Interactive fiction is an interesting combination of a game and a story. It is essentially based upon the concept of the user’s typing of text and the software’s response thereto. In his article, Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction, Nick Montfort quotes interactive fiction as being “a text-accepting, text-generating computer program; a potential narrative; a simulation of an environment or world; and a structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game.”

What I think is interesting is how interactive fiction resembles storytelling and how it can be manifested in the form of a game. You basically have a conversation with a computer. You type input in the form of a command or question, and the computer almost immediately responds to you with text output. Add a simulated world and a few basic goals, and you’ve got yourself a playable game that is based entirely on text input. Dennis G. Jerz’s instructions for interactive fiction describe how the player can do such things as move around, manipulate objects, interact with non-player characters, and save the game—all just by typing a command on the keyboard.

The way I see it, interactive fiction has a lot of resemblance to a role-playing game. Think about it; you are free to interact with a virtual environment in which you make decisions that make things happen immediately or influence events that happen later in the game. Each type of game has a set of goals that the player is responsible for completing. In both interactive fiction and a role-playing game, there is a character that the player can control. The only difference is that in a role-playing game, the player uses a controller to determine what happens instead of a keyboard.

Interactive fiction is a type of game that I have not previously considered before now. It is a unique and interesting type of game that I think has not received enough attention. I am still absolutely fascinated by how interactive fiction, as described by Montfort and Jerz, is so similar to a role-playing video game.