After watching the video introduction and reading about interactive fiction, I must say it was very hard for me to relate to or even understand what type of games this genre represented. I have never witnessed someone playing these games or even heard about them until now. This leads me to understand why they had not been analyzed until recently.

The idea of this type of game does interest me, but it seems incredibly limited. The fact that these games only recognize certain words could make the “work” difficult and therefore frustrating to complete. However, I find it interesting that it allows the interactor the ability to essentially make the story for themselves. Through the process of typing different words and commands into the computer, they are making the theoretical story for themselves and interacting with the fiction.

This obviously opposes the common form of fiction, books. In fiction, the reader has absolutely no control over what happens in the story. They cannot explore the repercussions of altering the normal route that the main character takes. Although stories can be extremely compelling, they do not offer the ability to delineate from the set path.

Overall, I think the idea of interactive fiction is interesting, but I believe I will need to play or experience one of these works first hand before I truly understand what they are about. Similar to the way fiction in books does not allow you to do some of the things that interactive fiction does, I do not believe reading about interactive fiction gives one the full effect of the IF game itself.