Interactive Fiction 2

Introduction


Interactive fiction is a text-based game that requires the interactor/player to direct the text with commands. With interactive fiction each user generates their own experience of the story through the commands the user chooses to use throughout the game. The first piece of interactive fiction, completed in 1978 and written by Will Crowther, was “Adventure”and was played on institutional computers. "Adventureland", published in 1979 and written by Scott Adams, was the first piece of interactive fiction available for home computers. Around this time a company called Infocom was founded and it released many titles such (such as Zork ) and was the most successful interactive fiction company. From 1979 to the mid 1980s, interactive fiction was extremely popular and The Hobbit, one of the most popular games, sold over two million copies. By the late 1980s interactive fiction was becoming less popular as more sophisticated games with graphics were created. However, in the past ten years there has been a renewed interest in interactive fiction and new games have been released.

This type of game enables users to input commands that lead to different outcomes and changes in the environment. It features two forms of writing, user's input and program's output. Typical inputs are short however the responses tend to be longer and based on the point of view of another person. The user is expected to get hints from the responses and move through the game. Monfort characterizes the essential elements of the form as consisting of a parser and a simulated world within which the action takes place. With interactive fiction each user generates their own experience of the story through the commands the user chooses to use throughout the game.

Group Members
Karla Kavanaugh

Necdet Kaskarli

John Schmansky

Heather Zion

Tim Bowen

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Kavanaugh)
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galxy interactive fiction game was released in 1984. It is based on the radio series and book series created by Douglas Adams. Adams worked with an Infocom programmer named Steven Meretzky to create the game. Meretzky recognizes the beginning of the game is more linear and relies more on the original books and radio dramas than later parts of the game. This was because the early sections were what they worked on first and Adams was not as comfortable with writing for interactive fiction and Meretzky was too timid to voice his opinions to Adams because of his fame. Once they became more comfortable working with each other and Adams became more comfortable with the genre, the game becomes more non-linear and more difficult. The game was originally just text based but the BBC updated it with a bit of graphics, which is the version I played. (Play it here!) The graphics include an inventory, compass, and a rough drawing of your location. In the game you are the character of Arthur Dent for most of the time. At the beginning he is a person from Earth and his house is being destroyed to make way for a bypass. You go to the local pub and have some beer with you friend Ford Prefect and when you return to your house it has been destroyed by the bulldozers and the Vogon ships are in the sky ready to destroy Earth. You leave Earth with Ford Prefect (who is really an alien). If you do not leave then you are destroyed along with the rest of Earth and the people. From then on in the game you are in various places in space and must collect items stay alive. The game became notorious for its difficult puzzles, namely the babel fish. While on the Vogon ship you must get a babel fish in order to go farther in the game or else you would not understand what the Vogons are saying. You have to do seemingly random things in order for the babel fish to get implanted into your mind. This is from a walkthrough of the game: "Firstly, eat the nuts. If you don't, you will die of protein loss. Take off your gown, and hang it up on the hook. Then, get the towel and put it over the drain. Wait until Ford is asleep, then nick his satchel and put it in front of the panel. Put the junk mail on the satchel, then press the dispenser button. A babel fish will land in your ear, and you will be able to understand all languages."I could never have gotten past this part if I didn’t consult the walkthrough. Figuring out how to get the babel fish became a point of pride for many players and shirts were sold that said “I got the babel fish.” Another tricky part of the game is that throughout the game you have to collect various tools. At the end of the game Marvin (the robot alien) needs a tool to complete a task and if you have not collected all the tools, he will ask you for one that you did not collect, thereby making it impossible for you to win the game. You also have to argue with the game. At one point you have to keep insisting to the game that yes, you really do what to go into the engine room. Once you are in the engine room the game says there is nothing really there. You have to input “look” and eventually it describes the room for you.

The way the game is set up is similar to other pieces of interactive fiction. The player must input a simple command and the game tells you what happens as a result of you input. What is unique about the writing is that the game was largely written by the author of the original material so the writing in the game is similar to the writing of the book. The writing of the game can at times be funny. One time when I kept typing in incorrect commands it replied “I'm not convinced you're allowed to be playing with this computer.” Another example is when you die at one point this is the output:

"You keep out of this, you're dead and should be concentrating on developing a good firm rigor mortis. You are put in the ambulance, which drives away. For a dead person you are talking too much." These remarks add to the game because it makes it more fun. It is not simply a computer talking back to you but adds some character to it. The game has many has many references to the original material and I think it would be very difficult to play if you were not familiar with it. In the beginning when you exit your house and the bulldozers are coming to destroy, you must lie down in front of them or else they will destroy your house and a flying brick will hit you on the head and kill you. This does not seem like the normal thing to do but if you read the books, or have seen the movie, then you would know that Arthur does indeed lie down in front of the bulldozers. There are also little jokes and asides that you would understand if you were familiar with the original material. If you feed the dog your disgusting cheese sandwich this is the response: "The dog is deeply moved. With powerful sweeps of its tail it indicates that it regards this cheese sandwich as one of the great cheese sandwiches. Nine out of ten pet owners could happen by at this point expressing any preference they pleased, but this dog would spurn both them and all their tins. This is a dog which has met its main sandwich. It eats with passion, and ignores a passing microscopic space fleet."The last sentence in that is a reference to something that if you are not familiar with Adam’s works you would not understand. At one time Arthur Dent says something that goes through the fabric of time and angers some creatures in a far off planet. They send their fleet to Earth to get revenge for this remark which is extremely offensive in their language. The fleet gets to Earth but because they have underestimated the size of Earth, the ships are tiny and a dog eats them. These little jokes and references to the original material make the game much more fun to play because it adds a different layer to it.

For a Change by Dan Schmidt (Kaskarli)
This interactive fiction work was written by Dan Schmidt for the 5th annual Interactive Fiction Competition in 1999. It came as a second place runner up during the awards but it managed to capture an award in the Xyzzy Awards that same year. The victory included Mr. Schmidt winning the "Best Writing" award for his work. When it came out many reviewers stated that the game feels "unusual" because of its language. The story itself starts off with you waking up at the bottom of a high wall with shadows extending infinitely to the east. It is not clear what the goal of the game is at this point but as you go towards each direction there are clues to steer you to find your purpose. The language is confusing but with some time and many trials you learn that going in compass directions is your best bet to get out of where you are. You encounter towers, water bodies, caves, and many rooms as you try to reach your goal. When you finally reach the "End of the Passage" you are supposed to read the wall that states "In this hall Shall water stand And gravity's grip be loose". The point of the game is revelead at this stage and you learn that your purpose is to take down that initial wall you woke up next to. You back track your path and reach the wall again. The wall is an infinitely high cylinder and once you access it you get lifted up to the top of the wall. You then use only water and gravity to take down the wall to rid the world beneath from the overseeing shadow.



The interface of the story is set up with paragraphs of explanation that tell you where you are and give you a sense of what you should be doing. As with many works of interactive fiction, there is an input command line for the readers. There are no graphics or coloring for the interface its plain, black, and white. The story is exteremely hard to grasp at first and outside guides were the only way I could finish the story. The language in the story is interesting but I would assume that it left many newcomers confused and baffled. For example the first sentence is "Sweetness fills the shade of the High Wall to your east." This kind of language that is present throughout the game. The author uses very distinct and surreal descriptions of objects and the environment. In his end note Dan Schmidt states that he wanted to write a story "in which objects are described in terse language that assumes the player understands the terms used, though of course the player does not". So the game itself was meant to be confusing and thought provoking. However this language is also a contributing factor to the level of interest it provokes from the user. The author exploits the potentials of IF very well and the story requires much more commitment by the user because of the nature of how its written. He uses puzzles, pieces, and clues to explain the story and get them engaged in it that most written literature would not be able to do. Personally I found this work to be immensely creative on the authors part. To come up with some of the language used in the story and the complexity of how the maze worked the author must have put in countless hours of deep thought and work. As the map shows, the author created many rooms and even different levels for users to pick up clues. Overall the story feels more like a game than a fiction story because of all the puzzles that users have to solve to advance to different levels. It is vastly interactive because users must pay attention to detail not to miss key clues. The diffuculty of the game makes it hard yet fun and challenging to play. Personally I found the the main message of the story to be how to overcome great obstacles using intelligence and thought rather than brute force as the the player in the game only used water and gravity to take down an infinitely high wall.

Shade (Schmansky)
Shade is a peice of interactive fiction released in 2000 by Andrew Plotkin for the 2000 IF Competition, in which he introduced the game as "This is a one-room game set in your apartment". "Shade is an object-oriented story simulation in which a command line is used to interact with a text parser. The parser prints text describing the situation to the player."

After a brief description of what is the apartment in which the story is set and quick insite into a purpose, the parser awaits the user's text. As the reader of the fiction you are responsible for controlling the story while the author has established the walls in which the story is designed to fit. This is where the game component of reading interactive fiction lives. As the user, you will primarily input basic verbs/commands like stand, sit, take, drink, examine, read, open, and close in conjunction with nouns that describe the object in the story you wish to like the verb to. For example you might direct the character by typing "take glass" and get a response of "taken". In Shade the parser also understand phrases with a verb and noun combination such as "fill glass with water from bathroom sink" and in rare cases the parser understands one word commands like "stand". These commands along with the cardinal direction keys n,s,e,w,u,d are used in interactive fiction to allow the user to navigate the story.

In Shade and most interactive fiction, the creator establishes requirements to drive the story forward. Shade's story does not progress unless you "stand". There are a vast number of commands that you can enter prior to standing but you will not move the story forward until you are standing. After standing you then become entrapped in another sequence of options until you fulfill another required task. Now, this particular game assists you in identifying the next required task through statements like "Your mouth is dry wool" which is designed the user to seek a drink. Once you acheive getting the drink and drinking it, the game challenges you to find your plane tickets. The game is rich with hints like this to guide the user through the parameters of the story created by Andrew Plotkin.



Shade constantly progresses revealing that the story is not in fact based in the apartment but that the character is trapped or lost in the desert, who has clearly become delirious and dilusional and is experiencing flashbacks of just before he left. This immediately reminded me of a movie I have seen called 127 Hours where a hiker gets trapped in a canyon in the desert and begins to hallucinate. Once you achieve a specific milestone within the story things that were once solid begin to turn to sand and even things that once turned to sand becoming solid again. The story, no matter how you play (unless you quit) ends with everything in the apartment being made of sand and a tiny human figure crawling out from under the sand. "Its dead."

The Lurking Horror (Bowen)
The Lurking Horror (TLH), a game created by Infocom, is one of the first horror based interactive fiction (IF) games of its time. TLH was written by Dave Lebling ( who was also a co-author of Zork). Dave Lebling wrote TLH after horror novels that were created by H.P. Lovecraft. This was Infocom's twenty-sixth text based game to be released. TLH was released on multiple platforms that include Atari ST, Apple II, & Commodore 64. But the game changed completely when it was produce for the Amiga (a personal computer produced by the Commodore company). Amiga introduced sound effects to the tittle making it the first game with this feature. This lead to worldwide success. Early reception of the game was astonishing, leading to highly rated reviews. TLH was given a 88 out of 100 by a German based study/test. In the early 2000's, an American magazine rated The Lurking Horror as one of the top ten most scariest games. TLH is critically acclaimed for producing a puzzling based story line will taking place in a horror subplot that leads to users fighting supernatural animals randomly throughout the story.

The Lurking horror, as with all interactive fiction, requires a user to enter a command (input) and the story compiles with your input to extent releasing a story or message to further the game along (output). This interface is set up for a user to easily follow along with the story that the game is given. The user must input a command relative to the story to continue on. When making a wrong command, the platform will produce a message along the line of "I do not understand that input." When a new user is introduced the game, the play style may seem confusing. But the game does a good job of easing a user along until the figure out the right commands that the interface will recognize. The interface is created simply to ease a user along while he or she tries to discover the secrets of G.U.E Tech. TLH is based at G.U.E. Tech. G.U.E Tech was thought to represent MIT due to most of the writers and producers attending the school. TLH is set in a cold, windy, snowstorm that has cut off most of the university from the user. The user must navigate through paths to get to a few buildings or storm tunnels. The game starts at a computer lab and the reader must navigate trying to find out what happen to his term paper. Along the way, you face multiple supernatural figures like zombies and demons trying to uncover what happen to pieces of your paper. Here to the right is a video of a walkthrough that explains the early scenes that happen while in the computer room.

The lurking horror is known for it's use of puzzles in situations that require the user to decipher the output story that the game gives in order to fight off monsters such as zombies in order to discover clues about the users paper. This form of literature is a prime example of interactive fiction due to the simulation that a user must complete in order to influence the environment in which the game takes place. The interaction that a user must complete in order to complete the game is prime example of interactive fictions menu based platform. When given an option, a user can go south, north, east, or west. When you choose a specific action, the game changes its output and ultimately changes the storyline until the user gets back on track. In this example, when fighting a demon, the user can attack it, run from it, or give it an item that you may have picked up earlier in the game. In my case, I tried to attack it but died multiple times. All in all, interactive fiction changes from game to game, but most exhibit this form of interaction between the user and the platfrom.

There are many forms of Interactive Fiction in video games that require the same input output dialogue that The Lurking Horror exhibits, but the TLH produced a more interactive environment for user than most games during its time. The introduction of sound effects allowed for a more environmental approach and really added to the effect of the game.

Photopia (Zion)
A famous piece of IF is called Photopia. The ground-breaking game was written by Adam Cadre and released in 1998. Unlike many IF games, Photopia differed in its narrative-driven story as opposed to puzzle-driven or challenge-drriven games which were much more common at the time where the player has a lot of control over how the story turns out. In Photopia, although the player has some options on what they do in each location as a way to give them the idea that they can come to different conclusions, it doesn't alter the way the game plays out. Photopia has been described more as a wonderful short story than a confusing puzzle or exciting challenge. As a result, many gamers have said that Photopia questions free will and determinism. The game has won several awards including Best Writing and Best Story in the Xyzzy Awards in 1998 and 1st Place in the rec.arts.int-fiction Competition.



The game brings you through different environments each starting out based on a color. When playing the game, you can opt to have the game in each color, which is how the game was meant to be played, or in the conventional black and white. The story, at first seeming random and unorganized, slowly falls into place in a well-written, sad yet sweet short story. The video to the right goes through the entire game, separated into which section of the game the player is in.

One major way Photopia relates to the genre of IF is through its non-linearity of a story. Not only is the presentation of time non-linear, but the location and characters are as well. The player is brought from the car of a drunk driver to the planet Mars to an underwater castle and so on. In the beginning, it is hard to understand how these stories are connected, and often even takes multiple rounds of the game to completely comprehend how everything is related in terms of time and location.

Another reason Photopia is considered IF is because of its menu-based conversation with the player. In each scenario, the player is allowed to tell the game what to do. Then, the game says what happens as a result or why the player cannot do what they want to do. For example, when you, as the player, are on Mars, you come across a large boulder. You can walk around it if you like, but if you try to move it, the game explains that it is too large with one wheel alone being much bigger than you. Therefore, you cannot move the boulder, and you must go around it if you want to continue to explore the planet.

Last, Photopia is considered an important piece of IF because of the way it constrains the player to a specific area at each time in the game. Unlike other IF games where the player can explore anywhere at any time, Photopia holds players in each area until the task is completed before they move on to the next color. Because of this, though, it is not possible to be stuck in one area or end the game early the way many IF games are if the player makes a wrong move. Photopia walks the player through what it wants to do in order to succeed so that everyone can experience the story.

Although many of the features of IF that are present in this game seem ordinary and expected, at the time Photopia came out, it was revolutionary. The game was ground-breaking for its presentation of time, menu-based conversation, and constrained game-play in a specific area.