between two people is interactive, however, since both parties listen to what the other
has to say and will then say something related or in response to that. As another exam-
ple, a strict lecture is not interactive since the lecturer reads a prepared speech without
any input from the audience. A discussion group, however, is interactive, since the pro-
fessor or leader of the discussion will answer the students’ questions and listen to and
evaluate their ideas. Games are interactive since they allow both the player and the
computer to determine the shape of that particular game. Computer games are not
being especially interactive when they play long cut-scenes over which the player has
no control.
Interactive Fiction: A term originally coined by Infocom, interactive fiction is an
alternate name for text adventures. Some people use interactive fiction to describe any
games that use text to describe scenes and include a text parser, even if graphics are
also included.See alsoText Adventure.
Interactive Movie: A term coined by those working in games who wish to call their
profession something more glamorous than what it is. This is similar to how the comic
book industry sometimes attempts to call some of its longer and more sophisticated
works “graphic novels.” Typically, interactive movies involve more and longer
cut-scenes than your average game. Unfortunately, the makers of so-called “interactive
movies” typically add more movie than they do interactivity, resulting in works that are
almost always not very good movies and lack the interactivity to be good games.
Inverse Kinematics: An animation technique whereby a joint in a character’s skele-
ton is moved to a desired location and the joints that depend on or are influenced by that
joint are automatically moved to the correct location. For example, if animating a
humanoid, the hand could be moved toward a door handle and the elbow and shoulder
would automatically move to reasonable positions.See alsoSkeletal Animation.
I/O: SeeInput/Output.
Isometric: Isometric is defined to mean “equality of measure,” particularly in refer-
ence to drawing objects. If one were isometrically drawing a cube from a distance with
one of the points of the cube pointing directly toward the viewer, the lines of the cube
would all be of the same length and would not use any foreshortening. Games such as
Civilization II,SimCity 3000, andStarCraftare drawn isometrically. This allows a game
to be drawn from a somewhat 3D overhead view, which can then be scrolled around in
all directions, without actually needing to involve a 3D rendering engine. The perspec-
tive on the world is technically wrong, but players do not seem to mind. Also referred to
as a “three-quarters” view of the game world.See alsoThree-Quarters View.
LAN: An acronym for a Local Area Network. These networks typically consist of a
small number of computers in a specific area networked to each other but not necessar-
ily to the Internet or other networks.
LAN Party: Held when a bunch of friends get together, bring their computers to one
central location, and play multi-player games over them. Typically the fast “ping” times
allow players to have much faster and more lag-free games than are available over the
Internet or other long-distance networks.
Linear: When the only way to get from point A to point B is via the line segment that
connects them, we say that the movement is linear. Linear implies a lack of choice
Glossary 663