So I was thinking back on whether I had played any mostly test based games, because I have not played Adventure or any of the others Montford mentions. I remembered playing Dope Wars on my older brother’s calculator back in the day. I am assuming most people have played this game or a re-make of it on Facebook but I was intrigued to see if it could fit into Montfort’s IF definitions. Montfort says, “text can also be considered semiotically to be any set of signifiers; thus IF works (and perhaps other works as well) that contain graphics, sound, or video can be accommodated in this way.” In Drug Wars you don’t type in commands but click on what you want via promts that come from situations or ‘narratives’ that are generated from the game. I am not sure that typing in commands is a requirement to be considered a work in IF, but in Drug Wars you have to click on your responses and navigate throughout the simuated world. The above quote, leads me to beleive that yes Drug Wars can be included in the IF category. I could not find any videos from the old calculator version of Drug Wars but I found one played on Wii that can be found here. It does have alot of graphics etc but ink the principle behind it can land this game in the category of IF. What do you all think?
This is an interesting idea. I’d say that Drug Wars doesn’t count as interactive fiction, primarily because there’s no emphasis on exploration or puzzle solving. There is problem-solving, to be sure, but the game is more of a simulation than a narration.