If have been searching around sites on IF and have noticed that Quest, in general, does not seem to have as good a reputation as other formats. Why do you suppose this is? I happen to like Quest.

When was the last time you played a game in Quest that was any good?

O.K. so you got me on that one. But the bad games are not reflective of the authoring program itself are they? I'm sure that some of the authors of the poorer games would have created a game with the same amount of sucktatude on any format. I am curious as to why the Quest software itself is looked down upon. Is it only because of the games created thus far? What happens when one of us releases a bad ass game on Quest? Will the software suddenly get praise and recognition? Most of you on this forum seem to be way more knowledgeable at the programming than I am so I am sure your projects are going to be very good. Do you think that we can turn around the opinion of Quest with quality releases?

Systems like Quest tend to get judged on the quality of the games written with them and the quality of the games written with Quest so far hasn't been anything to write home about. On top of that, from a writing point of view, Quest doesn't offer anything that other systems don't: Adrift has the GUI side of things neatly cornered and Tads and Inform have the coding side of things. Quest's GUI isn't anywhere near as easy to use as Adrift and its coding side isn't anywhere near as powerful or flexible as Tads or Inform. Which leaves it pretty much missing out in both areas.

If someone wrote a great game in Quest, would that change the IF community's perception of it? Maybe. After all, no one outside of the Adrift community gave two hoots about Adrift until an Adrift game did well in the IFComp in 2002. But maybe not. Quest needs a huge upgrade before it ever gains any kind of respect (it needs an UNDO command for a start).

As for the odds of a great game coming along? Well, I've been hanging around the forum for over three years now waiting for one and so far all I see are the kind of games that are barely even worth playing. There have been perhaps three or four Quest games out of the dozens I've played that have actually been worth playing, but none of them I could honestly say were great games.