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Magic Words - Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century
An anonymous reader writes "1UP has just published a nine-part article on Interactive Fiction, the politically correct name for what used to be called text adventure games (e.g. Zork, Stationfall, etc.). The feature includes an overview of the genre and its history, lengthy interviews with the genre's leading current creators, and resources for aspiring IF writers. Anyone who has fond memories of typing their way through dank caverns or outsmarting leather goddesses and ravenous bugblatter beasts with nothing but a keyboard should read this -- not just for the nostalgia, but to see what's become of the format."
Everquest, IMHO, beats the hell out of any text adventure I ever played, ever!
It also is extremely popular and requires a good deal time, i.e. investment, to play and play well.
Of course, no game is a substitute for reading or writing something. I do not ever begin to believe the written word is dying. Even if 90% of what is published is garbage, there is a ton of very good stuff that is decades, nay even centuries old. Pick up some of those...
-Craig.
Interactive fiction games are actually not very interactive.
The word interactive suggests some kind of system capable of adjusting and modify itself to your reactions in some manner. Such a system should do its best to watch your movements, whatever they are, trying hard to provide a reasonable response to them. Interactivity is all about giving you as most freedom as possible. Interactive software is expected to allow you to do almost anything you wish and provide reasonable and interesting responses to all your actions. Chris Crawford refers to the process as a listen/think/speak loop between two actors, and the most thinks you can "say" that your listener will understand, the more interesting is the converstaion.
However, "interactive fiction" is filled by constraints. The game limits as much as it can the things you can do: you can't move to any place, you can't take anything, you can't speak to other people, and when you're able you can't say almost anything to them. You're expected to find the "commands" the game understand, and the game world is filled with random constraints called "puzzles". While I expect the presence of conflicts and obstacles in a game, the moment there is a predefined, designed set of closed solutions you almost can't talk about interactivity anymore. You should create problems instead of puzzles, as any modern game designer would say. Problems are interactive and solutions beyond the creator's grasp are expected to exist given the broad number of actions at your disposal. Puzzles, however, are not interactive. There is a solution, find it or you're stuck and punished. But the action you need to do is hidden to you, even if logical. You should figure the exact word or sentence: if it where presented to you, the puzzle whould be so simple there would be no point to its existance. You're fighting the interface.
Interactive fiction is out of touch of modern game designing techniques. There is nothing wrong with text-only interfaces and textual descriptions, but the whole genre needs a deep rethinking if it is going to be something more than fine books so difficult to read that you need to figure puzzles before you can turn the page (and this in the better case).