The Results of Interactive Fiction

At first glance I thought interactive fiction was purely focused on creating innovation in the structure of a fictional story. Its so vastly different than any form preceding it, almost annoyingly calling attention to this fact. But after experiencing interactive fiction, I realized the structure is merely a tool to get the reader to focus on the progression of the story itself. True, in many cases we are at first solely focused on “winning” or the end result of the story. But this is also true with most conventionally structured stories. We ultimately judge a book’s worth on the level of satisfaction with which the ending provides us (in relation to everything else that happens before the ending).

Interactive fiction somewhat forces you to focus on the present as a means of getting to the end. We can see this idea best in Violet, because the game won’t allow you to make it to the end until you have completed a certain combination of events. Once you figure out the remedy to one distraction, another inevitably pops up. There are oodles of combinations that will yield  a favorable result, and even more that yield an unfavorable one. But the fact that there are so many different possible stories suggests that its not the end result (of which there are only two possibilities- good and bad) that is important, its the experience you have getting there. I also noticed this in all three of the stories, in that as long as you continue the game (i.e. do not close the window-I figured this out the hard way) every step of your progress is documented and saved. Being able to scroll up and down to view all of the errors you’ve made or new information you’ve discovered, really calls attention to the story, and not the end.