IF

Alright.

So, there’s been some beating around the bush, but basically, this is what’s going to go down:

As stated, the primary aim of this blog-o-space, is to define a new kind of literature. We’ve (briefly) discussed some of the core tenants of story, and kicked around some ideas about delivery methods.

I have one more little lecture to deliver here, before we get into the meat and potatoes of this enterprise - so bear with me for a moment as I describe IFs, or Interactive Fictions.

Interactivity in storytelling has a long history. It seems as though most everyone in our age bracket (modern twenty-somethings) read at least one of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books during middle school. Where, by turning to page 36 or 75, you could elect to save the robot, or not - thereby embarking on a separate series of choices that would ultimately lead to your death, or your success (arbitrarily). This tradition (concurrently) was also the origin of video-games - though not in the mainstream, graphical form we know them as, today.

Games on the computer, were originally just words. Like an ink-and-paper book, there were characters and situations and conflicts, but distinctly unlike said books, these stories were interactive. You were given a prompt, and as the player, you would input some kind of command (usually very free-form) in order to affect change in this artificial scenario.

One of the hallmark examples, is the text-epic, Zork. At the start, you are informed of a mailbox's presence - which you could then "Open the mailbox" and "You discover the mailbox to be bare." You could “Go North” to the forest, or you could enter the basement of the house, and (without the aid of a flashlight) almost certainly be “eaten by a Grue.”

(This format of game-meets-story could no doubt be linked to tabletop Role-Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ll leave that for now, or for a different writer’s pen.)

But oh my goodness, were these ever popular. As networking came into prominence, it became possible for multiple people to enter the same “game” (MUDs: Multi-User Dungeons) and by using the same textual interface, introduce novel characters to other players, and solve massive complicated puzzles together as a team.

This is significant: there was no other in-game avatar, than what you, the player, could imagine and describe. In many ways, these games relied on the literary talents of their players to bring original life into these worlds - and ala the eponymous artifact featured in The Diamond Age -or- A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson, these stories - at their most advanced - could be created on the fly, by the game-makers themselves.

Interactive Fiction is perhaps the best example of the literary game crossover - Galatea being one such exquisite example of this - thusfar. And the sorts of items we’ll be exploring, are variations and evolutions on that theme.

*wipes brow*

Alright. Alright? I think we can proceed, now.