Versu’s Emily Short Extends Gratitude To Rod Humble And Linden Lab

New World Notes has recently published a couple of articles about Linden Lab’s decision to end Versu. The first by Iris Ophelia entitled Versu’s Epilogue: How an Interactive Fiction Pioneer’s 15 Year Project Ended Up in Limbo at Linden Lab laments the loss of the title. This is a very good read and I agree with much of what Iris has to say.

The second deals with feedback to that article, Limbo Status of Emily Short’s Long-in-Development Interactive Fiction Project at Linden Lab Goes Viral and highlights a tweet from Gamastura’s Leigh Alexander:

I have always been interested in Emily Short’s work, especially the Versu stuff. This is awful news about its future http://t.co/TJo4WldkLy

— Leigh Alexander (@leighalexander) March 14, 2014

From there we can go to Gamasutra itself and find an article by Chritsian Nutt : The end of Versu: Emily Short looks back. This article includes commentary from Emily Short and highlights points Emily has made on her own blog, Emily is extremely grateful to Rod Humble and Linden Lab for supporting Versu in the first place. I’ve seen Emily make this point more than once, if it wasn’t for Linden Lab’s support, Versu would not have reached the stage it did.

This is a point that could easily be lost amidst all the disappointment over how things turned out but it remains a very important point. Emily is quoted in the gamasutra article as saying :

I want to stress this because some of the people I’ve talked to about the closure of Versu don’t seem to understand this point: I remain hugely grateful to Rod Humble and to Linden for picking us up when they did, and for giving us the run they gave us. There are so few opportunities to do this kind of research within existing companies, and if Richard Evans and I had taken venture capital, we would have had to spend a lot more of our time trying to learn to run a business and a lot less writing stories and code.

And that doesn’t begin to count the other resources besides financial support that Linden put at our disposal, such as a hugely devoted and enthusiastic QA team, or the opportunity to work with other experienced interactive-story authors like Deirdra Kiai and Jake Forbes. Both of them not only wrote content but contributed useful thinking about how to develop the system as a whole.

When Linden Lab closed the three projects of Creatoverse, Dio and Versu, the latter stood out like a sore thumb because it was still going places. Dio unfortunately appeared to be running out of ideas and Creatoverse had not been updated for months. Versu on the other hand was still producing new content, with Emily’s Blood and Laurels ready for release. Emily had been trying to produce Blood and Laurels for fifteen years and it only came close to seeing the light of day because of Versu, as Emily explains in the Gamasutra article :

It’s based on a story premise I’ve tried to write three times before, but could never finish because other engines weren’t up to the level of conversation and narrative modeling I needed. I was so excited that it finally worked in Versu, that I finally had an engine capable of pulling it off.

It’s probably the most plot-heavy, agency-rich piece of IF I’ve ever written. There were characters you could kill off during the first act or wind up romantically involved with at the end. There were hugely more scenes than you could ever see in a single play through. At one point I estimated that one pass through the story would show you something less than 10 percent of the possible text.

Another revelation from the article is that there were other stand alone apps in the pipeline, what these were is not discussed but they will not see the light of day now. I remain extremely disappointed that Linden Lab have decided to not only close Versu, but also that they have not allowed those willing to try and further develop the project, the opportunity to do so. Having such a potentially wonderful project gaining dust on a shelf is beyond wasteful.

Personally I feel Linden Lab should have negotiated a deal whereby they got royalties from titles produced via Versu. However having made the decision they have and knowing that managers can never be wrong, even when they clearly are, I would not expect any shift in attitude from Linden Lab over this. I remain convinced that Linden Lab have made a bad call here, but it is their right to make that bad call.

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