Post-Print Fiction

Salvador Plascencia makes us aware of his role as the author in The People of Paper.  He is not a separate entity from the text but is inside the text.  Federico de la Fe always feels “the weight of a distant force looking down on him” and this turns out to be Saturn, the character Plascencia embodies (18).  So not only are we aware of Plascencia as the author, but the characters themselves are aware of him.  Salvador Plascencia gives himself a passive role however, because the characters only seem to think that Saturn is watching them, not controlling them.  At time, Plascencia cannot even do this.   The characters try to manipulate the text by living in lead shells, thinking only of the flowers, and finally overpowering Plascencia through their voices.  We see this through Saturn’s text getting smaller and pushed to the corner of the page as Little Merced, Smiley, Federico de la Fe, and others tell their own stories.  The characters break away from the convention of the novels by writing sideways, something we’ve already seen in House of Leaves.  Little Merced even finds a way to hide her and other stories so that even we cannot see it with blocks of black ink.

I said that the characters over power Plascencia, but I can’t really say that’s correct.  Plascencia gives the illusion that the characters have agency, and I think it serves as a way to show that the author is not always in control of the story. The story can go in different directions that the author may not have anticipated at first.

I also thought it was interesting to see that Salvador Plascencia commented on how much the author’s life influences the text.  Liz and Cami are definitely not happy that they have become a part of the text.  Liz does not like the fact Plascencia has turned her “into [his] Rita Hayworth,” making her out to be some bad person that he is telling everyone about (137).  Cami feels exposed because all these people “say they know [her]” in more intimate ways than she would like (226).  Whether these two women were actually a part of Plascencia’s life or just another aspect of his character as Saturn, it still affects the novel and comments on the fact that authors are not separate from the text but weave in and out of it.

Did anyone use a walkthrough while playing one of these games?  I attempted to do most everything on my own, but if I got stuck for an extended period of time I decided to save myself the trouble and refer to a guide.  If we think about IF as a game, this would certainly count as cheating; but if IF is just a story that we’re participating in, is it the same thing?  Can you “cheat” at fiction?

With a traditional book you can flip forward and read ahead, or read the back, or go online and read a plot summary or someone else’s analysis.  Is reading the back of a book or the dust jacket “cheating”?  You would be gaining information about the story from a place external to the main text.  I know most people avoid online synopses about a book they’re reading – some even avoid reading the back – because they are worried about spoilers.  Perhaps “cheating” is to IF as “spoiling” is to a traditional book.

But let’s imagine that spoiling gives us a 2-dimensional view of a book, allowing us to look forward and backward through the narrative’s timeline as we please.  With IF, cheating gives us a 3-dimensional view, as it can sometimes show us things that are “hidden”, things that we never would have noticed in the first place.

For example, the game I played was Bronze.  I finished it, and some of the stuff I referenced in the guide I probably would have figured out if I had been paying more attention, but there’s one entire plot branch (involving a gong) that almost certainly would never have occurred to me, had I not seen it in the guide.  Easter eggs come in here, too – things that the author has deliberately hidden in the game.   Did any of you type in the command “xyzzy” while playing Violet?  Go give it a try.  How would you even know to do that, unless you knew it was in there beforehand?

What I find really interesting about IF are plot points, information, or easter eggs that are “embedded” into the text, tucked in someplace for the player to find them.  Either through cheating or just extreme patience.  That’s something you can’t really do with a traditional book.  Though in a weird way, as others have mentioned, House of Leaves attempts to cross that gap.  Danielewski veiled information in footnotes, codes, or symbols, and although he could not outright hide information in a tucked away space only accessible with the right command input, he set up a pretty close textual equivalent.

“i’m running out of time i’m out of step and closing down and never sleep for wanting hours the empty hours of greed and uselessly always the need to feel again the real belief of something more than mockery”

Closedown. I think the quote from Mr. Smith says it all for me. This kind of interactive fiction closes me down. I feel mocked by the game, more than challenged, or even engaged. I put the 60 minutes exactly for each one and that was an unbelievable effort in itself. I did not like it and had absolutely no enjoyment in it. Either I was so discouraged by my hopeless performance and dead-ends (and therefore completely put-off by the whole exercise) or I am simply not wired for this kind of adventure. Every hour was an “empty hour of greed.” I was determined to find completion, an acceptable ending, and was driven by the greed for the closure. But in the end, all that was closed was me.

I spent a few hours playing Bronze, Violet, and Shade (Varicella) in preparation for class this week, and my previous experience with this genre helped me get beyond the opening hurdles in each.  Encountering “Interactive Fiction” in this class has been like running into an old friend who has changed dramatically since you last saw him.  I.F. seems like a respectable guy, all dressed up and running with an impressive crowd of academics from the likes of MIT, but when I look at him closely I cannot help but see “Text Adventure Game,” my old friend T.A.G., the simple guy with the small vocabulary who was great at helping me pass the time sitting at my 386 PC years ago.  Good times.

I have created “interactive fiction” myself in the past.  I never thought of it as writing or fiction, though; at the time, I was simply writing a computer game with the skills I had (using words), without requiring the ones I lacked (using graphics).  Designing an interactive game of this sort seems to me to involve more game design than creative writing skills.  A game is designed with one or more paths in mind; if the user completes all required tasks in the correct order, a certain outcome will be attained (player will get a prize, slay the dragon, etc.).  If the player deviates from this path, they will fall short of the goal, either becoming stuck or reaching the end of the game.  Fiction, on the other hand, is usually designed with multiple possible interpretations. The clever author does not tell the reader *everything* that happens, but rather leaves some feelings and actions for the reader to guess.

The documentary Get Lamp includes an interview with a gentleman who thought he found a bug in an early I.F. game because when he typed “drink bottle” he literally drank the bottle, which then disappeared.  From the game design perspective, I think it is far more likely that the designer thought about what to do if a player typed “drink bottle,” and decided it would be clever to allow the character to consume the bottle.*  Most fiction writers I know would be quite bored doing the basics of game design, such as defining every possible command and the associated outcomes, which are frequently repetitive (go east: cannot go that way, etc.).

*<Correction, Nov. 2: “drink bottle” was a real bug, per the comment on this post from Jason Scott.>

I once created an interactive game based on my job at the time, working in the IT department of a hospital, for the enjoyment of my coworkers.  As I recall, the object was to print and deliver patient reports to the nurse stations in the hospital before the deadline.  The player was confronted with many challenges unique to our workplace, such as a “herd of visitors” that would crush anyone attempting to use the hospital elevator rather than the stairs.  There was also a troll lurking amid the electrical cables beneath the floor of the computer room, causing mischief.

I must admit that my game had one or two interesting story lines, and that it reflected some modestly creative thinking on my part.  Compared to my efforts at writing fiction, however, creating the story line of an interactive game seems much flatter and less complex.  When I write fiction, I strive to create a story that works on several different levels, supporting both literal and figurative interpretations.  A game, in my experience, typically operates on a purely literal level (examine table, get lamp, etc.), rarely venturing into symbolism.

So, while I understand that interactive fiction does involve some elements of creativity and storytelling, I believe the end result does not come close to the experience of reading a work of fine literature.  I think of I.F. as more game than story.  I suppose it depends upon how much effort the designer puts into the writing.  Simply coming up with lists of verbs, objects, and responses is not creative writing as I define it.  In his YouTube video “Exploring Interactive Fiction,” Nick Monfort mentions what at least one designer attempted in terms of character development, which moves a bit closer to creative writing.  I think future designers should try varying motivations and emotions, and strive to provide non-linear outcomes.

In other words, I suspect that a simple poem or short story can convey a far richer and more complex experience to the reader than any of the forms of interactive fiction we have considered.  As an example, I humbly offer a poem comprising only commands a user might enter in an interactive fiction game:

CLIMB UP
EXAMINE TRACK
OPEN DOOR
LOOK BACK

In interactive fiction, the commands above are likely to produce results that are strictly linear; in poetry, they serve as pointers to limitless meanings.

That’s a command I often used. I bounced back and forth Varicella and Violet, spending most of my time with the former. I found the entertainment I got from these games to be peculiar. Even though these are ostensibly stories and works of fiction, much of the satisfaction I got from these works was when I choose an action that yielded tangible results. Often I was frustrated by trying to do something the constraints of the game or something that did not advance the story, for example using the verb “wait” in Varicella. Doing so only prompts the response “Time Passes” Ah, sweet progress, what a fine thing you are! But when I did do something of consequence in a game, for example finding the airplane tickets, I felt a sense of accomplishment. This is something I usually associate with “conventional” games more than with interactive fiction. When you’re reading a choose your own adventure story, I think the enjoyment stems from exploring the various storyline. There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer, just different narrative conclusions. I immediately think of the game shown in our last class. With these games however my enjoyment was more along the lines of just “playing correctly.” That is to say, when I did something like find the tickets, it was like preforming a fatality for the first time in mortal combat. SEARCH JACKET!!! Oh man I found the tickets! Sooo dope.

I think this might stem because I never spent much time with these games and for all practical purposes am still a novice, so when I attempt to do something it is usually ineffectual, those increasing the satisfaction from typing in an action that pays off. I think this hampered my experience of these games. As many have pointed out in their own posts, the role of the gamer with these games is storyteller. Since I’m having trouble conforming to the rules of these games, my capacity to act as story teller is impaired. I found this frustrating when I wanted to find out if anyone was coming up the stairs in violet are when I wanted to investigate what scuffed my foot in Varicella. But I couldn’t figure out how. Whether I used the command “x” or “search” or “find”. It was these points I instructed my character to explode. Or kill, though much to my dissatisfaction I could not kill the peanut butter in my apartment.

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.

            I started playing Bronze on Thursday, and I didn’t get too far. Like several classmates mentioned earlier, it can be really frustrating, even with that command guide page, to work through the IF game. However, one thing I noticed about the IF game was how similar the format is to some of the RPG games I used to play growing up. One in particular was Sierra’s Quest for Glory. Like in Bronze, the player had to choose which direction to go, whether it was East, West, North, and South. Then, once a player entered a new “room,” he could observe or examine the objects, perhaps open doors, or even talk to characters within that section. There are two differences between my old favorite RPG and Bronze. One, instead of an old graphics card powering the spaces or “rooms” in the game, Bronze describes the scene with paragraphs. The other difference is that instead of typing commands, the player could use their mouse pad and a cursor that changed icons to look like an eye for examining, a mouth for talking to characters, a hand for grabbing or picking up objects, and another icon for moving North, East, West, or South. In Quest for Glory, the player still had to use the same type of strategies and critical thinking that is in Bronze. The gamer also still had read an extensive amount text to understand their objectives, to communicate with characters, to ask questions, and to familiarize themselves with the given setting. Frankly even the speed of Quest for Glory’s game play was very similar to Bronze.

            I noticed Jon had mentioned “I find it hard to believe that there could be a market for Interactive Fiction which would be a considerable downgrade from the games that Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii now offer.” In a way, Interactive Fiction is already somewhat represented in the video games played on consoles like the X-box 360 or Playstation 3. Games like L.A. Noire provide a more narrative and text influence format to gamers. Another example would be the old P.C. game Myst, which was also released on the 32-bit consoles. But, I agree with what Jon says about how graphics have been consuming society. And lately I have been steering clear of most video games. Graphics are substituting for a lot of the text that we would see in the older IF games, but the narration and dialogue still play a stronger role in certain strategy or RPG style games. What I’m proposing is that there is still an audience out there that is reminiscent of the gamers who were playing more text based strategy games. I was talking to David Kennedy, and we both agree that there is still an untouched market out there for Interactive Fiction. Games like L.A. Noire or even the original Resident Evil will emerge, with stimulating eye candy graphics; however, it will be the text within the games that really drives the gamer to want to keep playing and finish the game.

            I also read Lauren Walker’s post; she mentions, “The word ‘interactive’ seems to suggest that experiencing other forms of fiction is a purely passive experience, which we all know it is not.” While I agree that other forms of fiction are certainly not passive, I don’t think that the word “interactive” in Interactive Fiction” is really being used to suggest passivity in other forms of fiction. I would like to think back to what Manovich says about the theory of syntagm and paradigm dimensions. I think that Interactive Fiction, rather than other text based fiction, falls more into the paradigmatic dimension because gamers have to imagine the choices they make before they can carry on. And, I agree with Lauren that House of Leaves could be as close to an IF as any other book because it is less syntagmatic than most other books. I think that House of Leaves on an E-Reader is even less syntagmatic because you have to imagine and choice your path rather than just look at all the choices on one page. Perhaps, one variable that separates House of Leaves from IF games, or at least some IF games, is that there technically only one ending to House of Leaves. No matter where you decide to go or what sections you read first, the fate of each character in the novel ends the same way…

…or does it? Externally or explicitly, yes the same things happen to the characters, but readers certainly imagine new ways to interpret the meaning behind the ending of the book by choosing different paths.

            What I am trying to get at here is that House of leaves is closer to an IF game than most books, AND text-based Interactive Fiction is as close to a video game than most books as far as their interactivity, their ability to choose. Oddly enough, one problem with video games becoming more interactive is that they are beginning to lose more of the options or aspects that let the players imagine more ideas or choices, so games are losing a little of the paradigmatic dimension. Once again, this is why I think there is a market for gamers who would enjoy the more imaginative aspects of Interactive Fiction implemented into these new games that look like they are on graphic steroids.

I am not a gamer; or not a good one at least. My gaming days ended with Mario when Gameboys were the means of childhood entertainment, soooo over twelve years ago.

I have never been more frustrated during a game than when I was testing out VIOLET. When I played Mario, of course I got frustrated, but I was also competitive and kept going; I think that my attention was grabbed because of the visual images, and being able to jump on things.

This interactive fiction game, however, made me want to quit. I didn’t get frustrated because there were no images; I love books, and have a very vivid imagination when reading. In the movie, Get Lamp, playing interactive fiction was said to be like “playing a book.” However, I could not “play the book” for the life of me. I either received text like “I don’t understand” or “use a different verb,” for most of the things that I typed in. What was I doing wrong?! To lose a life or hit a dead end because you ran into another creature is reasonable to me; but having an unknown source tell me that my “move,” essentially, doesn’t work, I want to be given an explanation why.

There was also no set destination. In Mario, your goal is to save the princess; whereas, in VIOLET, my goal was to make a story, and I couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. When I was successful in my input, and got a good response back, I was overjoyed, which peaked my interest again. Until, yep. There was “use a different verb” again. So I tried a different method, of taking a word or phrase from the passage that VIOLET sent me, and using that as my command. This worked to an extent, but I was still a recipient of my new least favorite phrase.

In Get Lamp, the connection between this interactive fiction and scientific coding was brought up, meaning a way to get from one place to another. Thus, I was thinking that my transitional method of using previously used verbs/nouns would help me in developing my text. But I think I need a different method. If anyone had extremely good success and would like to help an inexperienced interactive fictioner out… it would be greatly appreciated!

I could see how one could spend hours playing these sorts of games, making stories as you go along, as I especially like the idea of creating my own images in my head. However, I have to learn how to be successful in order to do that!  I need to figure out which verbs are appropriate for the storyline, and what exactly they can go with, as it seems they have certain requirements.  I wonder if maybe I prefer being told what is going to happen (like in a novel), rather than attempting to encourage the story along myself? These are my confessions.

After watching “Get Lamp” I immediately thought it would have been better to watch it first and then spend the frustrated hours playing the IF games with at least some background knowledge and preparation. I guess I’ll just have to go back to the games again and bring what I’ve learned.

I found the documentary fascinating and full of great quotes which I think really beautifully explain the genre, what it’s all about, it’s strengths and it’s shortcomings.

Let me call a couple of those to attention. Maybe they will spark some thought in other posts.

• “Only pictures are in your mind, which are the best ones”
• “No matter how far graphics go they will always take you back to text”
• “Art forms are never replaced, they are only added to.”

One thing I noticed about IF which may come as a surprise or it may not, is that perhaps the biggest drawback to the genre, or at least what will likely keep it from any future commercial success (in my opinion) is also what I’d consider the genre’s greatest strength, that being the great amount of responsibility it places on the gamer.

Obviously the reading is one thing — anyone who doesn’t enjoy reading is going to gravitate towards the graphics, but the problem solving and mapping involved in the games, particularly the longer originals, seemed to be quite extensive. I don’t think the majority of popular graphics-based games force the player to be nearly as methodical. In a weird way, it reminded me a bit of our annotation of House of Leaves. Really the process and motivation is the same: Leaving ourselves hints and clues and networks to try and make sense of what’s in front of us. Annotation is not something I was used to or fully comfortable with and I sense I would experience the same struggle with IF, at least initially.

This will probably sound as an excuse in some way, maybe it is, but I think there is a generational aspect to why this is the case for me. I know by the time I was old enough to do any kind of serious gaming, it was at the cusp of 3D graphics gaming. I liked and still like to play games that are visually stimulating, fast-moving and don’t necessarily call for a lot of puzzle-solving. Then again, I’ve never been huge on crossword puzzles either. In my reading and gaming, I have been mostly used to linear, fast-paced, minimal effort storytelling. I think this sets me back when trying to jump on board with IF. I can’t come to IF the same way I come to a book or a video game. It’s more the mindset of approaching a puzzle or math equation.

There also seems to be a noticeable intellectual privilege to anyone within the genre, gamers and creators alike. We hear more about this late in the film when it talks about modern IF authors and a sense that many are writing games for themselves and not the audience. This is, in part, I suppose a result of the genre becoming more artistic and less mass-produced but was also true at the beginning of IF when people began hearing about the games in magazines and in computer tech professional circles. While the genre spread and occupied a large demographic for a period of time, it started and exists today as a sort of fringe intellectual community. I had a hard time relating to the genre’s inventors and enthusiasts who seem to be mostly MIT grads and people prone to spending days, weeks and months solving the games.

After attempting to figure out how to play interactive fiction, I realized that my role with fiction has always been an inactive one. Used to having the story told and solved for me for so many years, I got frustrated with having to find it. I had mixed feelings about how I would approach this style. On the one hand, it requires imagination and to put yourself in the place of the author and the characters all at once to fill in the spaces so that you can contribute to the story. You have to make the story happen. On the other hand, you have to learn how to ask questions that will move the story forward. That was what I fount most difficult. I found that even following the rules of the game, paying attention to the surroundings and the characters, still I lacked the ability to ask the right questions. In Violet for example, I knew exactly what I wanted to know but every time I asked, it was the wrong question. I found Violet’s hints really useful and sometimes the “SIDE” stories provided some clues, but in general I could not figure out how to actually start writing. As much as the game tells you to write, whenever I attempted to do it, it would take me to some distraction. I concluded that the real objective was not to write but that can’t be it because then the game would be deceiving. I experienced about the same with the Bronze game but I found it easier or maybe just made more sense to me. I was aware that when I got to a dead end, I simply had to find another direction and so it wasn’t so frustrating.

 

As for the Get Lamp documentary, I really enjoyed seeing those people who were part of that moment of excitement when things happened for the first time. How addictive it was from the moment it came out. Two things grabbed my attention the most: One, the idea of making such adventure happen with pure text, forcing the player bring in all the movements and images on their own. Two, the idea that it is a maze. One of the speakers in the documentary mentioned that many people were turn off buy the fact that it was just another maze. Another speaker was raving about how great mazes are. Some players developed maps and kept notes and drawings in order to figure out the game. I guess what goes on in this type of fiction is a parallel of narrative and the maze idea is what makes it interactive. Then instead of reading a story, pieces of it have been scattered all over the maze and we are supposed to find them and put them together to complete the story.  While I am not a maze person, nor do I become addicted easily, I still would love to be able to figure out how to complete some interactive fiction games.

The genre of Interactive Fiction is something I have never experience before, and after spending a few days trying it out, I have to say that I think it’s frustratingly fun. The first game I played was Violet and it is the only game I have actually “beaten.” I think.

This concept of interacting with a text that has been coded in a way to only respond to certain commands was something I really didn’t understand when I first opened the page to play the game. A blinking cursor and empty white space becomes the canvas for a formulaic, yet inherently unique experience. The fact that you have to enter commands spontaneously ensures that no two people will have the exact same experience. For example, when I was playing Violet, one of my first commands that actually earned a response was “listen.” The more I made my character listen, the more the story progressed, yet when I wanted to enter the hall, Violet would always redirect me back to writing the dissertation. Direction becomes the most pivotal aspect of these games, whether you are literally walking in a specific direction (North, East, South, West, etc) or if you want to move in a narrative direction. I think when we are referring to a narrative direction in interactive fiction, we also have to consider what story we are trying to flesh out, shape, or even discover. Does our character complete his dissertation in the narrative or does he stray away from it to look out the window or listen to the conversation across the hall? The choice in direction, no matter how much Violet protests, is ultimately ours. Yes, there are limitations on what we might do and where we might go, but we decide what we want to do with the agency that is given to us. I think this is just like those choose your own adventure books, except now we get to write our own paths.

This idea of writing a path is probably more applicable to the Bronze game. The whole premise of this game is to find the Beast, but I was never able to. I enjoyed this game the most because I felt it was not as limited as Violet and it took a lot more focus to navigate the castle than the one room you are confined to in Violet. I started out trying to enter commands but only when I used cardinal directions was I actually able to get to the Entrance Hall. From there, and for about 20 minutes I ran into a lot of dead ends in other rooms and dark places with weird sounds I could not, for the life of me, “examine.” What was really interesting was the point in which I was getting past dialogue between my character and the Beast of the castle. By going in and out of the same room over and over, an entire thread of the narrative was displayed. This narrative was clearly written into the code, but how I accessed it was probably not the way you were supposed to encounter it; then again, if this is a “choose your own adventure story” that choice was perfectly fine. There are also mini puzzles; one is literrally a puzzle with a missing piece which is locked in another cage which you need a key but the key is nowhere to be found. I was also able to “acquire” a object in the story. I picked up the shackle which later made noise in the dark place with the leak. Maybe I’ll go back and try to find the key and the Beast again, but this time I know to draw a map! If you’re literally going to be exploring a text, it only makes sense to map it out, right?

Since I have never played interactive fiction, I found myself frustrated many times while I played the different games.  In Violet, I got stuck trying to get the pen above the sprinkler.  With Varicella, once I got water, explored the rooms, and found the plane tickets, I did not know what to do next.  I felt like the frustrated writer in If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler because I could not figure out the trigger words to keep the story going.  Indeed, in Violet, I was acting out the story of a frustrate writer.  With interactive fiction, I could not simply follow the linear path of a novel, but I had to work my way through the story.  I had to think about the story, pick up on the clues it was giving me, and piece the puzzle together.  Violet summed it up for me nicely: when I tried to “think about” something, Violet would always shoot back “we really need to focus on action today.”  I found that physically sketching a map for the castle in Bronze, helped me remember where I had and had not been which helped eliminate some of my frustration.

However, there were so many different options to choose from that finding the right verb that the program would recognize, or getting something other than “you can’t see any such thing” was difficult.  So although I was interacting with the story, I did not have complete control over it.  Violet was more than ready to tell me when I could not do something, like break the window. And even if listening to Julia in Violet was entertaining, what I really wanted to do was help this guy finish his paper.

Being able to interact with the story, however, allowed for multiple stories to unfold which is something you cannot get reading a conventional novel.  In Violet, I could have gone outside the office and my “relationship” would have been over and thus the game.  I could also leave the story with my frustrated writer falling through the floor.  The story could have possibly turned out different if I had not smashed the stool in Violet.  In this way, interactive fiction gave me the options to somewhat shape the story into the one I wanted.  And if it did not turn out the way I wanted it to, I could “undo” the last command or I could reload a save game and choose a different path.

You have to write a blog post for your Post Print Fiction class. This week’s readings and assignments surrounded the phenomenon of interactive fiction. You know nothing about interactive fiction. Do you X the articles before delving into the interactive “games” or do you play the games before reading the articles?

> Play the games.

You selected “play the games” first. While this may have seemed like the best way to immerse yourself, this was not the most ideal. Because you were unfamiliar with how to play them, your naïveté solicited sardonic responses such as this:

-or-

Frustrated, you decide to consult the articles and redirect the voice of this post to the first person.

Similar to discussions we have previously had in class, interactive fiction is a self-aware genre that more or less has a predictable existence. After fiddling around with these three games for a good half hour each (before reading the articles), I started to succumb to pattern recognition. While there were times when I wanted to commit to insensitive reading, embodying Rabinowitz’s idea of launching attacks on stock responses, I tried to adjust myself to this paradigm and understand how to interact with them correctly. However, with games with more nebulous directions such as Varicella‘s “Write a thousand words,” I was in need of more instruction. I was not sure exactly what to type. I tried to be clever and merely type “a thousand words,” but that did not leave me with a fruitful response. While these games are ones that fall under a textual/literary context, they require the individual to play by certain rules in order to progress.

Referring back to the discussion we had on September 21^st about the differences between paradigmatic and syntagmatic genres, this type of fiction would fall under paradigmatic as the individual is given options that work to reinforce a larger syntactic role. According to Nick Montfort’s video, Exploring Interactive Fiction, the user has to interact “pleasingly symmetrical” in order to make his or her way through the fiction. Therefore, as much freedom as he or she thinks is available, is actually manipulated within the framework of the creator’s story line. I often got responses such as “That’s not a verb I recognize” or “You can’t see any such thing” which forced me to read into the context clues of the preface. As Andrew Plotkin implies in his “How to Play Interactive Fiction” website, the preface and answers the individual receives act as a pattern to provide insight on how to progress, “It’s not trying to teach everything an IF expert would know; it’s just conveying the pattern.” These “novels” are condensed into databases that reflect one of Rabinowitz’s four pillars of reading, as this type of reading calls upon the rules of signification, or, drawing significance from various elements.

Then, I have to ask, are the individuals who experience this type of fiction readers or players within this genre? To consult Lauren’s post, to be the latter of the two roles is to reflect a goal of winning or finality to the fiction. The genre becomes more objective than a statically published novel. Montfort refers to interactive fiction as a “literary riddle” and one that affords the reader/players with different perspectives. However, I do not feel this gives the reader/player a different perspective if this fiction has various parts that only support one viable outcome. In a class discussion we had regarding Calvino’s book, we brought up the question: is the “you” a character in search of an author? This question could be as equally applicable to interactive fiction, as the individuals are the characters who push through all these options in search for the desired (or “right”) outcome.

Learning about Interactive Fiction, especially after reading House of Leaves, makes me think about what a Reader’s goals are when they engage a text. The most striking difference between “interactive” fiction and regular books (even ones like if on a winters night and House of Leaves) is that in the interactive version you have a concrete goal or a way to win. Although everyone can explore the text differently, everyone wins in the same way.

When we read books in the traditional codex form, every reader has a unique approach to the text, which can arguably be as limiting and controlling as an IF game. But unlike an IF text, reading fiction (as opposed to…interacting with it?) produces much looser variations of winning and losing. I’d like to argue that when a reader “wins,” he or she can understand, appreciate, and internalize or utilize a text. When a reader “loses,” he or she is unable to find anything useful in the text or refuses to acknowledge the assumptions necessary to interact with it (and therefore does not find any enjoyment in the reading.)

I guess what I’m really grappling at here is what are the differences between so-called Interactive Fiction and just -regular- fiction. The word “interactive” seems to suggest that experiencing other forms of fiction is a purely passive experience, which we all know it is not. While I can understand why IF authors and readers (gamers?) reject terms like “Text-Based Video Game,” I think “Interactive Fiction” isn’t really pegging down what’s going on here either. I’m not going to be the one to propose a proper term, though, and I’m sure I’m far from the first person to speculate about this.

However, if you want to keep looking at the ideas of ‘winning’ and ‘losing,’ then maybe we should look more at the book form in juxtaposition with the computer program-based form of fiction. I think one important aspect of codex books is that they have a physical, linear beginning and ending. IF certainly has a beginning and ending as well, but unlike when you read a codex, you can’t relax under the (false) assumption that when you read that last page, you’re done. How many times have you read an entire book, only to reach the bottom of the last page and rejoice thinking “Thank God it’s over! I win! Homework complete!” How you experienced the text and whether you gained anything from it doesn’t necessarily matter–you read the book, so you won. This is different from in IF, where you could presumably play forever and ever and ever and you’re never finished with the text until you accomplish a given task.

Anyway, I’m really just arguing with myself now. But I’m excited to explore IF and its relation to post-print fiction in class on Wednesday. It seems great that we’re studying this in an English class, and I can certainly value IF from a textual standpoint, but its relationship to its readers (and I feel awkward calling them that) makes me a little unsure of what to do with it.

And as a total aside–someone in class had once mentioned that Danielewski’s House of Leaves seemed to account for all of our presuppositions about what goes into a book. It was full of footnotes, appendices, and even an awkward (but interesting) index. However, it’s occurring to me that the one thing Danielewski didn’t account for was an “interactive” part of the text. Maybe you could argue that the option to read Pelafina’s letters in the beginning instead of at the end offers a sort of “Choose Your own Adventure” reading. But I like to wonder what an interactive fiction component to House of Leaves might have look like…obviously, you could explore the house, talk to Karen and the kids, etc…but what else? How could Danielewski have incorporated this into House of Leaves, or would it have been impossible? House of Leaves maybe strikes me as being as close to an IF text as a book can get, without actually becoming IF.

Towards the end of the documentary Get Lamp the question of whether there is a market for IF (Interactive Fiction) was brought up which after having finished the documentary and played three different IF games, I think it is an important question to explore further. In an age where society is consumed with graphics, 3D and overall technological advancements, I find it hard to believe that there could be a market for Interactive Fiction which would be a considerable downgrade from the games that  Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii now offer. I have never been a fan of either video or computer games so I am completely clueless when it comes to games, but from watching my brother play his games in modern game consoles I can see that in comparison to IF games these new games are a lot more developed, have more elaborate graphics that are intriguing to the human eye, and the puzzles and riddles that are embedded within these games are a lot more complex.

Along with the question of whether there is a market for Interactive Fiction or not, I also think that it is important to consider if text is in fact dead or lost. In Get Lamp, famous game researcher Richard Bartle states that “text is lost because people just expect computer games to have graphics. And if you want them to play a game that does not have graphics then you have to give them a very good reason not to.” While I do not believe that text is lost, I do think that it is disappearing especially within the new world of the video and computer games. Whereas in Interactive Fiction text commands the game, in these modern games it is the graphics and the voice of the characters that take command of the game. Do I think that Interactive Fiction is a good reason for people not play games with graphics  –  my answer would have to be no because in this modern age as Bartle earlier states “text will always be inferior to graphics.”

Later on in the documentary Rob Griffiths’ mentions that he believes that Interactive Fiction could sell, but I disagree with this statement considering that Interactive Fiction has already attempted to enter the market of the modern video and computer games and miserably failed at least it did when former Infocom implementer, Mike Berlyn tried to invest in it. Also not to mention the fact that people are more interested in 3D and modern graphics more so than they are in text.

Having played three Interactive Fictions games, I am more interested in modern games because I find them to be less frustrating. While I was playing Violet and Varicella, a lot of the times I would get the same types of messages telling me that the game did not recognize the verb that I used or that it did not see what I was talking about. It took for me to write several of the same commands for the game to continue but even then in Violet, I was never able to continue writing or to fully ignore Julia. While in Varicella, I was unable to find a cup of water or any other type of drink for my supposed dehydrated body. I did, however, find Bronze to be interesting and could see why anyone would become engulfed in it. The reason why I primarily liked this game is because I knew that after I found the 55 rooms that I would find the beast. In other words, I liked that I could I foresee the end to the game much like in modern games. I did not like the ambiguity of the other two games.

I think that modern games will always be and are more successful than Interactive Fiction because today society does not appreciate the element of surprise. Rather than imagining a character such as a beast, we prefer to be able to see it and to some extend have our characters in the game have some sort of physical interaction with the beast. We are afraid of involving ourselves with the unknown. It is also customary for society today to link an image to almost everything especially now where our ability to see images is a lot more advanced, and the images themselves are more intricate and detailed.  In general as Bartle states “So when you’re dealing with text it’s really for people who’ve got strong imaginations. The tragedy is that people have strong imaginations; it’s just that they never get to play the text because they went for the graphics first.” Moreover, as I had mentioned above, society is also concerned with knowing that there is an obvious end to something which I feel that certain IF games such as Violet cannot provide gamers a clear ending.