HNRS 353

When I played the three IF games for the first time I was struck by the differences in the games’ writing styles. The first game, Aisle, differs from the other two because it contains live dialogue. I don’t know if Bronze contains any live dialogue because I didn’t get that far, but the dialogue I encountered was mostly flashbacks to the time when “you,” I’m guessing you are Belle, lived there before. Aisle contains detailed descriptions of your surroundings, from the “bright plastic bags full of pale skin-tone shapes” to the specific names of foods you encounter. This descriptive style differs greatly from the writing in Shade. In Shade, the writer often dismisses items and repeats nondescript phrases: When you command the “work” to “examine floor,” the response is always “it’s a bit dusty.” Shade‘s lack of description, i found, was helpful in deciding which elements were important to the game. Aisle, however, was a bit more abstract and seemingly artistic. The author, it seemed, was trying to make a point about the power of IF in creating such dramatic imagery for the IF genre.

Bronze, as most probably discovered, was the most complex of the three games we played. There were complex descriptions, many rooms to explore and many tasks to complete that often required the acquisition of items from other rooms. Bronze is obviously designed for longer gameplay than Shade, which contains fewer descriptions and no dialogue. It is interesting, however, to consider the complex descriptions and dramatic thought and dialogue featured in the very short Aisle. I don’t know if the writer was trying to be funny or thought-provoking in his creation of the game but it was interesting to compare it to the other games.

Warning – spoiler for the game Shade

In the work by Nick Montfort Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction he says that “Many IF works have a goal that is explicitly presented or that becomes clear during interaction.” The game Shade as far as I can tell is one of the exceptions to the general IF rule. Shade does not have a clear goal nor does a goal become clear during interaction as far as I can tell. At the end it says:

>…
Nothing left to do. Time passes.
The sun crawls higher.
*** SHADE ***

This to me means that I have completed everything that I was supposed to. I have read this work of interactive fiction from beginning to end. But the goal or object of the game is left in the dark. At first I thought the object of the game was to get the shade over the window in your house open! As far as I could tell, the game was a navigation of the thoughts of a delirious person who had gone on a “desert festival” mentioned in the in-game travel guide and was now a lost hiker.  I repeatedly got the sense that the character I controlled was recalling his past of just before he got on the plane. I think in his thoughts he was confused and started to think it was reality. Halfway through I think his mind started to slip further and further as more and more sand starts to show up. Instead of figuring things out when sand is all around him and waking up to realize the situation (of his impending doom) he is still confused and does not grasp reality. I know this because when you turn off the stereo towards the end it sounds off one final report about hikers still missing, and the character says that it is “old news.” Does this mean he had a radio with him? or it was it just more confusion in his thoughts? Either way, he never snaps out of it and I assume he is lost for good, delirious in his thoughts and dying of thirst in the desert. That is my interpretation to this IF.

One thing that puzzled me greatly was the ‘figure’ at the end. I could not figure out who this ‘figure’ represented.Was this his shadow? a shade of himself? This part of the story truly puzzled me and if anyone can shed some light on it I would be grateful. This is the second to last response from my command input from the IF:

<examine book
The tiny figure crawls out from under the sands. It’s dead.

“You win,” it says. “Okay, my turn again.”

This made little sense to me. I would like to know what some of your thoughts are, my classmates, on the story and ending of “Shade.” What do you think happened? How do you interpret this part of the story?

On a final note, I think the game was well done and is a good representative of the capacity of IF games. My original thoughts was that all IF games would be adventures where the hero has to find objects and solve puzzles. In “shade,” the world you are in seems normal but progressively becomes stranger and stranger as weird things start happening. Are you in reality or a dream state? Does walking through a mirror to complete a puzzle mean anything? Let me know your thoughts!

I have never played an interactive fiction game before. Interactive games require the player to think out their actions before actually acting them out. The game will also tell the player that they cannot complete a certain action or that completing an action will have no effect. Games that are not considered interactive fiction allow the player to act without thinking. Much of the action in those games comes from basic instinct. Interactive fiction games (or works) require a lot of strategy from the player. Each different answer I use with the story in the game Aisle provides a different scenario to follow. There are many options to type in and it forces the player to become more creative. Being new to interactive fiction, I find these games interesting but I feel like they could get tedious and/or boring after a while. There are only so many scenarios one person can come up with, so the player comes to a creative roadblock after a while. After reading the description of interactive fiction games with instructions on how to play, the most common commands, etc., I was able to play more effectively. I don’t know about other people, but I tend to skip the instructions part of the game and find out for myself how to play. That is easy to do in games like Super Mario Brothers but I think it is almost impossible to play these games without reading the instructions.

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.