Before reading Nick Montfort’s article, I watched his video explaining Interactive Fiction. I thought it was fascinating- the idea of having a machine smart enough to recognize text rather than pre-programmed controls was very interesting to me. It seemed to me that Interactive Fiction “works” (Montfort doesn’t like to call them games because they have no goal, keep no score, etc.”) are much more intellectually stimulating than normal video games. Instead of just thinking about our diegetic character’s next move and performing the small motions that correspond to it with a video game controller, we have to think about our diegetic character’s next move and how to correctly phrase that movement in words. I think if they could take this concept and put it into a game for children, it would help them learn to put actions into words and help with spelling and grammar. It could actually be educational.
The concept of IF sounded simple to me, until I actually tried to do it. The computer didn’t recognize almost anything I typed in and I had to go back to the tutorial on multiple occasions in all the games. However, when I got it right, I was shocked with how the computer followed my storyline. It molded my next steps in the game and kept a riveting storyline going, no matter what I typed in. It was cool to have control over what was coming next and not just have to follow the pre-determined path of the game’s creator. You could play any game hundreds of times and have completely different storylines each time.
I think the concept of interactive fiction in gaming is fascinating and innovative. As frustrated as I was, I enjoyed playing the games and creating my own stories.
I believe interactive fiction has the capacity to be games, a work of literature, or even both. I do not recall in any of our reading or discussions that games have to be winnable (ex: Farmville, cityville, cow clicker, WoW; none of these are winnable, but are considered games). Albeit there are different definitions of what winning is, some may consider it a favorable end to the game, being the best compared to others, or even fully exploring the game world. Much of IF is orienteering of unique game worlds. Montfort does not believe IF are games because there is no goal and no score kept. I would argue that Bronze in particular is a game with a goal. You are told that there are 55 rooms and as you discover more rooms, you are struck with the desire to discover all the rooms. The top bar keeps track of how many rooms you have visited, which in a sense keeps track of the score. I would consider discovering all the rooms a “win” in itself and also saving the Beast. Each puzzle that is solved within Bronze is also a “win” or completion of a goal. I might even consider Aisle a game because each time I discovered a word that generated an output; I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was a mental exercise for me to think of all the possible things I could do in such a situation.