Talk:Adventureland (video game)

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I've moved this article from Adventureland (VIC-20 game) to Adventureland (computer game). Adventureland was first published for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I. The VIC-20 was only one of several computers to which it was ported in the early 80s. Clampton 20:26, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Why did it get moved to (video game)? It's not a video game, it doesn't even have video, it's a text game. (computer game) was infinitely more appropriate for this. 76.226.101.4 (talk) 05:02, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

For some lamebrained reason, wikipedia decided one day that there's no such thing as a computer game and they're all video games.69.212.127.147 (talk) 09:29, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

All computer games are video games if they display anything on a 'video' screen. This was the original meaning of video game in the 70's.

"Low importance?"

I find it very difficult to believe that the members of the Wiki Adventure Games Project have chosen to assess this article as of "low importance." This is one of the most seminal and historic adventure games of all time! Its from 1978, for crying out loud, and thus preceeded Zork One: The Great Underground Empire by two years. Unless I am mistaken, and I very much don't think that I am, this was the very first commercially available work of interactive fiction! Possibly even the first commercially available adventure game of any kind (and if not THE first, it was certainly among the first five or so). Colossal Cave Adventure was written several years earlier, but was not commercially released until 1982, it should be noted. This article should, at the very least, be granted Mid-level importance. I mean, come on! KevinOKeeffe (talk) 06:31, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Most likey the people involved in the "project" are of the current breed of Interaction Fiction writers/players. Adams' works are derided by most of these people for being too "simplistic." Today's IF must be artsy-fartsy or it's no good. They don't appreciate what a technical achievement Adventureland was at the time (an adventure game in 16KB!). Nor do they have the technical expertise to realize the merits of its design. Adams was the FIRST to write his games not as standalone programs, but as data objects embedded in an interpreter. He was the first to create and utilize a language specifically designed for the creation of adventure games. Interactive Fiction (IF) authors of today (for the most part) can't appreciate that. Their life has been made easy by smart people like Graham Nelson and Andrew Plotkin already providing the language and tools. They didn't, and probably couldn't create the tools themselves, and probably wouldn't be writing IF. Scott Adams SHOULD be given more credit in the IF world then he is. He is as important to the genre as Crowthers and Woods. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.31.106.35 (talk) 16:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

"version" of Colossal Cave?

The article reads, "Adventureland, Adams's first program, is a slightly scaled-down, machine-language version of the “original” Adventure program.[6]"

In what sense is Adventureland a version of Colossal Cave? --Allen (talk) 03:51, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

In the sense of reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.69.152.178 (talk) 03:09, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I played a little of Adventureland just now, and it doesn't look like a version of Colossal Cave (in the sense of reality, that is). --Allen (talk) 05:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I found an online copy of Dragon #42. Mark Herro, in his "The Electric Eye" column, does not distinguish between Crowther's Adventure (the origins of which he misstates) and text adventure games in general. Hence his erroneous statement, plagiarized by this article, that Adams' "first program, ADVENTURELAND, is a slightly scaled-down, machine-language version of the 'original' ADVENTURE program." This was an understandable mistake for Herro, since the field he was covering was so new in 1980, but not for us. I suggest we remove the claim from this article. --Allen (talk) 05:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

User:Indrian First I have to say that your comment "As the author of the thesis added it, I suspect this was more about inserting the thesis into this article for publicity than providing a critical citation that only this source could provide" constitutes a personal attack and is nothing but supposition. In fact I noticed that nowhere in the article does it mention that the game is a single player game and so I added that relevant piece of information and a citation for it. We have had this discussion elsewhere before so you know this is a PhD thesis, not a masters thesis, and you know that WP:SELFCITE makes it clear that it is ok for a Wikipedia editor who is an academic author to cite their own work in an article if the source is published and peer reviewed, and you know this work is published and peer reviewed, as you yourself pointed out! So I have to wonder why it is that you have decided to misrepresent that work here and to make an accusation about my motives that is a long way from presuming good intent. I suggest the information and its citation be returned to the article.Morgan Leigh | Talk 02:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

• Master’s thesis was a typo. As an American, I think of master’s theses and PhD dissertations as a matter of course. No offense intended.

As to the rest of the points that you brought up between this talk page and the Colossal Cave Adventure talk page, I could write an FA-quality article on many a topic in video game history that cites nothing but peer-reviewed scholarly sources in which nearly every last fact would be incorrect. The state of the scholarship in some corners of the field is that dreadful. That is not to say no good work is being done. Raiford Guins, Laine Nooney, Nathan Altice, Carly Kocurek, Tom Boellstorff, Braxton Soderman, and a few others have done truly admirable work, but there is a lot of dreck due to a lot of reliance on low-quality secondary sources for the basic narrative. Your thesis, I am sure, is not among the dreck, but neither is it focused on video game history. If you were citing it in the Second Life or virtual world article I would not bat an eye. It is quite odd to cite it in the Adventureland article when you not only barely mention the game, but also do not cover it accurately. No work is perfect and errors are inevitable. There is certainly no shame in flubbing a minor point not central to your thesis. My own work is hardly free of errors. But those flubs do make it quite an odd fit to cite in this article.

Sincerely, more of an expert on video game history and scholarship than you clearly assume. Indrian (talk) 03:50, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Why are you asserting that I am in error in relation to a fact that is clearly correct, i.e. it is, in fact, a single player game. Three things only are in question here. Firstly is the the single fact that I was citing correct? Secondly did I provide a published, peer reviewed source for it? Thirdly did you make a personal attack on me?

I agree wholeheartedly with you that the state of academia today leaves much to be desired, but that is irrelevant to the matter at hand. If you were making this argument in a discussion to change the policy of Wikipedia in regards to reliable sources I would listen keenly to your suggestion for a practical way to deal with this problem. But this talk page is not the place for such rhetoric. Moreover should we chose to not cite any single correct fact from a work that was in some other way in error, we should have very few works indeed to choose from.

I also agree that my work is not perfect, which is why I have released it as open access and am presently undertaking a collaborative project to try to improve and expand it. But that too is irrelevant to this talk page.

What matters is that I added a missing fact to the article and provided a citation for it. If you are unhappy with my citation, instead of making personal attacks upon me, I urge you to add a better one. Should you do so I shall rejoice at your improvement of this article.

I am not making any assumptions about your expertise, as that is irrelevant, unless you have some published work you wish to cite, and I will thank you to not make any about my motivations when editing articles. Morgan Leigh | Talk 06:03, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

User:Indrian I notice that you haven't returned the information that the game is single player to the article, despite saying it could be "easily be cited to the game’s manual or intro screen". I have examined both of these sources and found neither of them actually say that the game is single player. Seeing you object to the source I added that did included this information, and seeing this info is not where you suggested it be sourced from, can you please provide another source? If not I shall return the original source. Morgan Leigh | Talk 07:09, 9 October 2023 (UTC)