Category talk:Spanish

Thank you very much for your history of Spanish IF, Depresiv!

I have a question. You write: In 1997, the two existing clubs organized a text adventure competition, in which less than twelve adventures were entered. Is the precise number unknown?

Also, I think your article shouldn't be a part of a Category page: it deserves its own IFWiki page. Would anybody oppose this? (There would be a link from this Category page to the article, of course.) --Eriorg 13:44, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, it's very welcome information, but I agree it probably should get its own page. I propose it be called History of Interactive Fiction in Spain. -- David Welbourn 15:11, 22 February 2007 (EST)

A quick note from the humble Spaniard girl at IFWiki: I found out that the history of Spanish IF is direct translation (although a very good one) of the Aventura conversacional article on Spanish wikipedia (note the similar structure). Take into account that, as such, it is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, that is, "gives readers the same rights to [...] modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license." -- Cassandra Palop 04:32, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Thanks for reading my entry on Spanish history of IF.

First of all, I apologize for not having specified that this page is a direct translation from spanish Wikipedia. It's the first time I ever add a content to a Wiki, and also it's a work-in-progress, since there was still some content I wanted to add later (I just didn't have enough time for it). My question is, what steps should I take to allow this text to be editable by any reader, just like the GNU license specifies to do?

I agree that it could probably be better in a separate chapter of "Spanish IF History". How can I move it then?

And also: I've added this content to encourage members of other non-english spoken communities (I'm thinking of the german, italian and french ones, which are - I think - the most active) to do the same. I think it would be great to have a more complete overview of IF history in all countries. -- Depresiv

I moved the article to History of Interactive Fiction in Spain.

I added Cassandra Palop's comment about the GNU license to that page, although I'm not sure there's really a problem with it. After all, IFWiki, just like Wikipedia, can be modified by the readers: that's the point of Wikis. But I guess there's a difference between "public domain" (like most of the IFWiki pages) and "GNU Free Documentation License". Could Cassandra Palop clarify this a bit, please?

About the other non-English IF histories: I think it's a great idea! I've just added the article I wrote for the latest SPAG issue (#47) in the History of Interactive Fiction in French page. The only problem is that my article gave Jimmy Maher, the SPAG editor, a very similar idea, even if it's for SPAG and not the IFWiki: see this R*IF thread. Maybe we could copy these articles to the IFWiki when they'll be published (with the permission of their authors, of course)?

Also: note that it's recommended to sign your posts on the Talk pages (and only on the Talk pages). --Eriorg 19:36, 23 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, that's a great idea! I'll write to the authors as soon as their articles are published in SPAG.

Also, I've read your article on French IF History, and it's great, but I've found out that the First Period is a bit under-developed. Is it because people from the french community are not very interested in those 80s games? That's curious, since many people in Spain are interested in old spanish text adventures (even with their horrible parsers), as you can see with the Project BASE. -- Depresiv

You're quite right: people from the French community show virtually no interest in 1980s French IF games.

When they (very rarely) talked a bit about them in the mailing list or in the forum, the comments were usually negative. In retrogaming forums, I saw a few rare nostalgic comments about them, but their nostalgia apparently wasn't strong enough to make them want to resurrect the genre.

I may be the only member of the French community who discovered text adventures thanks to 1980s French games! The other members discovered -- or at least liked -- them thanks to games in English, old or recent. But even I know very little about old French IF, actually: that's why I didn't develop that part of the article enough...

In the English (and maybe Spanish, too?) community, IF never really died: the end of commercial IF (1993) was immediately followed by the rise of amateur IF; amateur IF was a consequence of the nostalgia for commercial IF, especially Infocom. In French, at least as far as I know, IF completely disappeared after the commercial era and was only resurrected almost a decade later; the commercial era and the "modern" era are quite distinct, there's no link between them.

Admittedly, few 1980s French IF games were very good. There just was no French equivalent to publishers like Infocom, Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls or Adventures AD. Surprisingly, the most successful (and probably the best) games were published by "generalist" publishers, like Ere informatique or Ubi soft; the rare publishers which specialized in text adventures, like Froggy Software and MBC, hadn't a great reputation at all.

I wrote: "Many IF games in French, both commercial and freeware, were released". But "many" is in comparison with modern French IF, not with 1980s English or Spanish IF! They were far less numerous than English games, and apparently than Spanish games, too -- especially than Spanish amateur games. And there was absolutely no French equivalent to the Spanish fanzines and amateur clubs. And graphic adventures (with icons, etc.) replaced text adventures earlier in French than in English or Spanish, especially on 16 bits computers.

I don't know why the IF communities evolved in such a different way in different countries. But that's a very interesting question! --Eriorg 10:38, 26 February 2007 (EST)