Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_af | Hacker News Reader

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I learned about this phenomenon (looking down I mean) from the forums of Home of the Underdogs, which gathered people from all over the world. This was 2004 I believe. But also from magazines we got from Spain. For some reason adventure and text adventures were really big in Spain, and along with it the notion (in their subcommunities) that action games were for the "dumber" crowd.

It wasn't a vicious sentiment, like you would have nowadays, just a feeling of superiority from adventure gamers. They also reacted fiercely when game designers started introducing action gameplay in adventure games, creating action/adventure hybrids. The feeling was that they were "dumbing down" adventure games. Which, if you read the Old Man Murray article, is of course a hilarious notion.

I loved adventure games too! As I said, I cut my teeth with the original (and punishing) Space Quest series, and to this day I have fond memories of it. I also learned quite a bit of English from the series :)

Me too, I learned a lot of English. I would play Monkey Island and Indiana Jones with a dictionary on the side.

I remember taking hours in one of the first King Quests, that used typed text input, that the right verb was to "pick-up' a cup. Not take, not get, which were the only ones I knew at the time for picking up things.

Especially confusing since "get" to my knowledge has been the conventional keyword used for this action in the vast majority of parser games and MUDs (maybe "take" in some cases, but "pick-up"? Really?). I'm a native English-speaker and that still probably would have stumped me for a while.

Since "pick up" should not be hyphenated, as a native English speaker I don't think I would have ever guessed it!

That's probably on me though, not the original game. Let's keep in mind that this is a memory from ~30 years ago, so not that reliable in general

Back then, when there was no internet (or it wasn't widespread), Sierra On-Line games were vicious. Not only the wrong action meant instea-death, hope-you-have-a-savegame, but they were also sometimes impenetrable in an age where there weren't internet forums to ask for help. (There were hint books you had to buy, which in my mind were a scam).

For example, in Space Quest 2 there was a puzzle where some strange creatures tell you that in order for them to open a passage, you just had to "say the word". Keep in mind I was just learning English back then. The answer was you had to literally type "the word".

Ah, the old "Speak, friend, and enter" of Tolkien fame.

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