky type of game. And I was kind of considered ah a technological advancement that we still be very excited about.
00:06:52
Speaker
And it was cool in everything and everything. And I think for a lot of reasons, it can be definitely a more approachable style of a venture game. But I never thought of it as an advancement over the text parser, just something different or just a response to what we could now do. But I have always found that the text parser has been much more immersive for me. It it requires the player to engage more with what they're looking at, what they're seeing, and and and even conversations with other characters. You really have to pay attention to what you wanna ask you have to be there's more purpose is more intent and in all your interactions with the game and that is why i decided to make a text person game i just immediately thought about it because not only was it my favorite type of thing but it's really not something we tend to see very much anymore unfortunately.
00:07:39
Speaker
No, that's true. it's it's kind of ah Back in the early 90s, it sort of became passé in a way when when we started doing point-and-click games, and we sort of forgot all about them for for a couple of decades. um Yes, ah Phil, you released three snail trek games and have been working on a lot of other games. What attracts you to a partial game versus a point-and-click game?
00:08:04
Speaker
um i mean I think originally it was kind of a nostalgic thing because those were the games I started on like when I was a kid. um and I think they they give you the illusion the illusion of more freedom for the player. I say illusion because you still have to you know there's a You have to anticipate what the player is going to type, obviously. But um it's kind of it's almost like the interface, what you can do in the game is hidden and that provides a more interesting player experience for me because part of the game is figuring out what you can do.
00:08:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. In in a sense, with point-and-click games, you are limited to what the interaction icons represent, which i I have words about, but I'll save them for later, whereas the parser games perhaps have a lot more freedom at the expense of, you know, as the designer having to figure out what your players might actually do.
00:09:05
Speaker
um Once again, I'm rambling. ah Kevin, you also released a parser game, of course, and in and even one that has a two-player mode. And um I really want to know, what first of all, what attracts you to parser games, but also how you came up with the idea of a hot seat multiplayer parser game.
00:09:25
Speaker
Okay, well, so I like feel I guess a big part of it is just like flat out nostalgia and I can i can admit that that's just but part of it. But also I feel like back in the sort of the mid to late 80s, there was like a physicality to some of those old adventure games that like Like over time in the 90s with the point and click, I feel like there was almost kind of like a ah distancing, if you know what I mean? Like even just something like you're moving your character around, you you click, you know, go over here and he would sort of, he or she would sort of walk themselves over there versus, you know, i just moving your character around as, you know, I'm sure trolls can attest to having navigated the the, you know, the vine monster from Space Quest 2.
00:10:07
Speaker
multiple times. There's just something about that and like typing in what you want to do. and Also just like the old games used to have like a very short sort of intro and then they just sort of released you into the world, you know, like go have an adventure versus like a lot of later games that you spend a lot of times watching cutscenes or navigating dialogue trees. So I just kind of wanted to sort of recapture that like that physicality that the older ones had.
00:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, and in a sort of visceral sense. And I'm not just talking about the faceless woman who looks at you from by the forest, but a more sort of visceral, visceral, sorry, um interaction with the game environment. Yeah, exactly. But probably also kind of like a literary experience, because, you know, obviously, before the before sierra really started adding graphics into the mix with like mystery house first and then a couple of other other titles in the watershed that was king's quest that was kind of you know it the the easiest quote-unquote type of adventure game back in the day would literally be like taking a novel reading through it and translating that into a format where you could you know basically
00:11:14
Speaker
program in the whole story and the player would just have to you know basically have read the novel or guess what to do next and that that would be that would be your gameplay it's lucky ah if okay you you encounter an ogre if you want to fight him turn to page 62 if you want to ravage him sensually turn to page 72 more or less basically yeah choose your own adventure But of course with a computer you've got plenty of pages so if you can think of every possible scenario of what you could do with the ogre you can make a really rich experience for the player as well as for the author. Or just use the goat to kick him off the bridge, that's fine.
00:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, but let's let's ah let's let's have a little introspective moment because, as Gareth mentioned in his pithy introduction, writing a parser game involves not only a lot of clairvoyance as to what your players might expect, but also involves a lot of heavy lifting in terms of writing.
00:12:09
Speaker
so um in in terms of anticipating player input and the amount of responses that needs, do any of you have any certain tricks that you use or are you just really good at reading people and anticipating their actions? Anyone can jump in on this one.
Importance of Playtesting
00:12:27
Speaker
I think play testing is very important. Like the times I've been at a you know small, what do you call it?
00:12:36
Speaker
game where were you show your game off. um Those hours have been so useful to ah to see what players do, right? um And so play testing frequently is is really important.
00:12:54
Speaker
Yeah. um i ah My mind just went a million places when you go, Oh, what's that thing? Um, I'm sorry. I will not, I will not suggest any of that. Have you, ah which surprises have you, you know, encountered when you've done that? Because now I'm curious.
00:13:10
Speaker
Well, um i can't like um I guess I'm talking about two things. I'm talking about like the general interface to the game, and then also specific story-related stuff. I can't remember any specific story-related stuff. But one of the biggest things I found when I first placed my game with a large group of people is that, I don't know if you know remember in the old Sierra games, when you typed look, it didn't know where you were on the screen. It didn't have context. And it would just give you a general description of the room, but I found people, especially those who hadn't played those old games, when they typed look, they expected a description of what was ever what was in front of the current, of the player character. So if they were standing in front of a table, they would expect a description of the table. Wow. Now I feel old. Yeah. and so So that's one of the things I ended up putting into my engine was like context of where you are in the room and what's directly in, you know, eyesight of the player.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, I want to get back to the the innovations that you put into the parts of it really quickly I want to ask up Julie and Kevin the same question I mean Julian in terms of anticipating player of reactions as far as play testing in the amount of writing that you had to do how.
Cultural Differences in Game Design
00:14:29
Speaker
How long did that take you and and what sort of considerations did you have to go with? This is your first game, incidentally, as far as I know anyway. yeah so so Yeah, it is. There must have been ah like a sort of steep learning curve going on. Oh, yes. Yeah, year's worth of learning curve. Yes, very sometimes very steep, sometimes very gentle. But as Phil mentioned, going to events and showcasing a game is really, really, really helpful. And related to that is Twitch streaming, watching people play the demo and then now that the game is launched, watching people play the game on Twitch is really educational because what you get is you get people, ah well, for the most part, they tend to be people who do have a nostalgia for this style of game, text person games, you know, 30 years ago, something like that. Retro Twitch stream is a really wonderful community. But there also have been kind of what like younger mystery streamers that have been playing it as well, who this is there for whom this is their first text parser game. And it's wonderful to watch them play it as well and then see yeah where people get stuck, the types of words that they use. um Also, what's great about Twitch is because it's it's kind of like an international community, you get
00:15:35
Speaker
something, you know, we might call something ah a waste paper basket or a trash can in North America. They might call it a bin, you know, in the UK or something. That type of thing. Like, there was actually, I got some feedback, I was using the word vest. And apparently in the UK, I don't know what vest means in the UK, but it doesn't mean what the same thing is North America. And I added a waistcoat into this into the the the parks or dictionary based on some feedback I got from a British person about what what that item of clothing is supposed to be. This is why Canadians are the best.
00:16:05
Speaker
What is a vest? Okay, yes, Gareth, what is a vest to a British person? A vest would be something that you'd wear under a shirt, you know, when you when you're cold. um So um I believe a classic example would be what the Americans call a wife beater. That's what we call a vest. Oh, okay, like an undershirt is what we call it in North America. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. See, I didn't know that. I have to say I prefer the UK version. The other one has a few horrible connotations. Yeah, I said that far too casually, didn't I? I'm very, very sorry. think I think undershirt would be the yeah appropriate term for that, maybe. Yeah, undershirt. I've learned something new today. I had no idea Vesta had a different meaning in the UK.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, that that type of thing. Yeah, ah so having an international community of like retro streamers or new mystery streamer people play it has been really great to the of course the testing and Yeah, that's how that's how a lot of the synonyms get generated for me is also people sending feedback and saying well I think this word should work and I'm like I usually say yeah We'll do that because adventure game studio, which is the engine that I use for my game is has a built-in text parser in it, and it's really easy to use. I just need to add a synonym to the dictionary, and there we go. I'm happy to do that because i i I think we all understand that we're asking a lot from the player when we have a text parser, and that's why we all have our own little tricks about how to make that a little bit easier.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah, and i I do want to get back to your point as well because you do have two filthy second languagers in in the chat right now and there's some language barriers there that are very interesting to talk about. um But I just want to hear from Kevin because not only is your game retro-inspired naturally. It also has two text parsers in it. So you have to contend with two players who may each have a different way of playing adventure game. One might be seasoned, another might. Someone is drowning in the chat. Yeah, I didn't think that would be so loud. I thought I was pouring more tea into my cup, and I didn't realize it would be that loud. And I was just thinking, I hope they don't think I'm in the washroom or something. No, that's fine. No, no Gareth is the one in the wind tunnel.
00:18:12
Speaker
um We have some... Never mind. Yeah, Kevin, you might have two players playing your game, but one might be a seasoned veteran, the other one might be a newcomer. How do you balance those two?
00:18:25
Speaker
Well, I didn't really playtest mine a lot much at all, which is maybe one of one of the many mistakes I made. I just i guess I playtested it myself, basically. But i so I tried to spend a lot of time, every time I made a new like so screen or whatever you want to call it, I spent a lot of time just kind of screwing around, walking around, looking and just thinking, you know if I was playing this myself, what would I try? And then I would just sort of write those in.
00:18:50
Speaker
um But yeah, so I didn't really go through any actual like play testing as such. since Basically, I didn't give a shit. um a lot A lot of the mistakes of my game, you could just shock up to like, yeah, like straight up laziness. It's it's amazing it came together as well as it did. um Thank you.
00:19:12
Speaker
Before I completely take over the proceedings here, i um I'm wondering if my co-hosts have any questions about what we just heard? I do actually, because I, you know, ah going into this episode, I had a kind of a thought. Now this this comes after checking out your games as well as I could, which frankly wasn't as much as I would like to. um But there was this point about how the parser allows you to interface with the game world. And I would i would probably call the parser a proactive interface because you have to form a thought that you put into words and see how the game responds. But something I noted that's very interesting about your snail trick games, Phil, is that you implemented predictive text not unlike what you get in basically any modern messaging amp.
00:20:04
Speaker
So at that point in my view the parser becomes reactive because now you're you're maybe forming a thought but the game might actually take you elsewhere while you're typing. So I would be very curious as to what led you down that road. you know why did you Why did you go for that specific quality of life improvement and what do you think it adds to the gaming experience?
00:20:28
Speaker
um Well, I mean, i just typing is tedious because autocomplete is ubiquitous everywhere now, so I figured it made sense. I don't i don't know if it ends up spoiling it because you... i you know you might realize the game does not want you to type in a specific word because it's always changing it to something else. um Is that what you found when playing it? I mean, i don't I don't want to infer it's something negative, but it was just you know that's interesting because now you have a parser that can sort of stop you and lead you down a different path before you
00:21:08
Speaker
you you know exactly what you're trying to do. you know And i I don't think it's a negative, but I just think it's a very interesting evolution of something that just kind of stopped dead in its tracks in the ah early 90s when it was like implemented in one specific way where you, you know like you said, had to type out every goddamn letter of Rumpelstiltskin's wrongly typed name.
Innovations in Parser Games
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't intended to lead the player down a path. It was more just to make it more streamlined and quicker to use. Because i'm and I'm very impatient. I see we have a hand raised from Gareth.
00:21:51
Speaker
I just thought that would be seamless, but then you drew attention to the hand controls and now it's not seamless. I was interested in the laziness aspect of it, actually, that the the idea of the of responding to play testing and things like that. I know it's not always particularly easy to do,
00:22:09
Speaker
But can you imagine a scenario where you had like keystrokes or the sorts of words that people were using recorded and then sent back to you as that kind of, you know, that sort of, we're requesting your data to help make our games better ah type thing. Getting that data back and then sort of updating the game as it goes once you realize that there are certain things that people are doing with your game that you didn't necessarily expect them to do in the first place, but now that you've got people playing the game that you can ah react to.
00:22:39
Speaker
I mean, I've done that when I've demoed the game at events. I record everything. Some very interesting things people end up typing, let me tell you. Well, since I'm already calling attention to the whole hand waving system we've got here, and Julia. Pick me, teacher. Yes, OK. Yeah, going into that part, I do have a parser log in my game that actually defaults to being off. So it's really not that useful.
00:23:04
Speaker
But there is one where if you enter a command into the dictionary that ist into the game that is not recognized by the dictionary, it will put it like in a text file that you can then send to me if you wish. But no one has and that's totally fine. But I'm just proud that I was able to figure out how to do that because I'm i'm not necessarily like a prize as good of a programmer as Phil is. But yeah, that that's something I did add into my game as an ah in an effort to catch people's you know way they try to play the game and their synonyms and things like that.
00:23:31
Speaker
um But also going back to just the fact that typing can be a little bit tedious. I think wasn't a police quest game or something where you could do like text pressure shortcuts like open door could be OD and things like that.
00:23:44
Speaker
Oh, yeah, there were there are hotkeys. The F keys were hotkeys. And I think it was Police Quest 1 where you could just and type a single letter and it would default to something. yeah yeah and And also what what you're mentioning about the the ah the text file that logs your input. Al Lowe actually did that with the first Least You See with Larry game, which was frankly brilliant I think. um So that's ah that's that's quite interesting. um Frederick has his digital hand up somewhere. Yeah, yeah well now it's it's it's just because we started talking about these Sierra Legends and that's just my curiosity because Julia, you obviously got to meet up with Roberta Williams, the Roberta Williams at the Adventure Game Fan Fair.
00:24:24
Speaker
Did you guys share any thoughts about this particular kind of interface or so you know way to tell a story and and in an adventure game? Not really. We didn't really have a lot of time to like sit and chat. But I did send her like the demo and then later a key to the game. And she said she'd play it a little bit and write me a little blurb for my Steam store page, which she did indeed do. That's nice. And what i what I love, actually, is in in and she she actually emailed me about it. And she said she asked me, and I'm not going to answer this because I don't want to do spoilers for my game quite yet. But she asked me if there are any murders in my game. And and she was looking she was googling my game pretty hard, she said. And she couldn't find anything. which
00:25:05
Speaker
I was very pleased about it at the time because I'd kept a real tight lid on you know the story details and everything. But I did tell Roberta Williams um what what went on in my game um before anybody else, except for my testers they knew. But yeah, um that's that's as far as we got with with in terms of talking about what was actually in the game. But yes, it just of course, it tickles me pink to think that that she played a little bit of my game.
00:25:27
Speaker
That's lovely. And I just love the fact that the Roberta Williams, the the queen of adventure game, ah inventor of the graphic adventure game says, ah thank you so much for your for your game. I've played a little bit of it. Now, give me the juice. Where are the murders? Where's the gore? that's The dark side of Roberta Williams.
00:25:44
Speaker
ah she's she's She's killed us all multiple times. This is like, this is just how Roberta Williams is. There is no dark side. She she enjoys pushing us downstairs and whatnot. She's she's just a lovely person. I was lucky enough to meet her at at Adventure Game Fanfare as well. She's just a lovely, lovely person. Great to chat to. An absolute sadist when it comes to game design. Back then I believe the term was replay value.
00:26:12
Speaker
um i kind I kind of want to ask Phil about, because Fred briefly mentioned the whole predictive text. And one of the things that really impressed me about Phil's engine that powers the snail trade games and other games that he's made ah is you know all the quality of life improvements that you did to the text parser to make it more accessible to newcomers. And it's not just ah predictive text, it's also spell checking. And it's also there's there's a lot of stuff going on there.
00:26:39
Speaker
did you like ah like academically or like surgically pick a part because because you're you're very much a part of the you know Sierra programming um community SEI companion not studio um so so obviously you have a lot of experience with Sierra games did you did you like look at the old Sierra games and go that's a bit fucked up I think I can help with that um Yeah, it was just kind of like playtesting and seeing the friction points or the, you know, the frustration that players had and I just kind of one by one tried to tackle them. um I didn't really have to change the underlying parser implementation. It's kind of done at a higher level.
00:27:25
Speaker
I don't know if that's what you're and asking. Well, I just think of of of of the three we have here, all all of Esteemed's people. yours your Your parser interface is the one that I would say leans the most into making it as comfortable and as user-friendly as possible for people who don't have prior experience with parser games.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I did have a long time to work on it. I still have a large game that I still haven't released that I've been working on for 10 years. um So I have had a long time to you know fine tune it. Oh, OK. Thank you for clarifying that.
00:28:06
Speaker
um I guess i guess ah a similar question to Julia is, what steps did you take to ease new content? You said Twitch streaming was was very important, but that's sort of an after the fact ah kind of thing. You can go back and fix ah fix certain stuff. What steps did you take to ease people who are used to point and click adventure games or may not even be into adventure games at all and to to ease them into the world of parser games?
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mentioned earlier the keyboard shortcuts. I do i do utilize ah ah some keyboard shortcuts for the most commonly used um commands, such as, and you know you can for look, you can do L, or you can do control L, or ask about control A, or you could do A space AB, and then whatever you'd like to put on.
00:28:54
Speaker
That type of thing where not only does it help You know the players but actually helped me also when I'm testing the game and I'm entering commands and over and over again um Also, additionally speaking of um streamers and things um specifically there's a speedy adventure community Which has been very helpful. They they've been running the Crimson Diamond and i've I've heard that the record for playing the full game You know, whatever percent completion is like five minutes and something really shit I know. i was I was actually shocked to hear that. But that's great. And what's great about them is, yeah, if you want some people to play your game over and over repetitively.
00:29:28
Speaker
um Those are the ones where you're going to look at, and they're going to find those friction points as well. The friction points you know really quick, and and they're going to be the ones who are going to be able to tell you, this you know I was able to phase into this building before you know the objective was completed, stuff like that. But also stuff like um the text parser, like the commands. I didn't have a ah text parser shortcut for taking things, and that's something you have to do in the game. and and i've I have implemented that in a later update, and that certainly helped me play my own game and test my own game. Then it helps the players too, and it it makes it a bit of a more comfortable,
00:29:58
Speaker
um situation. But at the same time, i knowing that the text parser is already a friction point that we're kind of, you know, leading with, there are all these attempts at making that a little, you know, everything else you try to make a little bit easier, to the point of when I launch the game, you can actually go into the main menu and there is a a link you can click that opens up your browser for for a full hint book.
00:30:19
Speaker
of Like a you you know you are you a universal hand system style hint book? With step wise hints and everything because if you're stuck if you truly are stuck in the game You're not sure you might have the right idea of what you want to do But you might not know the exact you you know command or or kinds of commands you might need to implement it's gonna hopefully tell you like actual commands to help you to get through whatever you're stuck on and then you know you can continue enjoying the game and um Knowing that text bar series is kind of a big ask for people, especially nowadays. I did want to have that. I didn't want people to get stuck in the game, get frustrated, and then just give up. That's a really good idea. Fred. Yeah, I mean, now we're on the serious side of parsers right now, but something that I've always felt that the parser always did great was like comedy, because you can get an unexpected response from something you don't expect. Oh yeah, the aside, yeah.
00:31:10
Speaker
I actually have a really good example because I was replaying Space Quest 2 recently and at one point in Bohol's asteroid fortress, the final part of the game, I got really frustrated and started noticing all these security cameras in the background that I just wrote moon camera. And unexpectedly, instead of going, I don't understand moon, can you try again? The game basically goes to paraphrase and that's your IQ test over with. Thank you for playing. it actually this Nearly, I guess 40 year old game soon actually got a genuine belly laugh out of me because that was so expected. So I want to ask you ah people in the chat with us that have, you know, you don't necessarily have to spoil your games, but has this entered your thoughts, you know, this, ah this idea of getting a laugh out of the player by doing something unexpected in response to something they type?
00:32:06
Speaker
And anyone can grab that. and i don't I'm not asking anyone specific. I'll edit out the silence. I mean, I can't remember any ah specific instance. This is definitely something I tried to do, but I can't remember any specific ones at this time. I have a few that um because I felt like my game took ages to make, I've written stuff in the game and then forgot that I wrote it. And sometimes when I watch someone stream the game and they try something, i think, oh, that's a good idea. I wish I wrote something for that. And there actually is a response. And we both get surprised. And we both have like an enjoyable time watching that. ah one of them There's a couple things. One of them is there are some candlesticks on the dining room table. And if you you can try to blow out the candles. And it says that it's not your birthday. You can't blow those out.
00:32:53
Speaker
um But someone suggested, I really would love to do, I don't think I'm going to do this, but it would be funny that if I had, I don't know, Nancy does not have a canonical birthday. But if she did, and you know the player's computer was on that birthday, maybe I would let her blow them out and you could get a steam achievement or something. um That type of thing. But yeah, I mean, just when someone tried to blow out candles, I didn't remember if I'd written anything. And I probably wrote something like five years ago for that. And I was just like, oh my gosh, I did do something for that. That's lovely. um there's also There's also a pair of of pens in the study on the table.
00:33:21
Speaker
They're supposed to be just for display only. You could try to take one of the pens, and it says, why you wouldn't want to break up the set of these lovely pens. And then if you try to take both pens, it says, you think you're so smart, well, you can't have either of those pens.
00:33:32
Speaker
um it's it's It's so much fun to to write stuff like that. It is. ah One of the things i we've been talking about is yeah the strength of parser games versus point-and-click games. And one of the things is that you're not limited to the interactions that are predefined in a point-and-click game. um Like you said, you're you're forming a sentence based on what you would expect your character to do in kind of sort of a role-playing situation. and And I don't mean a sex tension role-play. I mean like an actual role-playing game kind of thing.
00:34:03
Speaker
um like That got awkward in a hurry, I know. Yeah, try editing out that silence. the i um No, because I'm just going to keep talking. ah so ah ah One of the things I'm ah i'm really interested in is with you Fred, you mentioned Space Quest 2. Stuff like having to take a deep breath before diving under the water. oh yeah um ah Stuff like in in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where you have to instruct the parser to look at a room three times before the parser actually goes, all right, I'll describe you in the room. But it's actually very dangerous. That's why I didn't want to tell you. Stuff like where you're having an actual conversation with the computer instead of just you know clicking around and seeing what happens.
00:34:46
Speaker
um Did you guys approach your game designs in terms of your standard adventure games? You're going to look, you're going to pick up, you're going to talk to? or Or did you try to put in some more conversationalist ah puzzles? i think and We haven't really heard from Kevin in a while. Let's throw that one to Kevin.
00:35:03
Speaker
Okay. Well, unfortunately, cynically, ah no I have to admit, I kind of explicitly didn't spend a lot of time on sort of like optional little hidden phrases or anything like that, just because you it takes so long to make a game. I think it took me like four years to make mine. ah Julia, I think maybe took like six years. I don't know how long Snail Track took Phil. Well, they're very short, so they didn't take that long.
00:35:29
Speaker
but But altogether, it must have taken it a while. But theyre the other one I'm working on is 10 years going, it's still not done. Wow. So well so you know just you're spending years on this. So i kind of at one point, I just decided I'm going to have to just basically just work on the the main functionality of the game. And kind of like if there's anything extra and I find time to fit in anything, little Easter eggs, that's fine. But the vast majority of the time was spent basically just on the the main functionality of the game.
00:35:57
Speaker
Oh, yeah, but I was I was thinking more in terms of some of the actual puzzles, like, for instance, we did a little playthrough of of your game on on my channel and ah we had several people playing it at the same time. And I was the only one. Yeah, sorry about that. it's okay I was the only one who figured out how to.
00:36:15
Speaker
get through the gate. yeah get through the gate um i know I was sitting there ringing my own neck because I'm like, I should have thought of other ways to say it. ah It seemed like, what was it? Like china climb? Someone put it like climb through gate.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was me. I wrote, because you're supposed to climb through a gate, you're supposed to squeeze through the bar. I think it was the lady, the lady lady there. she was She was like, climb through gate. And I'm like, that makes sense. And then it didn't work. And I thought, oh, my God, like I didn't put because it really should work. But I just I didn't think ahead that far that someone would try to climb through the gate versus, you know, squeeze through the gate.
00:36:50
Speaker
Ah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, so climb in in the internal parser it means scaling something. but But I thought that was interesting because normally with a point-and-click interface, you just click the hand icon on it and the character would squeeze through the gate. And here you have to specifically instruct the character to climb or or or to to squeeze through the bars instead of just climb gate.
00:37:11
Speaker
um So so that's that's the sort of thing I was i was sort of fishing for. It's like instances where you have to construct your sentence in a sort of natural language and instead of just sticking to your usual look, get, talk to sort of verbs. I think Gareth has a comment. it Just passing the ball. Fuck it.
00:37:30
Speaker
ah Sorry, i was I was waiting for our illustrious chair, Mr. Plina, to help that out. Now, when you were talking about using the correct verb, it immediately made me think of Patina, who is now a recurring character on this podcast. You're a prosthetic Sam technician. Exactly, yeah, and and and trying to remember the the exact um direct translation of verbs from English to Danish and and very much struggling with
Language Barriers in Gaming
00:37:56
Speaker
that.
00:37:56
Speaker
But I know, Charles, that you used um the parsers from the early space quest is ah partially as a way of learning English. And I guess that's one of the things that kind of comes from this. We've already kind of half and talked about you know the pronunciation of the word vase or or the way the word vest changes depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on.
00:38:16
Speaker
There is something definitely here about language that is very, very tricky to overcome, but is also one of the real strengths, I think, of the parser is that you really have to get into the you have to kind of get into the head of the person that is ah that that is that has written the game. So it it seems a lot more intimate, but then you've got this kind of language issue that you need to get across as well.
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's an interesting point. Fred, i'll I'll get to you in a second, but but i I'm actually interested to hear what our guests have to say about that, because regardless of how international you try to make your game, ah first of all, they're 99% of the time, they're in English. And second of all, you always have this sort of cultural, I was going to say bias, but that's that sounds a bit harsh, but you always you know you you're brought up in knowing that words have a certain meaning and there's there's like cultural mores and manners that that you're here to ah say for instead of like you know playing a Japanese ah RPG game where you know the manners are entirely different something you do couldn't you know potentially offend someone hideously which would be perfectly normal in another cultural setting.
00:39:26
Speaker
um So, I mean, it's it would be interesting to hear what what other challenges you you guys have faced in in terms of, oh, this actually means something else, or there's ah this this this thing is too, I don't know, Americanized. The classic example is, you know, when it when it rains, you have if you wash your car, it rains. There's that puzzle in Day of the Tentacle or the Monkey Wrench in Monkey Island too, that sort of thing, where you go, oh, this might be a bit too local in a way.
00:39:56
Speaker
Was that too rambly? I don't think they'd end on the note of a question that is. It well was a very long-winded statement that seemed to be to want to culminate in the question, but people are waiting for the question trolls. OK, so the the question is, have you have you encountered any situations in your game design where you went, OK, that might not actually translate well to people who don't speak English very well or who are not North American?
00:40:24
Speaker
I can't think of any, but I know if you're writing about something that is like in a specific domain, like maybe in Julia's game, she knows a lot about mineralogy and stuff, but maybe the common layperson doesn't, and you have to be careful to not... um to make your game playable by the layperson, I guess. CascadiaQuest, my 10-year ongoing game, had a lot of mountaineering-specific terms early on. And I had to remove a lot of that because regular people just did not understand names for things. But it wasn't so much of cultural differences as like ah you know expertise in a particular domain differences.
00:41:13
Speaker
more more of a technical thing like as opposed to police quest, which has you like having one eye on the manual ever at every turn ah to to know exactly what you're supposed to do. I mean, it's a sobering reminder that we are in a more globalized world, you know for better or for worse. But certainly in this context, I would argue that it's for the better because it's very hard to you know paint ourselves into those corners where we wind up with something so integral to the design that is so rooted in an idiom that 90% of you know that the rest of the world won't get. um and It segues nicely into the reason I raised my hand which um
00:41:53
Speaker
which also kind of no no no you didn't you just you were hoping i'd forgotten um yeah yeah that's true basically 98% of the time that would happen another kind of pitfall of course is the design wise pitfall where probably the most infamous phrase in any Sierra game is the classic you can't do that at least not now because that puts you on this wild goose chase where you think okay i'm on to something here i just can't do it right now And this is reading the designer's mind. Yeah, exactly. And this is another one of those open questions. But I do feel like since the Crimson Diamond ah is so heavily influenced by the style of a game like The Colonel's Bequest, I kind of want to ask Julia um how that influenced your design
Designing Satisfying Endings
00:42:43
Speaker
process. did How did you try to avoid this kind of pitfall? you know or Or didn't you try to avoid this kind of pitfall?
00:42:53
Speaker
the kind of shut the fuck up game, let me get on with it pitfall. Yeah, well, so one of the reasons that I love The Colonel's request so much is not even it's beyond even what it looks like and beyond the genre of it being a mystery, but this idea that was, I guess, you know, revolutionary at the time that Roberta Williams wanted to kind of modernize the design of adventure games, which meant you could stumble through and get an ending, you you know, she was that one.
00:43:19
Speaker
other I don't know if there's softlocks in the Chronos book quest, but at the very least there are much you know much fewer, if there are any, than in most other Sierra games ah up until that point. And I thought about that a lot when I was making my game, because as I mentioned earlier, I want people to get to the ending, to get an ending.
00:43:38
Speaker
And that was really important to me because nowadays there's this idea that we have we have so many games competing for for our attentions and that you just need to keep people's attention and make that easy for them and and make it intriguing for them to get to to get to an ending. And make it a good one too because a lot of times people will play a game once. You're lucky if they will want to replay your game. And I did try to design my game to encourage replayability, but I understood that probably for most people they're only going to play through once and I want them to come away from that with a good experience and what that meant was at the end the way I designed the ending for my game is there were two major endings there's a kind of like a good ending and a bad ending I mean they're not explicitly called that but I mean there's sad music in one and happier music in the other so I suppose
00:44:23
Speaker
It's implied pretty heavily, but you the choice between getting either of those endings has very it has nothing to do with how the player actually played the game. It it has nothing to do with you know what conversations they managed to hear or what they managed to learn about the game or or any of the goals.
00:44:38
Speaker
As long as I kind of went through the game, there's a yes or no answer that you get to answer in in the last chapter. And if you you know if you choose the good ending, then you'll get the good ending. And that was important to me because I did want people to enjoy their experience with this parser game that has been asking so much of them. and But yeah, it was it was just like I want that to be a positive experience one way or the other, um especially knowing that you know I stream on Twitch and I stream old old adventure games and just seeing you know how those tend to be designed. like they tends to be By the time you get to the ending of a lot of these old games, it just kind of ends really abruptly and that kicks you out into DOS. It's just congratulations, you won and here's the DOS prompt again. um You know, that type of thing. I did want there to be like this denouement. I wanted there to be some satisfaction and some like feedback about how the player did as well. and ah So yeah, in kind of both ways in terms of um
00:45:28
Speaker
how I approached making making my game, I wanted to... I looked at Colonel's Book Quest for things that I did very much enjoy, especially the way that the actual game design was handled, but also thinking about other old adventure games and what I didn't care so much about them and and what I wanted to to improve upon for the benefit of like three decades of of game design experience. Oh, very interesting. i ah One thing that... We haven't really touched upon yet. was it but we've We've been talking about it, and we've been sort of skirting around it a bit, is that ah parser games tend to have a retro feel to them. um we Of course, the adventure game genre started out with text, and and we still have a very healthy interactive fiction community that are still developing but text parser games in the in the style of Infocom and such. But your games, all three of you, are
00:46:21
Speaker
Produced in this modern era for a modern audience and they still have kind of a retro feel but the The topic of this podcast was actually supposed to be I don't know where we're at right now But it was supposed to be our parser games going to make some sort of resurgence some sort of comeback um where they unfairly shoved the side when we went into point and click and everyone just assumed a point and click adventure game is an adventure game.
Resurgence of Parser Games
00:46:50
Speaker
um is is this um is Is this something you see could be used ah not just as a retro game in the style of old Sierra games so or what have you, but implemented in in a modern and adventure game or even just a modern ah game of any genre?
00:47:11
Speaker
I'm so bad at asking questions. big I mean, I can say some things. I don't know. anything really I guess I thought I've been having lately is that I'm a little worried like my parser games, like at their core, it's basically do thing with object or like verb on object, right? Like the sentences.
00:47:34
Speaker
It can't be that complex, but now with the advent of AI and chat GPT and stuff, I feel I'm worried that people are getting used to computers actually being able to understand complex sentences and paragraphs. And I'm wondering how that will affect how they play these types of parser games if their expectations will be different.
00:47:58
Speaker
And I'm wondering if I should have released my game a few years ago before this. Is it something that you're kind of perhaps looking to to exploit, though? Because it it seems like something that could be interesting. That's actually also a thought that I had ah before we started recording. So it's interesting. You should mention this. If you could somehow implement some sort of neural network-based approach to the parser into it,
00:48:27
Speaker
then you you would have something that's um you know completely different, responds in a completely different way, maybe based entirely on the way the player addresses the parser and and just you know is maybe able to, within a certain framework, make up stuff on the fly about the game environment, you know descriptions that the programmer didn't actually think of.
00:48:53
Speaker
you know i think With the advent of AI, we could be looking into an era where parser games suddenly become a lot more attractive because now you can do with them what was only really hinted at in in the 1980s. And that's not really a question. That's kind of like maybe a thought. you know I don't know if that can be the the springboard for any kind of discussion because AI also certainly does have its pitfalls. but you know i ah that Yeah, i would I would absolutely hate that, to be honest. I think it would take it would take away the whole point of of writing a game in the same way it would take away the point of writing a novel or or or doing a piece of art. I mean, but I see the attraction, especially maybe with some of the more kind of
00:49:37
Speaker
and generic kind of prompts of basically I'm sorry you can't do that kind of thing maybe you could get a few more interesting interactions with or at least sort of interesting seeming interactions but for me the entire point of a game like this is that you are in dialogue with the author and it's meant to have some kind of art and human kind of thought behind it and I just the idea of it just being AI generated text would kind of take something away from me but maybe I'm not typical of all players I don't know i I think ah ah before we ended up to guest, we actually invited to the party. I i think that's a very, very interesting point. I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where an author of an adventure game can create their own neural network within parameters that still fit within their creative vision.
AI's Role in Game Development
00:50:26
Speaker
but take some of the ah workload of having to anticipate every action that the player can take. I don't know if that frightens or offends people. I think it's it's an interesting approach and also I appreciate the irony.
00:50:40
Speaker
of if if we were to like sort of let loose and and have some sort of generative AI just make shit up as it goes, now we are, instead of trying to read the designer's mind, the designer is now trying to read the game's mind. is that That's an interesting irony. No, there's no question here.
00:50:58
Speaker
um So how how how scared are our our guests at the ah at the thought prospect of ah relinquishing some creative control over their games with the potential benefit of not having to write descriptions for every possible interaction?
00:51:18
Speaker
um I'm not scared because I'm not going to do it. because it's my own It's my own choice. you know um that There is so much to do with the writing that I love being the author for the interactions and I love being the one who's giving those descriptions because it's not just about the you know the surface level description. If you're looking at a table, it's got four legs, it's got a surface.
00:51:40
Speaker
um At least for for the way I wrote my game, there isn't, you know, and it's kind of interesting because I only noticed this when I started to write my own game was that the way that narration is handled differently in a LucasArts game versus a Sierra game. um Sierra games have like a third person narrator that kind of feels separate.
00:51:57
Speaker
from from the actual character and in LucasArts games when you know you click look at tables and it's guy brush three point is going to tell you about this table whatever he knows about it having just encountered it um but in Sierra games day you do have like a third person narrator but at the same time there's kind of a tension between what the character is going to say to you is you know Nancy Maple's going to talk out to the screen and and and say things to you versus what the narrator has to say but at the same time then then then The narration in the game is more than just look at table and this is what the table looks like. It actually has to do also with you know how she sees the world. and You get some and so you know some idea of what her personality is based on how she describes things.
00:52:37
Speaker
And I don't need, you know maybe you can train AI to do that, but then it takes like, it will take eight times the work to do that, you know, to say, well, okay, here are all the goals that I want this, you know, this, you know, three sentences to achieve. I want this to be a certain kind of tone. I need to describe, you know, the act, the verbs and the nouns you could potentially act upon. It also has to give you the impression of the personality of the character that is looking at the, you know, there's just so much that's tied into just, a you know, a few sentences of writing, at least the way I approached it, that,
00:53:05
Speaker
I'm not saying that it's impossible for AI to do it. I'm just saying that it would be extra time that I could to be spent spent elsewhere on the the actual writing. i you know I think most writers love the act of writing. My game has 160,000 words in it. you know um and In order to train an AI to be able to output as many as that, I'd have to write 10 times that. you know um I i just just want to clarify, i i I sort of devil's advocated this whole thing. of course yeah yeah yeah i absolutely I think it's a completely shit idea. ah i just wanted to I just wanted to gauge the room, so to speak. ah Please continue. Yes, and as someone who enjoys every aspect, which is you know the writing and the art and the animation and the game design, and you know to a lesser extent the programming, but also I do kind of enjoy the programming as well, everything about it,
00:53:55
Speaker
it all It all is connected in a way that when you're a solo game developer, you have this privilege, this incredible ability to integrate all those things completely with each other in a way that, you know i don't how can Anaya possibly do that? Which is why I'm not scared about people wanting to buy something that is looking like the what what we make. Because I feel like by and large, the audiences for what we make are interested because it's us making those things.
00:54:23
Speaker
um And i've I've kind of worked hard as an insurance against that idea of just you know some some AI-produced product being being something that people would want instead of what I make, is I've really tried to, when I market my game, give people an impression of the kind of person I am and the kind of things that I like and the kind of things I like to make, which means the only place they can get a game like that is from me.
00:54:45
Speaker
i love everything you just said yeah and i mean so do i i just you know wanted to ah defend myself because i think the impression was that i was suggesting that the game should procedurally sort of generate itself every everyones just packing away from ai is yeah yeah well well I would absolutely concur. That is a shit idea. um What I was thinking more of was you know in line with the pitfalls I described earlier. If you were to you know feed the characteristics of an object in the game, the context in which it appears, what you can and actually can't do with it you know into a neural network, you could maybe you know ah remove a blind spot from your tasks as a writer
00:55:29
Speaker
and at the same time maybe avoid a pitfall like you can't do that at least not now you know which is just this generic response that's in all these sera games and it's it's so incredibly obvious that's something you have to be careful about when you do a good parser game you really really have to get into the mind of the player and make sure that you don't lead them down any wrong paths that seem perfectly logical but that you you know for um for crunch reasons or whatever just didn't think of at the time. So that's, if if I were to use AI, that would be the only thoughtful way that I could could think of, you know, and um certainly have someone review, you know, whatever responses come up ah from that. ah It's always better when there's a human overlooking things, you know, I agree with that. But but
00:56:24
Speaker
these you know These old games are sometimes remembered ah not all that fondly because of those blind spots. you know And I think that's a shame because there is some brilliant design down there and in most of them. what kind of effect Yeah, sorry, go on. No, you go, Julia.
00:56:44
Speaker
ah well I was going to say that in terms of those boundaries about you know the generic response, you can't do this, you can't look at that. I actually don't necessarily mind those, because what it does is it it guides the player to what is the interesting thing to look at or what institute interesting interaction is. But if everything that you can look at in a text person game is going to give you the same level of complex like but like description, then no one they're not going to know. like If I can just look at a corner,
00:57:07
Speaker
You know, of a room or look at spot on wall and it's giving me like, you know, five paragraphs about that because that's what AI can do. Like it's not guiding the player to what is important. Yeah. It's almost like if you had a point and click and like every little object on the screen had a response, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't be directed.
00:57:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it actually creates more blind spots than it's going to actually solve, because it's it means that you're relinquishing that amount of control. um I also, when I'm writing my you know responses about looking down certain sections of the hallway, I try to make sure that they're different. And they're different enough so that they're not they don't become monotonous. um all All these kinds of considerations that you can do when you're guiding it personally is not something, you know it's kind of, yeah, you have to check then another thing's work. right And it's just like, um I think especially when you're but doing it by yourself you are so mindful about the time that you have to do things with and the idea that I'd have to like
00:58:01
Speaker
Add like, you know, put put aside certain X number of hours per week on checking that the work of of a robot it does not feel to me at all. I mean, it's that's a very good point. And you you know, I definitely salute all of you because you've all been working on on, you know, your respective games for years, trying to avoid this kind of stuff and trying to make sure that the writing is, is exciting and varied. So, you know, i I don't mean to belittle that in any way. I think I think it's amazing.
Authorial Intent in Games
00:58:29
Speaker
But I think one one of the things that's kind of come from this is, I mean, I think that whole point of, yeah, yet the reason why there's no description for this object is because you're not supposed to really care about it, look at something else, which I completely agree with. But I think the other thing that kind of comes from what you said, ah Fred, which which is interesting as well, is this kind of idea of the parser being, is the parser a tool?
00:58:50
Speaker
Or is it communication with the game? If it's a tool just for finding out what is on the screen and what is it, then what you described is absolutely fine. It will give you a a factual description of ah of what's there. But I think as Julia was saying earlier, this idea of actually yeah when you tell the character to look at a table,
00:59:09
Speaker
that character will then give that character's interpretation off the table and then it becomes a much more kind of human ah kind of thing. So I mean i think i think in some ways ah them there may well be something that can be done through some of these kind of automation things in terms of ah trying to pick apart semantic meaning rather than literal meaning and there's there's interesting things you can do with ah bigger worlds maybe maybe procedurally generated worlds if we want to go sort of down that particular route.
00:59:42
Speaker
but But I do think that one of the things that i've that I appreciate actually about a lot of adventure games is that maybe unlike a lot of other forms of game, the the author really does matter in adventure games. And it's one of the reasons one of the reasons why I enjoy them so much is that you you're not just playing a story that's been procedurally generated. you're You're playing some kind of story that has very deliberately been written and where you where the the author is trying to guide you in a particular way, but also giving you the freedom to explore that world.
01:00:12
Speaker
And I don't really see how generated text can do that while at the same time thinking it's a fascinating discussion to have. Can I just say I hate the fact that every time we do one of these shows, we inevitably fall down the AI rabbit hole. I'm just fucking sick. I mean, that says a lot about how it's everywhere these days. And I think we're going to fall further down as the season proceeds.
01:00:37
Speaker
and Okay, so i we're we're kind of coming up on the end here. One thing I want to circle far away from the AI discussion at the moment and and talk about the future. Not the future of procedurally generated bullshit, but the the future of parser games themselves. as As we've again been talking about, parser games have a sort of retro connotation. It was something we used to do a long time ago, now we're trying it again.
01:01:03
Speaker
I want to hear from, and especially Kevin, actually, because Kevin, when we, yes, sorry, shining the fucking spotlight in your face again. um When I invited you on the show, you sent me a couple of links to a bunch of larger games, modern larger games that I'd never heard of.
01:01:21
Speaker
And some of them were doing some very, very interesting things to evolve the parser beyond what we consider the retro get lamp talk to kind of thing. Phil has been working with with that in terms of predictive tech and making the interface easier for newcomers to ah approach. But but can can ah can you talk a bit about some of the games that you sent me and and how you see parser games in the future, what they might ah bring in terms of innovations?
01:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, you mean um enclosure ah brackets 3D or the A-King, both of which are very much like, yeah, and clearly inspired by the old Sierra AGI games. Both very good. and But I would say their use of parser For the most part, it's pretty traditional. They um they function they pretty much exactly, I would say, I don't know, from from having played them. It seems like it's pretty traditional. But I know what you mean, like um the idea of of parser interface sort of evolving. Although I've tried to think of how you could
01:02:23
Speaker
Take a parser and use it in like a fundamentally different way or sort of like evolve it. But I've never really been able to come up with an idea of how you could do that. And maybe I'm just being really cynical, but I don't think we're going to see some like crazy Renaissance of like parser games. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's a little too niche.
01:02:40
Speaker
It's a little too much for like dorks like us who are just really into this kind of thing or like, you know, old people who grew up with this kind of thing. I don't think we're going to see like a big renaissance, although that would be cool. Yeah,
Niche Appeal and Resurgence of Parser Games
01:02:50
Speaker
I'm not sure. of of One game actually just sprung to mind. What the fuck was it called? um and I'll have to look that up.
01:02:59
Speaker
Hi, FutureSQH here, editing this podcast. The game is called Trackless, and it was developed and published by 12 East Games. Thank you, and now back to my incoherent ramblings. But it was a game that was, you know, a first person walk around a world, sort of a walking simulator thing. And whenever you interacted with something, you were supposed to type in the verb of what you wanted to do with this. I mean, you looked at at a handle or something and you could type pull handle.
01:03:26
Speaker
And you'd get a certain amount of points for that word. If you gave it sort of a more esoteric synonym for pull, it would give you more points. That was their idea of a parser. They would reward you for having a more flamboyant vocabulary. I thought that was kind of interesting. Classist parser. Yeah, classist parser. I don't know. I don't know. Sort of disappointing to hear that you don't think parses would make a comeback because... Maybe Phil or Julia disagrees with me.
01:03:57
Speaker
That's what I was kind of hoping they would. Well, okay. Yeah, go on Phil. know like yeah I don't ah kind of agree with Kevin. and sure i mean the it For me, the best thing that could be that could happen is more old folks like us get into gaming and realize that there are these retro parser games and that takes off. Yeah, Julia.
01:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think there are a lot of reasons why there probably won't be like this this text parser research and I think one of them and one of the reasons we probably don't see them very much anymore is that yeah this there are a lot of like issues in terms of like localization and and different porting it to different platforms and things like that. I think for most game developers you want you do try to want want to reach a ah broad audience and already when you're when you've got the adventure game audience it's you're already kind of It's already a niche that you're trying to reach that's already kind of limiting the number of people potentially that would be interested. But as well, because it's we know we all make these text parser games, are you going to be porting that you know to PlayStation? Are you going to be porting that to Switch? it's it's not you know You could, but at the same time, there's even more barriers in the in that respect. And when you're talking about localization, i mean that's in a whole other can of worms, you know especially
01:05:16
Speaker
the quantity of writing in know in a lot of these games, but also the the way that you know language gets implemented in in different you know in different ways. These are all difficulties that will also limit audience, which is probably why you're not going to see like a AA or AAA studio tackling text parser adventure games. There's so many reasons why not to do it, and I think all of us here Made what we made because we wanted to make it and without any real like practical considerations of is this gonna make lots and lots of money? Cuz you know what it probably isn't But so that aspect yeah, I will say that is it is, you know It's doubtful that there will be this res research inch but at the same time there's a couple of things that I do get interested about which is um you know scum VM has an iOS app now where you can play you know the Crimson diamond or other scum VM compatible games on your phone or your iPad things like that which actually find kind of
01:06:08
Speaker
It's surprisingly work surprisingly well without having made any formal considerations for design f for those platforms. I think, you know, playing, you know, the Crimson Diamond on your phone is is kind of like a fun little novelty experience that maybe could bring the game to more people who might be more interested and in mobile, in a mobile way to play it.
01:06:27
Speaker
But also, but i what I really find encouraging is the reason I started making my game in the first place was this thing called Adventure Game Studio got invented that made it so much easier to make games. And what I love to see is I love seeing these tools get easier and easier to use. You know, there's, you know, there's a vampire, there's twine, there's all these things.
01:06:45
Speaker
and What I get excited about is maybe it's not going to be like this commercial renaissance of games that are going to be released commercially that tons of people will buy. But on the flip side of that, there could be maybe a renaissance of creators who have access to these easier tools that can make their own stories that are so you know unique or so personal or so something that you know it's not considered. We're not going to try to make a smash success if there's something I want to express or there's something there's a story that I want to tell.
01:07:11
Speaker
And in that respect, I think there could be maybe more of a resurgence in developing something like a text parser game, which doesn't have the same demands on assets that so many other genres would have, um especially if it's only text um or text in a static image. um I always mention this engine called Adventure On, which you can find on Itch.io. And you can find tons of games, dozens of games made by people that this game, this is apparently, I've never used it, but um it's apparently relatively easy to make an Adventure On game. You can play You can play these games on on phones and on tablets. You can actually save your game on on your you know and then come back to it and everything. I think it's incredible. um and I've seen so many instances of people who have made their first game in Adventure Run, and it does it feels like like an old like Spectrum ZX game or any kind of like those types of adventure games. Relatively, people have recreated those games on on on Adventure Run. I love to see this idea of people getting to tell their tell their own stories, not only of the Adventure Run, but all these tools that just get easier and easier to use.
01:08:08
Speaker
Yeah. OK. So so i I fully concur with with that observation. And um I guess I just want to plant some seeds in in everyone's head. Because i didn't I didn't mean to sound all negative when i when I said I was sort of disappointed that you don't feel partial games deserve a um ah a renaissance. and And the reason why, and again, just planting seeds in your head.
01:08:31
Speaker
um I think the initial barrier for parser adventure games used to be I don't want to type. Typing is fucking tedious and you have to have this these conversations with ah with the parser and it doesn't understand your input and maybe I'm not too good at spelling and all that shit and that's why we invented it point-and-click interfaces.
01:08:51
Speaker
um But recently I played um the Space Quest games, the AGI games on an interpreter called GB AGI ah for the Game Boy Advance, which completely sidesteps the whole typing issue and instead has you pick ah verbs and nouns and you know sentence construction with a pop-up interface. So you still have the freedom of the parser, but you don't have to overcome the hurdle of, did I spell this correctly? did i um You don't have to anticipate what the parser accepts as a logical synonym and all that. And stuff like that is is kind of what I was fishing for in terms of evolution of parser games. so
01:09:31
Speaker
in the sense that you can you can easily think of ways that you can use the strengths of a parser, which is the complete freedom to essentially try anything that happens to you. and You don't have to be constrained by the predetermined actions of a point-and-click adventure game, but you also don't have to walk into the pitfalls of having to type shit correctly and read the designer's mind, so to speak.
01:09:55
Speaker
um We've got a lot of hands raised on that one. I think Gareth was first and then Kevin after that. Well, it actually builds on from what you were saying, Charles, in the sense that, um yeah, one way is to have a set number of words that you can ah select from a dropdown. The other way of potentially doing it, although as I was just having this conversation with Fred on on Messenger outside, you would have some problems with pronunciation, but maybe voice recognition. Obviously, we've we've already worked out today that vase won't work.
01:10:27
Speaker
um But but it it could be that voice recognition can then sort of feed into the parser. So you can either type or speak and that maybe that is that is one way as as the sort of the voice recognition software becomes um more and more portable.
01:10:44
Speaker
maybe that Maybe that's an option. Phil did some work on that. I was going to raise my hand, but Kevin is an next, I think, or someone else. Gareth beat me to it. I was just going to talk about voice recognition, so who cares? Let's let's talk about voice recognition. yeah I played around with it and it worked pretty well. We were talking about like um the way that, you know, a parser interface could evolve, right? ah Maybe with voice recognition, you're not even like, um because you're you're saying like, I would say like, look, room or whatever. But maybe rather than that, ah the the whole game is like, you're talking to other characters. Do you know what I mean?
01:11:22
Speaker
Sorry, there there was actually a VR game by alex Alexander Mejia, who's also been on the podcast earlier. He did a VR game called Starship Commander, which also ah uses voice recognition. You actually talk to this shipboard computer and tell them what you want to do. ah The demo is kind of limited in the sense that it it sort of want to railroad you on to what it expects you to do, but you can essentially have a conversation using voice recognition. Interesting.
01:11:48
Speaker
Well, Phil, like I said, you've dabbled with the voice recognition. And all you got to say was, it seems to work OK. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Well, it wasn't it was much simpler than I think what Kevin is talking about, because I didn't change the background parser interface at all. So it was basically just so routing it through a a speech to text thingy, whatever comes with Microsoft, and then putting that text into the parser.
01:12:17
Speaker
But it worked. The only issue, it was actually, I found it really annoying to play because you just, your voice gets tired after a while. And it's like, this is way easier to just type.
01:12:29
Speaker
But I can still see it ah yeah potentially being useful. I think if you can find my game jam game, ah Snow Spirit, I think it was called. I think that has the voice recognition in it. And that was that was a lovely game. And I was i was thinking of the voice recognition could be a way to overcome the hurdle of, oh, I can't port my game to consoles. I can't port ah my game to mobile because ah people can't, you can't type on a fucking controller. Let's just be honest.
01:12:59
Speaker
On the other hand, you'll irritate your family endlessly by sitting down in front of the TV and talking and they will irritate you. You know, shut the fuck up. I'm trying to put the gem into my mouth. yeah Or everyone on the train just goes, stop saying, look at things.
01:13:16
Speaker
Yes, but and it's it's something to consider, I feel, because I personally would love to see a renaissance of partial games because I miss that freedom. I i think point-and-click interfaces, as much as we've grown accustomed to them and as many hurdles and and pitfalls that they ah circumvent entirely by having these predefined actions, and i you know context-sensitive point-and-click UIs are certainly a way forward that I think is very interesting, but you're still sort of limiting the player's imagination, and I still want that freedom of imagination back in my adventure games. So I think to round this thing off, because now we've been going for over an hour, and we try to keep things in a moderately... brief I was going to say brief, that is absolutely not the... mode as a moderate Yes, moderate time frame here. um Just just but have a sort of final round and from from the co-hosts as well. If you could think of like your dream,
01:14:13
Speaker
the interface for an adventure game doesn't have to be parset, doesn't have to be point and click, doesn't have to be voice recognition. ah What would be sort of your your your fantasy way of interfacing? What would get you completely lost in the ah story and the author's personality as said Julian and Gareth we're were talking about? What would be the ideal way to experience an adventure game? Let's start with, I'm just going to go through the list as it is on my screen. Let's start with Phil.
01:14:42
Speaker
um I'm just going to say a parser game still, but ah here's the thing. i want I want keyboards to have a reason to be included with consoles for some reason. Then that opens up a new market, maybe. I don't know. That's my dream. It's never going to happen. Interesting. um I don't have any other ideas about what my ideal interface would look like other than, you know,
01:15:09
Speaker
Maybe like one of those, like ah i don't I don't want to sound insensitive or anything, but they those those sort of things like like Stephen Hawking had on his wheelchair, they like you can you can type with one hand at a like in shorthand instead of having to type out long sentences on your keyboard. like You can type in shorthand with one hand, kind of like you were using a controller. Maybe that was...
01:15:30
Speaker
an idea for console? I don't know, he was using his eyelid and it took him three hours to answer a question. I think that the tenacity of having so much knowledge in your mind that you just want out there, that you're willing to go through the ordeal of doing that is just mind-boggling, honestly, but probably not something I would envision for games personally.
01:15:54
Speaker
Okay. i didn I didn't, I didn't didn't mean Stephen Hawking should play adventure games. for all i just What, what, what, what if you wanted to, what if he did? that's That's absolutely fine. What I was talking about was the you know the barrier that we talked about was keyboards typing is fucking tedious. How about we have some sort of shorthand? If you're going to port it to consoles and people don't want to type on a fucking keyboard, you can have some sort of shorthand ah way to do it. Fuck it. I'm um rambling. Sorry, this was supposed to be a wrap up. Julia, your ideal way of interfacing with an adventure game.
01:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go with Phil and say, I still think it's the text parser. I i actually, the thing is, is yeah, the typing can be kind of, you know, tedious or exhausting, but the pace that you play these games, this is not like an action game. We're not like boxing and, you know, typing lunch and uppercut and dodge and things like that.
01:16:48
Speaker
you could take your time with these. And that's part of the appeal to me with this type of game is you can just be sitting. It's like reading a book, but kind of just on a screen. and you you You enter in a command, you ponder a little bit, you have a sip of tea, you walk around a little bit, you enter another command. It's it's it's very relaxed. It's a very relaxed way of playing things. um And I do like that illusion of limitless possibility that Our language gives us and at this point Also, yeah, I mean talking about you know, the the voice activated stuff. I do find it, you know exhausting I I stream for like three and a half hours on tuesdays and things and I don't yet I I don't feel like it's the you know I would like that to be an option for people, you know for i for any number of reasons for that to be an option for people But it's definitely not my my favorite way of of doing things. I I you know, I like to do writing so I like to sit in front of my my keyboard and tippy-tappy for hours at a time and And because of that, I do feel that the keyboard and the text bars are are still my favorite. Fantastic. oh um Yes, ah Frederick, your ideal way of interfacing with an adventure. I don't know. it It depends what I'm achieving. If I'm trying to... you know, get ah get my bearings in in the world and and getting immersive, I would probably have to say the parser. If it's instant gratification I'm after and I have more of a focus on gameplay... Then you call it patina. Because I want to finish the story, then it's point and click, you know. um But it it it depends entirely on the kind of way I want to play the game. um So, yeah.
01:18:23
Speaker
But, you know, I'm gonna play nice and say parser because that's why we're here. So it's gonna be a really disappointing episode if I end it saying, oh yeah, point and click. but ah Okay, so so im I'm just gonna go on a limb and suggest that Kevin might say PS2 controller.
01:18:42
Speaker
Well, I'll try and switch it up a bit. How about ah you said dream
Integrating Advanced Technology into Games
01:18:47
Speaker
way, right? So how about just like a full body like motion detection suit slash, you know, voice recognition. Fuck yeah. You're basically just like the holodeck from Star Trek pretty much because ah I've heard people say that the the good thing about adventure games is that they tell good stories. And something about that never sat right with me at the time, because like, I've played lots of adventure games that don't really tell the accurate stories, but I still really enjoyed them. And I think for me, what makes adventure games so good is I get drawn into, like, I feel like I'm there versus a lot of other games, like, you know, in a platform where you're jumping and the first person shooter you're shooting, they're really like based on the mechanics, but in an adventure game,
01:19:24
Speaker
yeah is It's these series of like bespoke obstacles you know that you have to think, how would I overcome this obstacle? You know what I mean? so So that's what I want out of my adventure games. i want I want to be drawn into that world kind of thing. So yeah, holodeck. That's my answer. Oh god, the King's Quest staircases in VR. When you fall off, you actually die.
01:19:46
Speaker
i said you know Before we get to Gareth, this reminds me of an episode of Red Dwarf where they find out that they've been locked away in this virtual reality simulation for years and years playing essentially an an adventure game. And it's ah you know for for for several years and it turns out they sort of rotted their brain and they have to have all the all their personal belongings delivered back to them to remind themselves of who they are. That sort of complete total immersion. um What actually I don't know. To me, it sounds kind of cool, but I don't know if you spent several years in it. Anyway, the um ah the episode is back to reality. If anyone wants to go and check that out, it's a fantastic episode. um Right. I'll shut up now and let Gareth answer the question.
Parser Games vs Point-and-Click
01:20:31
Speaker
I really enjoyed Kevin's answer. um because i think ah Well, I think both Kevin and Fred kind of touched on it in that, to a certain extent, it depends on what you're trying to do. And I think it always it's always important that the game designer picks what works for the pace of the story they're trying to tell, what they want the but they want the player to get from it, how they want to guide that player through the world and all of that kind of stuff. But with with all of those caveats in mind,
01:20:58
Speaker
I really enjoy the parser. And I'm not just saying that because our guests have been so good this afternoon. I'm saying it because I think there is something about that kind of interaction you get with the game through the parser. It's a slower pace.
01:21:14
Speaker
it can sometimes be really really frustrating but there is nothing like that moment where you just click with the game and you you work out what the game wants from you and it feels like you're in conversation with the game in a way that you just don't get from ah from point and click with point and click you feel like you're kind of breaking the game whereas i feel with the parser you feel like you're figuring out the game maybe a little bit more maybe that's just me so i'm going with parser because i don't think the holodeck is around the corner in the next five to ten years or so Yeah, that's a fair point. Although I do long for the yeah the holiday. Although I would hate to be the one who has to clean it up after the Riker's been in there. Well, see you in 10 years where we've all got shitty neural link chips implanted and you know see you in the post-apocalyptic hellscape and everything.
01:22:01
Speaker
um If I were to answer the question myself, i I do enjoy stuff like walking simulators and I do enjoy my point-and-click adventure games obviously. I concur with what Gareth just said that essentially point-and-click games are more reactive in a way, in that you're supposed to... it For me, they involve more guesswork as to what the designer intended than parser games. And I think that's something we, as adventure game players, are not ready to admit yet, especially especially with the the old and Sierra LucasArts UIs that have prede predefined verbs that are supposed to be ubiquitous to the entire game world, have always hated the fucking hand icon, because it can mean anything.
01:22:46
Speaker
um So yeah, um ah as as elitist as it may sound um or as as book nerdy as it may sound, I would also really prefer having a very good parser game that I can immerse myself in because one of the things I've always loved about at adventure games Is i was never a book nerd and i was never um i mean i can read and write good but i never really got into like losing myself in the book because it's a passive medium i considered adventure games my
01:23:20
Speaker
of literary upbringing, so to speak. And I think Parsha games were the ones that got the closest to me reading a good book as opposed to actually reading a good book. And it felt like I was actually interacting with the book and the book was telling me to fuck off because I didn't spell the word correctly, that sort of thing. but So what you need now is Anna Karenina, the game.
01:23:43
Speaker
Oh, Julianne. Yes, please. actually um When we talk about immersion, I actually like really like something that Kevin talked about comparing point and click movement on a screen versus when you're actually are using the arrow keys to navigate your character. um This idea that with point and click, it almost feels more like a surface. like you're It's a 2D surface, and you're clicking you know on that point, and then your character kind of moves over to that point.
01:24:03
Speaker
But when you're using the arrow keys to move around, like you'll bump into stuff and you'll, you know, you're like, you know, if you climb to that table, you're not going to get any further. And it kind of does put you more an immersive feeling of moving around in a space versus point and click.
01:24:15
Speaker
I agree with that very much, actually. Although I do have click to move, but there are yeah I think there are times in my game where that doesn't work and you have to interact with the environment in a more like visceral way. you yeah Yeah, and talking about point of click, even the interactions of the hand and the eye and the you know the mouth and things, that also is the same type of idea where You have these clicking and you're clicking on the screen in these areas, but then the the text first, it does invite this deeper feeling of immersion in that same way that the walking does, but you know different, of course. yeah And one thing I really enjoyed about the the text-only games, like Infocom games, is that it was not movement based in the slightest. You entered a room.
01:24:58
Speaker
And you're just sort of in the room and you expect like if you said, look at table or examine table or get candelabra or whatever the fuck, it was sort of assumed that the character just walked over to the candelabra as a normal fucking person and picked it up. You didn't have to bump into things and and try to walk 90 degree angles because you didn't have a numpad or whatever it is. There's something a bit more immersive than that, although I get, of course, that graphics are very nice and something to aspire to, I guess.
01:25:28
Speaker
Does anyone have any closing remarks in terms of Frederick and Gareth before we let our guests talk about where they can find their illustrious career-defining moments? Only that you've forgotten the greatest part of a game made by anybody in this room, which of course is Stair Quest. Fuck off. No, no, let's let let the man talk. Let the man talk.
01:25:54
Speaker
No, I mean, I have i have no i have no closing remarks as as such, but it's been an extremely interesting discussion ah with lots of very valid points. and I had some preconceived notions and ideas about parser games before I went into this, but I still feel that I've come out smarter. Also, knowing that trolls can't get his way through a book is infinitely pleasurable to me.
01:26:21
Speaker
sophisticated Yeah, well, there is that. Yes.
Guest Game Highlights and Social Media
01:26:27
Speaker
So, well, with all that said, Phil, where can people find your amazing career-defining moments? Well, they can find Smeltrek on Steam, all four episodes. It's four, not three. Four? Goddamn. Did I miss one? No, I'm pretty sure you would have known. I played them on my channel. I'm pretty sure I played all of them.
01:26:50
Speaker
um And then I have a few on GameJolt. If you just look for Alien Science, I think is the most recent one on GameJolt. That one is dirty as hell. yeah Yeah, it's kind of one of my favorite ones. I love it. I love it. it's It's the first anal probe simulator I've really enjoyed. And I'm not even fucking kidding. I had a lot of fun making it. Yeah, that one was great. um What about the like social media channels if people want to talk to you?
01:27:19
Speaker
um Probably Twitter or whatever it's called now. x Just Icefall Games on Twitter. Excellent. um And it's SCI Companion, not SCI Studio. Although they're both useful. yes yeah thank you Thank you for your services to the Sierra community, by the way. Thank you very much. I still use SCI Companion to this very day for things that I really shouldn't. um That's what it's meant for.
01:27:46
Speaker
Yay! ah Julia, where can people find yourself and your achievements? Yeah, ah the Crimson Diamond is available on Steam. It's available on GOG or G-O-G, or whatever we call it. I still don't know what that what we call that. um It's also on Itch.io, or Itch.io, another one I don't and know don't know how to say properly, probably. um It's also on Fireflower Games. You can find it in all those places. I've got a website, TheCrimsonDiamond.com, where you can find all my social media stuff. But I am on Twitter. I'm on Blue Sky. I'm on Mastodon.
01:28:19
Speaker
um There's a Facebook page. this It's everywhere. I also stream on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern. I'm a underscore maple mystery. And I have been kind of doing an EGA demake of my own key art that I also made. And then I also um play like retro adventure games that are all EGA palette as well. So that's what I've been up to.
01:28:40
Speaker
Fantastic. And I would absolutely encourage everyone to say GOG instead of GOG because because in Danish GOG is... not No, no, not no related no, no, First of all, don't go there. And second of all, it's with a K. All right, yes. But but it sounds wrong. Okay, I get it. it's good It's also a handball club to anyone in the room who is in the perf. This is why I don't read books. They play on food. and Oh, great. I pronounce it Joj. There we go. That's the new accepted norm. Kevin, please save me from the pit I've just dug.
01:29:18
Speaker
Duh, okay, well i've I've just got the one game, A Lively Haunt, which is only on Steam. ah But I always feel the need to mention, my game has this one weird glitch, where because of the two keyboards, sometimes it just won't detect letter input from people, so there's always a chance that if you buy it, it just won't work. So it's kind of a weird, it's a weird thing, it's a weird situation. But anyway, that's where it is, it's on Steam.
01:29:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, actually, Gareth ran into that. You were very kind to provide us with keys for the game and Gareth just messaged me and said, I can't type. What, what the fuck? And we just... Yeah, that was the least I could do. Have you tried using your hands? Yeah, I was just gonna say, speaking of how Gareth was late to the proceedings, because he can't figure out how to turn on his fucking computer, I would say the technicalities and the technical workings of computers is perhaps not his strong suit. Maybe he just forgot to plug in the keyboard.
01:30:12
Speaker
I pay a man to do this thing for me. Oh, that's right. You're a doctor. Yes. Oh, well, um we are the backseat designers, best of friends, as you can tell. And you can find us on my YouTube page because we still haven't worked out how fucking RSS feed works. No, do we have a website? Guess who was in charge of that?
01:30:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that was me as well. That was me as well. Yeah. We also had a Twitter, I refuse to call it X, at BS designers. As soon as I figured out how to log into that, we'll start using it again. Oh, Fred, I actually did get a re-activation email. I said, Fred, a message like, did you get a re-activation email for the Twitter account? He was like, no. Are you high? So yeah, it was actually on. So if anyone can hack that for us, please,
01:31:03
Speaker
yeah up update i got I got the email, never mind. And we also have a Facebook page, which which we were going to delete, but because one person, Hayatomer, actually replied to one of our posts, we decided to keep it. So please go and search for Backseat Designers on there. And if you want to check out our previous seasons, parentheses, please don't, you can go to our previous YouTube channel, which was at Backseat Designers, or youtube dot.com slash Backseat Designers. It has our previous seasons.
01:31:30
Speaker
which also has some wonderful guests. ah Please don't listen to the first three seasons. They're terrible. um i yeah I guess that's it for us. um so Okay, let's let's do the thing. um Please say goodbye, Phil. Goodbye, and thank you, lovely people, for hosting this. You're quite welcome. Say goodbye, Julia. Bye, everybody. Yeah, this was awesome. Thank you. And say goodbye, Kevin. Goodbye, Kevin. Thank you so much for having us.
01:32:01
Speaker
and say goodbye, Frederick. I don't understand the inquiry, say goodbye, Frederick. Please try rephrasing that. You're not close enough. And say goodbye, Gareth. he myra Thank you. That's a goodbye from me as well. See you whenever we pick ourselves off the ground and do this thing again. Thank you so much. Goodbye.
01:32:34
Speaker
Nah, they're lekked.