As Lev Manovich states it in her piece “The Database,” society has recently—in the past 20 years—entered into a chaotic system where pieces that were once structured and organized have fallen into unmanageable disarray.  The narrative model that was once used to view the world and that was relied on to structure the world’s “collection of images, texts, and other data” has been replaced.  We now see the world as a database, a collection of algorithms and the symbolic form of the computer age.

One of the distinctions that I found most interesting between narrative and database models was the concept of being finished.  Narratives almost always have an ending, or a conclusion that brings all of the story’s actions to a close.  Some databases that hybrid with narratives, such as video games, also have endings, which appear at the end of each goal or task assigned: shoot everyone around; get to the checkpoint first; retrieve a certain item, etc.  But, databases that are web-based, and most of them are these days, can never be said to be finished.  Their content can be easily added to, edited, or even deleted, which “contributes to its antinarrative logic.”  Each hyperlink or reference that is added to this one database splits its trajectory of into another direction, linking it with a million other databases, a million other trajectories, and a million other possibilities.  Even if these changes blend seamlessly with the original database, because they’ve occurred over time they are no longer considered part of the “story” but have created a collection.

Gilles Deleuze concurs with this in “Postscript on the Societies of Control” when he writes “in societies of control one is never finished with anything.”  These societies are analogous to the world-models that Manovich describes, and the one of control he refers to the database we view the world as now.  Roland Barthes makes the same connection in “The Death of the Author,” by deemphasizing the importance and role of the author.  He states that “to give a text an Author is to impose a limit on the text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.”  Authors create endings; scriptors create extensions.  Barthes also connects with Monovich’s assertion that the database has taken priority over narrative when he writes that “it is language which speaks, not the author…to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’.”  The only question that is left is one of cause-and-effect: did the development of the database trigger the death of the author, or was it the death of the author that forced society to create the database?

I read Nick Montfort’s history; I read the instructions; I played both The Dreamhold and The Warbler’s Nest.  Flashback to my Grandfather’s computer: MS DOS commands and floppy disks.  I’ve played interactive fiction before.  Of course, I didn’t know its name; it was just another digital game among Wheel of Fortune, Monopoly, Golf.  I didn’t like it then; and I didn’t like it now.

I started with an open mind: when I got stuck, I made a map; I read the directions again; I tried unusual commands; I asked the game for hints.  I still could not find my way through Dreamhold’s halls or the second egg in The Warbler.  I got frustrated.  I walked in mental and virtual circles.  Too many choices and nothing visual or physical I could hold on to.  Then I recalled that I had felt blind and lost before.  So I quit.

According to Montfort, Interactive Fiction evolved to incorporate graphics and some even became adaptations of popular novels (3).  This sounded like a promising upgrade; after all, who doesn’t like a book with illustrations or a movie adaptation of a book?  “Hard core” literature critics or book fans may argue that looking at pictures or watching a film “dumbs down” the content and “spoon feeds” information to a participant–as it foists the artist’s and director’s interpretation of the work into our minds and leaves little room for personal interpretation.  However, these add-ins and adaptations can also enhance the reading experience for the veteran and scaffold it for the novice.

Thus, I decided to take IF for one last spin.  I found a version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy IF Game that supposedly had graphics.  This certainly would made things easier–or so I thought.  The interface was more appealing: constructed like a hand-held game console, I felt more at home clicking the cardinal direction-buttons to give travel commands and typing into a single bar instead of a large empty screen.  Only 15 moves later, I was still wandering in the virtual dark and could not find my way out of the first room.

I can appreciate IF’s simplicity and its art in the digital genre; however, my brain cannot “get into” this type of game.  I can easily become spiritually lost into a physical book of just words–where my mind decides what to see and can pick up on the subtle hints the author scatters among the leaves.  However, everything is there in plain, physical sight and the story is decided.  I don’t have to do any work; I just have to accept what’s there.  I take comfort in this constancy.  The awareness of my physical and mental presence dissolves as I simply take in the words on the page like breath–instead of the constant mindfulness and thinking I engage in solving the mysteries of Interactive Fiction.  This uncertainty and unknown makes me feel physically lost in a digital realm.

In Nick Montfort’s article, Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era, Montfort goes into great detail about the history of Interactive Fiction as well as some of its unique qualities. The statement that stood out to me the most was, “This version [of Adventure] came out in 1976, complete with puzzles and fantasy elements, and it was an instant hit — work in the computer industry supposedly ground to a halt while practically every person with access to a computer tried to solve Adventure.” My question, after reading that statement, is,

What does this say about our society? 

This game came out in the mid-seventies, and, even then, the computer industry came to a halt as every person that could get their hands on a computer, stopped and played this game. If this happened in the seventies, and technology and the obsession of it has only increased, then if something revolutionary came out in the technology world, what would society do today? Perhaps our society was and is too obsessed and engulfed in technology. Perhaps we rely on it too much. There aren’t very many things in this world that make work stop. A family crisis or  an attack on our nation’s Capital cause work to stop. But a piece of Interactive Fiction? It seems too extreme to be true.

As time has progressed, have we let ourselves become taken over by technology? We do most of our work on computers; I’m even writing this blog post on my MacBook Pro. We have our iPhones and our Droïds hooked to our sides at most times. We can now post our pictures instantly to Instagram. The iPad has made portable computers even more portable. Perhaps we are so constantly using our technological devices that we no longer notice that we’re stopping work to see something new, or, even, something old but so readily available because of our advances in technology. How much less work do we get done because of our phones and our computers? It is so easy, perhaps too easy, to open a browser and look at anything.

As our successes in technology continue, how will it affect our ability to work and get things done? We may just be setting ourselves up for failure.

(Adventure can supposedly be found here, though, I couldn’t find it, as hard as I tried: http://ifarchive.org/)

After reading Nick Montfort’s Fourth Era piece, I decided to play our assigned interactive fiction The Dreamhold in the good spirit of digital media and get the iPhone version of it. To me I was taken aback at first by the fact that interactive fiction was being explored by developers onto new mediums of operations. As Montfort alluded to, book formats of interactive fiction came out shortly with popular stories such as The Hobbit in this form. In the same way, the iPhone and iPad versions, as I started to play, kept the same type of format as needed for all traditional interaction fictions: namely, I type in a typical response, “examine”, “north”, “look at”, etc. and it blurts out a response in which I can creatively imagine myself as the protagonist in the world described by the set of codes given by the programmer through the computer, or in this case, the iPhone. Yet the app expanded on this a bit, where a set of help options and settings were available to me, as well as an easy-to-access map, etc. In one sense, the iPhone version took out some of the essence of what I think interactive fiction is: that is, to place you in an unfamiliar environment and for you as the “interactor” to figure out exactly what’s going on through text. In a way, the text was your only hope to play the game and not only interact with the world given to you in the game but you as the player interacting with the text. Any possible traces of clues would be explored. Here, not only could I easily access any sort of hint from what was given but I could ask for help from a third-party, namely, the “narrator.” While Montfort argues that a third-party “narrator” can and should be used to create and cause a more distinctive and unique chain of events that happen in the world to make it more immersive, and though I do understand that part of what the first section of Dreamhold attempts to do is to introduce newcomers into the world of interactive fiction, I also believe that the use of the narrator as a help guide loses to a unique aspect of interactive fiction: namely the sense of being lost! It’s from this sense that I wanted to play further, explore the world, and let loose my imagination. From it I grew to appreciate interactive fiction in the first place and I believe causes many people to continue to enjoy it today.

The first major question that was brought to my attention through Nick Montfort’s article, “Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era,” was what constitutes as literature? Webster’s dictionary defines literature as “writings in prose or verse; especially writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest” (Merriam-Webster). This definition made me ponder whether or not interactive fiction constitutes as literature. Many of the works of interactive fiction are, indeed, written in forms of prose and use various narrative techniques to tell a story or a plot. The difference between interactive fiction and literature in the traditional sense is that, in classic literature, the author narrates the story completely without reader interaction or input. In contrast, interactive fiction allows the “interactor”—or reader—to inform their own story and pattern of narration; the commands given by the “interactor” determine the computer’s narration, essentially indicating that the audience can determine rhetoric based on their choices (Montfort 2).

Interactive fiction affords possibilities that are impossible in print literature. While choose your own adventure books offer readers various decisions along their journey, interactive fiction allows the audience to view images that simulate real life experiences and incorporate personal text within the narration. Readers become a part of the story in a way that is unfeasible in traditional literature. Additionally, interactive fiction ensures that the reader is knowledgeable about the text before the “interactor” can proceed in the narration. Montfort states that progress can only be made “because the interactor, like one who solves a literary riddle, has deeply understood the working of this unusual world” and the text within (Montfort 5). The audience must read and comprehend the text before advancing in the storyline whereas readers of print literature can continue reading without understanding the textual content. Interactive fiction forces readers to explore and understand the text in ways that cannot be enforced in traditional literature.

The journey through interactive fiction ensures greater analysis and comprehension in order for the narration to continue. Furthermore, interactive fiction attempts to bridge the gap between literature and video games through a complex weaving of text, textual analysis, real-life simulation, and interactive role-playing. While Monfort realizes that interactive fiction does not produce the same level of in-depth textual analysis like traditional literature, he is optimistic about the future opportunities and progression of interactive literature as he believes it will be able to “[further develop]…the ability to narrate” (Montfort 7). If this form of digital media is continually developed, it will be able to bridge the gap between “the literary establishment, the art world, and academia,” creating the opportunity for many users to study and understand the capabilities of language through this digital medium (Montfort 7). In conclusion, interactive fiction can be viewed as a work of literature, yet its potential poses even greater possibilities in portraying text and narration through a literary lens.

The part of “Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era” which was most interesting to me was the IF created in 1998 titled “Bad Machine.”  The author tells us that the story begins with the question, “What do you want to do?” which differentiates this work from others at the very start.  Montfort tells readers that IF will normally give the readers a bit of background story before having them jump into the story, but this is clearly not the case with “Bad Machine.”  In this way, this text seems to me almost more interactive than even the others that came before it.  The person using the program is allowed an immediate opportunity to interact with the story, rather than having parts of it laid out for them, without allowing them a chance to choose what they want to do.

The bit of the story which Montfort includes in his article is almost incomprehensible to me.  He states that it includes a mixture of English and code, which I immediately found interesting in relation to the topics we have discussed in class.  Hayle discusses the importance of textons and scriptons in her article, and their usual separation in digital works.  Readers are usually allowed to ignore the underlying code, or textons, and focus primarily on the printed text on the screen.  In “Bad Machine,” the mixture of English and computer code within the interactive fiction reminds the reader that there is indeed an underlying code which makes the experience of any work of interactive fiction possible.  To me, the bit of text from “Bad Machine” made me uncomfortable because I am not used to looking at computer codes, and I was unable to understand the bit of story and how I would interact with it.  While this may not have been the case for many users of this interactive fiction, it does still make me wonder if the inclusion of code language had some effect on the limited success of this work.  It seems possible to me that code on the surface of a work of interactive fiction reminded users too much of the code underlying the story they were supposed to be interacting with, which could have taken away from there enjoyment of the story by constantly reminding them that they were talking to a computer and not entirely creating their own adventure.

The next era of interactive fiction, according to Nick Monfort, would give the genre more of a narrative quality and more options in usability. This conclusion to “Interactive Fiction’s Fourth Era” sparked a few questions for me. Namely, how would these new affordances change the genre of Interactive fiction for the better (or worse).

I admit that I don’t have much experience with text based interactive fiction. In fact, I have none besides what was done in class. From my limited knowledge, I imagine the framework of an IF work like a system of tree roots, growing in all different directions and intertwining at points. Choose a root and roll with it. Monfort’s proposed fourth era, however, looks a little different.

I think it would operate a lot like a video game. Maybe too much. The affordances of having many choices within a developed world, some leading to success and some to death remind me of the mission orientated games – especially when combined with the flashback ability that he suggests. Would this make interactive fiction just a video game that you control with text instead of a controller and joystick? To some extent, yes.

Another part of the fun or frustration is figuring out what the code wants you to say. It is limiting but can be comical if the programmers have a sense of humor. This puts a lot of control in the hands of the creator – I would argue more than that of a mission-oriented video game. Monfort suggests using a narrator in that “uses natural language generation techniques, rather than the fixed orthographic strings that are used in current systems.” From my understanding, this means less controlled responses, more response options; improv I stead of scripted entertainment.

Text-based interactive fiction in this Fourth Era seems more and more to me like a video game without the pictures. On one hand, these changes make interactive fiction more innovative and interesting for the common users. On the other, this change makes the medium lose some of what defines it: the script, the limited options, the dead ends, the constantly forward trajectory. On whether or not this is a bad thing: I’ll leave it up to the experts.

Ryan says in her Between Play and Politics: Dysfunctionality in Digital Art that the way in which to “judge a work experimental or ludic (or both) depends largely on the fun factor; experimental art is notorious for sacrificing pleasure to critical thinking.” I thought this was an interesting statement when I read it and I wondered how true of a statement this actually is and if it could be applied to non-digital art, such as a photograph. This made me immediately think of a piece called Piss Christ by Andres Serrano, a photograph which depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of the artist’s urine. This has always been a piece for me that where it clearly made sense what that artist was looking to say and the image was beautiful, until you realized this was urine. I have always had a bit of trouble getting past the disturbing method used by the artist. I think this is what Ryan means when she says that “experimental art is notorious for sacrificing pleasure to critical thinking.” Sarrano could have been deriving fun from shocking the viewer once they realized a revered religious icon was submerged in one of the world’s most vile liquids. That would beg the question of who determines the “fun factor” – the artist or the audience.

 Piss Christ would probably fall into the ludic dysfunctionality category based on Ryan’s definition. This is primarily based on her statement that “ludic dysfunctionality does not take itself seriously.” It’s hard to say with complete certainty how seriously Serrano meant his work to take itself, but it’s possible to conclude that due to the fact that this piece is taking a very serious image and immersing it in a non-serious substance in some way this piece is meant to be in some way fun.

While I understand the claim that “every reader’s experience is unique in some way to that individual; no one has the exact same experience,” I know that it is not entirely untrue. We see in classrooms and literary criticism that texts, while available for any interpretation, are defined by some similar traits and similarities in thinking. We find that discussions of literature follow a trend that leave us with an overarching idea of literature. What the point I think is being made here by sfoley2 is that the composition of the random text and literature had already intrinsic meanings and then their collaboration brings about a new meaning.

The cut and paste method is  an interesting method of bringing about a new meaning. Although random in composition, I can’t help but feel the author makes some decision in order, amount of words, types of sentences, and many other choices. There are so many options and choices an author can make and even the sources from which they come can frame and influence the author’s decisions. I can’t help but critique the method; while it helps diversify the language and bring multiple random literature together, I feel that it takes out a large part of the writing process. Finding the right words to say help make the piece an author’s original work. Unlike sampling, which would modify the words, the cut and paste is many different voices collaborated as one. No editing or modification. It just doesn’t seem genuine as an original work.

What makes this interesting is that even though the concept is not too young, it still brings a different type of literature to table. There’s a lot of new digital literature that we’re studying and being introduced to that messes with our perceptions and tastes as both English majors and literature enthusiasts. Then we see the cut and paste literature that changes how we view original literature even more. I find it refreshing to see a new appreciation for paper but also find the copy and pasting not genuine as a craft of original authorship.

Alexander Brahmstedt