Interactive fiction

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As Interactive Fiction (often IF abbreviated for English interactive fiction ) is called a computer game genre , are described in the within a game world plot and game environment as text and in the company of the players influence the action can.

definition

Since the term only describes the mode of presentation in addition to a general principle of computer games, it covers various genres with different game principles as a generic term. The best known and most widespread type of interactive fiction are text adventures . Multiple choice adventures like a playbook are also widespread . The Japanese Adventures are a derivative of this concept . These three genres can also contain role-playing elements within the main interactive fiction genre . What all sub-genres of interactive fiction have in common is that they are based on a game world that can be manipulated in the broadest sense and that the course of the game is linked to the active activity of the player - as long as the player does not make any input, the game pauses. The interactive fiction genre must be distinguished from other forms of electronic literature that lack either literary quality, interactivity or a game world, such as B. MUDs , hyperfiction , procedural story or poem generators and chatterbots .

In the course of time, the term “interactive fiction” has changed in meaning. Until the 2000s, interaction using natural language, which was entered on the keyboard and processed by a parser , was essential for categorizing a game as interactive fiction. In the 2000s, authoring systems for game books such as Twine , ChoiceScript or Ren'Py emerged , which allowed authors with a literary background but no programming knowledge to create sophisticated and complex game books. From then on, these were also subsumed under the Interactive Fiction genre.

In classic text adventures, interactivity consists of puzzles that are solved by the player. A puzzle is a situation in which the player has to intervene in the game world for the game to proceed. For example, a door can be secured by a lock; In the simplest case, the key for the door has to be found in the game world, in more complex puzzles it has to be stolen from its owner by a trick or access has to be achieved by alternative means. In game books, “riddle” means that in a situation two or more options have to be weighed up to determine which option brings the player closer to his individual game goal. In both cases, the riddle represents a turning point in literary terms that controls the narrative and only releases the further text after the player has actively taken action. Such a use of puzzles is a well-known stylistic device; Nick Montfort, professor of digital media at MIT , identifies it for the Bible and calls it the “bottleneck of narratives”. Since text adventures are narrative often linear, i.e. do not offer different, optional storylines, they only have a low replay value .

history

The term "Interactive Fiction" was coined in 1979 by the American programmer and game developer Robert Lafore, who named his text adventures developed for Scott Adams' company Adventure International that way. The term was widely used from 1984 when the US game producer Infocom began to refer to its popular text adventures as "Interactive Fiction" in order to differentiate itself from competitor products that are less developed in terms of quality. Montfort points out that the male-dominated academic environment of the early authors led to the fact that the works were written from a male perspective.

At the end of the 1980s, interactive fiction was replaced in the commercial sector by graphic adventure games such as Maniac Mansion . As a result, users of the ARPANET founded newsgroups in which the existing games were first saved for posterity. The source code of the zMachine, Infocom's interpreter, was cracked by reverse engineering and a similar interpreter was written that was released as a public domain . In 1987 the shareware program TADS appeared , with which you could create your own text adventures and which, in its third version in 1990, reached the functionality of the zMachine. In 1993 the programming environment Inform was published, which allowed the creation of your own text adventures as freeware . The two programs became so popular among fans of interactive fiction that an annual competition called IF Comp has been held since 1995, honoring the best interactive story. The text programs then experienced a second marriage without commercial constraints. In addition to text adventures, unusual storytelling styles were also important.

Authoring systems

Since a parser, once programmed , can be reused for other games in a similar way to a game engine , authoring systems emerged early on which relieved the author of a large part of the programming work so that he could concentrate on the game design and the texts. The first systems were developed by companies and used exclusively internally. Companies like Infocom or Telarium were able to have their games written by authors without any programming knowledge and only assigned programmers to support them. In 1983, The Quill appeared for the first time, an author system accessible to everyone, which allowed the input of texts for the description of the game world and the definition of the relationships between the objects in the game world via a menu system. The finished game could be used independently of the authoring system, so that commercial games were also created with The Quill . Other, similar authoring systems followed.

In 1987, the Adventure Game Toolkit appeared for the first time as a combination of programming language , compiler and interpreter , which subsequently shaped the interactive fiction landscape for a good decade. With the help of the programming language, the author defines rooms and objects in the game world and their relationships to one another, the compiler translates the program into a machine-readable format and the interpreter lets the game run on different systems.

From 2004 author systems for game books appeared. These are usually development environments that require little or no programming knowledge and concentrate on the structured sequence of text and hypertext .

system Manufacturer / author year Type
The quill Gilsoft 1983 Menu based
Adventure Master CBS software 1984 Menu based
Graphic Adventure Creator Incentive software 1985 Menu based
Professional Adventure Writer Gilsoft 1986 Menu based
Adventure Game Toolkit David Malmberg 1987 Programming language + compiler + interpreter
TADS Michael J. Roberts 1988 Programming language + compiler + interpreter
In shape Graham Nelson 1993 Programming language + compiler + interpreter
Ren'Py PyTom 2004 Development environment
Twine Chris Klimas 2009 Development environment
ChoiceScript Dan Fabulich 2010 Development environment

Interactive fiction in film

A Black Mirror episode called Black Mirror: Bandersnatch , which was released on Netflix in December 2018 , explores the development of an interactive story. In addition, it is an interactive film, in which the viewer helps determine the course of the film by making inputs on his remote control, as in an interactive story.

Competitions and Awards

In the IF scene, there are several annual competitions in which authors have their works assessed by a jury, and awards that are given annually by interest groups or publications. The best known include:

  • The XYZZY Awards have been presented in several categories since 1996. The host is the magazine XYZZY News, the choice is made by the IF community.
  • The Interactive Fiction Competition has been an annual competition since 1995 in which authors submit previously unpublished works, from which the IF community selects a winner. The competition is organized by various IF authors.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie-Laure Ryan, Narrative and Digitality: Learning to Think With the Medium, in: A Companion to Narrative Theory , edited by James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz , Blackwell Publishing, Malden / Massachusetts and Oxford 2005, paperback edition 2008, ISBN 978-1-4051-1476-9 Table of Contents , pp. 515-528.
  2. ^ Montfort, p. VII
  3. ^ Montfort, p. VIII
  4. ↑ Montfort, p. 3
  5. ↑ Montfort, p. 39
  6. ↑ Filfre.net: Seastalker. Retrieved August 20, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Montfort, p. 101