LANDSCAPE AND CHARACTER IN IF<br>
=============================<br>
<P>
If we reduce interactive fiction to its essence, we can view it as a
triangular relationship between three basic elements: Landscape,
Character, and Action. It's possible to write IF without objects, plot,
NPCs or myriad other ingredients, but as soon as that first room
description appears, it introduces a landscape, just as the first prompt
ushers in the concept of Action. [1] I would further argue that the
interaction between these two elements inevitably creates some concept
of Character. The character that emerges is the being that would perform
the actions selected when presented with the landscape (and situation)
at hand. Even if that character is not human, not organic, or not even
embodied (an omniscient narrator, for instance, though that voice is
almost never used in IF because of the form's powerful insistence on
connecting Action with viewpoint), Action must have an agent, and that
agent is what we call the Player Character.
<P>
In this formulation, the only one of the triumvirate completely under
the game's control is Landscape. Action is entirely in the hands of the
player, and Character lies halfway between the two. That last statement
may require a bit more unpacking. If Character is determined by Action,
why isn't it entirely in the hands of the player as well? The answer is
that while Action *does* determine Character, it isn't the sole
determining factor. The game itself can shape character by statements as
blatant as "You're Tracy Valencia," or by something as subtle as
a particular word choice in a parser response. However, I would contend
that while blatant character-shaping statements and even subtle nudges
from default responses are far from inevitable in IF, some sense of
landscape *must* be included in any IF game, and that both the design
and the description of this landscape are extremely powerful factors in
determining character. It is my aim in this essay to examine the ways
in which Landscape influences and creates Character, and to raise what I
hope will be some interesting questions about the nature of their
interrelationship.
<P>
<P>
MAP DESIGN<br>
[This section contains minor spoilers for Colossal Cave, Planet Of The
Infinite Minds, Strangers In The Night, and Suspect. It contains
medium-level spoilers for Lost New York and Stone Cell, and major
spoilers for Shade and 1981.]
<P>
Space is continuous. The landscape of interactive fiction, however,
consists of discrete units, connected to each other in various ordinary
and sometimes extraordinary ways. [2] By convention we call these units
"rooms", but in fact they can be anything from a tiny subsection of a
room to an entire town, country, planet, or universe. How does a game's
subdivision of continuous space affect our perception of the character
in that game? Let's look at some examples.
<P>
An illuminating comparison exists between two pieces of IF with urban
settings: Neil DeMause's _Lost New York_ (1996) and Rich Pizor's
_Strangers In The Night_ (1999). In the former, the character travels
through Manhattan and other areas of New York City during various points
in history. The game frequently compresses neighborhoods, boroughs, and
other such swaths of territory into single rooms, albeit lovingly
described ones:
<P>
   Lower East Side<br>
   The scene around you is one unmatched in any other time and place in
   human history: Acres of identical four- and five-story tenements
   packed cheek-to-jowl with people, people who spill out onto the
   sidewalks and fire escapes in search of a little space, a little air.
   The el tracks continue down the street to the north and south; to the
   east, the tenements seem to stretch on forever, though you're pretty
   sure they eventually end at the East River shore.
<P>
Within each time period, these areas connect to each other directly,
even though they may have been separated by miles in reality.
Occasionally, a "traveling message" such as "You trudge north for close
to a mile, finally arriving at..." will interpose itself between
locations, but more often the traveling interval passes instantaneously
and without comment.
<P>
_Strangers In The Night_, on the other hand, painstakingly sets out its
generic city map as a street grid, and provides almost no description
for the lion's share of its locations:
<P>
   Broadway and 11th<br>
      You are at the intersection of Broadway and 11th Avenue. To the
   southwest is the security door for your apartment building; the
   Broadway Sineplex (which a few downtown residents still consider an
   amusing name for a movie theatre) lies to the northeast.
<P>
   >n<br>
   Broadway (10th & 11th)
<P>
   >n<br>
   Broadway and 10th<br>
      One of the streetlights is dim here; the shadows that are cast
   against the sidewalk are oddly deformed, giving the corner an
   otherworldly feel.
<P>
   >n<br>
   Broadway (9th & 10th)<br>
      Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm starts blaring it's [sic]
   Call of the Wild to the concrete jungle. This is followed a few
   moments later by the sound of figerglass [sic] crunching and safety
   windshields shattering until the alarm ceases.
<P>
   >n<br>
   Broadway and 9th
<P>
   >n<br>
   Broadway (8th & 9th)
<P>
   >n<br>
   8th and Broadway
      Carl Tuck's Coffehouse [sic] is to the southeast.
<P>
At first glance, it might appear that about half the locations contain
room descriptions. In fact, however, only the first and the last do; the
dim streetlight and the car alarm are random atmospheric messages that
can pop up in any street location. In fact, the only time a non-random
message, or a description of any kind, appears is when the location
adjoins the entrance to a puzzle-solving area, or to the PC's home.
The game's city grid is comprised of about 80 locations, all of which
may well have been compressed into one room in _Lost New York_.
<P>
It's a natural impulse to discuss these choices as they relate to game
design, or to talk about their successes and failures in creating
immersion or facilitating strategy. What may not be so natural is to
think about how these choices influence the way we think about the
player character; I would contend that consciously or not, we perceive
these two characters differently based on the way the games construct
their surroundings. What we know about the PC of _Lost New York_ is that
she [3] knows New York City well enough to identify its various areas
instantly, even as they appeared over a hundred years ago. In fact, the
game's easy recognition of areas such as "The Goats" and "Ladies Mile",
not to mention the copious historical detail infused into many room
descriptions, creates a tension between the game's identification of the
PC as "a tourist" and what we know about her from her subsequent
experiences. Someone who could wander through New York's past with so
much information at hand must be intimately familiar with the city,
either through experience or study. Her interest and perception is
mostly broad strokes -- she's more interested in generalities of an area
than in its specific details, and her sense of history is sweeping
rather than finely grained -- but her knowledge is quite comprehensive.
Even if the game had insisted that this was the PC's first trip to the
city, we would have to conclude that she is someone who for whatever
reason has immersed herself in New York City history; how else to
explain such detailed knowledge in the midst of the extraordinary
experience of time travel? If the game proved unable or unwilling to
address and resolve this question, that lacuna could hardly be anything
but a flaw in the work, just as it would be in a novel where the main
character knows things she shouldn't. 
<P>
Unlike the PC of _Lost New York_, the character in _Strangers_ has
almost no interest in ordinary detail, let alone history. He never finds
himself musing about ironies or architecture as he treads the streets,
and in fact usually notices nothing but the bare identity of the
location. Together with the game's specification of the PC as a vampire,
these facts can lead us to a few conclusions about this character. He
sees the city not as human tapestry or even interesting backdrop, but
rather as a sort of maze he must navigate in order to locate prey. The
lack of room descriptions impels us to move quickly from one location to
the next, replicating the urgency of the character's thirst for blood.
His disinterest in local color might even be seen as an undead disdain
for the fleeting effluvia of mortal life. The game's overall
presentation isn't quite strong enough to give this effect full potency,
but all the same we know quite well that there is a significant
difference between these two characters. The _Lost New York_ PC, even if
she *were* a vampire searching the streets for prey, couldn't help but
notice the landscape and be aware of its heritage, while the _Strangers_
PC could be thrust into any time in the city's history and would evince
a similar disregard for anything but the most minimal details of place. 
<P>
On the other end of the detail spectrum from _Strangers_ is Andrew
Plotkin's _Shade_ (2000), where the entirety of the action appears to be
taking place in the player character's studio apartment. In this
one-room environment, however, movement is possible, and the game
responds to this movement not by placing the character in a new room (as
is the case with most IF), but rather by making a series of alterations
to room description and scope for the current room. If the PC is in the
center of the apartment, for example, the game first mentions objects
close at hand, such as the computer desk and stereo, while reserving
mention of the kitchen and bathroom areas for the later parts of the
room description. When that character moves to the kitchen, however,
text about the counter, the refrigerator, and such occupies the
beginning of the room description. The desk and stereo are still visible
from that location, and still mentioned, but are only visible, not
accessible for touching or other manipulation until the character
returns to the center of the apartment.
<P>
When _Shade_ was released, this approach to map design was hailed as an
innovative subversion of the conventional IF map, which it is. It is
also a fitting choice for characterization purposes. The overlapping,
connected nature of the apartment landscape makes clear to us that this
is an environment with which the character is intimately familiar, and
that even while he inhabits one area of it, his awareness of the other
areas does not abate. The map design makes the apartment *belong* to the
character in a way that it would not were it separated into discrete
rooms. This sense of familiarity, of safety, and of enclosure makes the
game's later revelations all the more powerful, as the familiar
dissolves into the strange, and safe enclosure into fatal exposure. 
<P>
A similar effect, the subdivision of one room into many separate
locations, appears in a variety of games, including Infocom's _Suspect_
(1984) and Steve Kodat's _Stone Cell_ (1999). In the former, it's a
grand ballroom that the game presents as nine separate locations, and
the effect is to make the room feel enormous. The character in _Suspect_
is a reporter at a party being given in a mansion, and the game's map
design underscores her sense of awe at the opulent surroundings -- where
the house's owner's perception of the ballroom might be closer to that
of the character in _Shade_, the guest's mind demands more concrete
conceptual boundaries in order to take in the scope of the area. _Stone
Cell_ achieves a different effect by performing the same gridlike
subdivision on a much smaller room, the eponymous stone cell. Room
descriptions and common sense tell us that this room is much smaller
than the ballroom in _Suspect_, so the game's partitioning of that
space, rather than conveying immensity, instead reflects the PC's
awareness of the room's tiniest details as a result of her imprisonment.
What makes this design particularly effective is that the game initially
presents the cell as one location, then expands it into a grid after the
character sleeps, thus reflecting not only the character's growing
familiarity with his surroundings but also his growing desire to
scrutinize each detail of the premises in hopes of escape.
<P>
The opposite effect is available, too, when games compress the extremely
large, even the inconceivably large, into a single room description. One
of the more extreme examples of this technique occurs in Alfredo
Garcia's _Planet Of The Infinite Minds_ (2000), where the character
might find himself here:
<P>
   The Beginning of Space<br>
   All around you, distant suns flicker and twinkle. Painfully bright
   points of light seem to appear suddenly from out of the ether, as
   another retracts into obscurity. En masse, the effect renders a
   carnival of vibrant colours and astonishing beauty.
<P>
The simple fact of the character's existence in this location tells us
something about that character: that she has transcended humanity,
attaining a sort of bodiless, godlike status. Since the game starts with
the PC as a simple librarian, its transportation of her to such an
abstract vista carries with it the implication of personal disembodiment
and removal from reality as well. What's more, her ability to know that
the location is "The Beginning Of Space" rather than, say, a Christmas
tree festival viewed through a hangover, suggests a metahuman
omnipotence that we must assume has been granted to the character, at
least temporarily.
<P>
The connection between map design and character stretches to the deepest
roots of IF, for the majority of _Colossal Cave_'s (1976) map is named and
divided in ways that would make sense to a spelunker. From the way that
the game comfortably names areas of the cave as "rooms", and indeed even
the names of those rooms, which draw on caving vocabulary such as
"Bedquilt" and "Y2", we can clearly identify that the character in that
game is an experienced cave explorer. Thus, even in the earliest days of
IF, when games made virtually no overt effort to characterize the PC,
character was already emerging as a function of landscape. The character
in _Colossal Cave_, while unraced, gender-neutral, ageless, nameless,
and faceless, was nonetheless made distinct from the player herself by
the way he perceived the landscape of the cave, seeing rooms and twisty
little passages where a different character might have experienced the
area quite differently.
<P>
In the hands of a skilled author, the effect of landscape on character
can make for a portrayal that is very striking indeed. Take, for
instance, Adam Cadre's _1981_ (2001) [4]. The first room description of
the game is as follows:
<P>
   New Haven, Connecticut<br>
   New Haven. The worst place on earth. The town is dirty and
   industrial, the students are sloppy, everything is horribly
   expensive. And you had to cash in $3600 of your stock to get here.
   But it was necessary. Four years at this place is enough to ravage
   anyone. You have to rescue her, your first true love.
<P>
   Her dormitory lies to the north.
<P>
Already, we can see a dramatic narrowing of scope occurring. The
character is so unconcerned with the details of his location that he
compresses an entire town into one unit, dismissing all of it as "the
worst place on earth." Then the broad outlines of location gain sudden,
sharp focus: "Her dormitory lies to the north." The contrast between the
vague, reviled whole of New Haven and the focus on the dormitory, set
apart in its own line, suggests to us that the character's concentration
on his goal is unhealthy, perhaps even obsessive, and moving north
confirms this suspicion:
<P>
   New Haven, in her dormitory<br>
   You're standing in front of her door. It's closed. It's always
   closed. You've shoved approximately one hundred poems and letters
   under that door. You figure she's probably read about half of them.
<P>
Scope narrows even further here, from one building to the tiny area in
front of one of that building's doors. The room descriptions certainly
confirm our impression of the main character's unbalanced and obsessive
nature, but even without them, the basic funneling performed by the map
design would get the point across admirably. When we discover that the
PC is John Hinckley, Jr., and that the door in question is to Jodie
Foster's dorm room at Yale, the revelation is terrifically powerful,
because via its map design, the game has already taken us directly into
the viewpoint of its would-be assassin.
<P>
<P>
ROOM DESCRIPTIONS<br>
[This section contains minor spoilers for A Change In The Weather,
Heroes, Varicella, and Zork I. It contains medium-level spoilers for
Once And Future and Wearing The Claw, and major spoilers for Nothing
More Nothing Less.]
<P>
Of course, in _1981_ it's more than just map design that clues us into
the character -- the room descriptions themselves make it clear that we
are seeing the game's landscape as filtered through one individual's
highly idiosyncratic viewpoint. Short, choppy sentences give the text a
jittery feel, contributing to the general tone of uneasiness. We know
the character has some access to wealth because of the "$3600 of your
stock" line. We also know the character is either a heterosexual male or
a homosexual female from the reference to the true love as "her." [5]
And we certainly know how he feels about New Haven.
<P>
Cadre is particularly skilled at bringing character across through room
description, as in this example, the first room in _Varicella_ (1999):
<P>
   Salon<br>
   You've funneled the lion's share of the palace improvements budget --
   and most likely the tiger's share as well -- into renovating the
   salon... not that the Philistines you live among are equipped to
   appreciate it. From the plush Quattordici chairs to the handsome
   volumes in the library to the imported Ming tea service to the
   steward you hired to attend to your grooming needs, this is an oasis
   of taste and comfort in what is otherwise a fairly uncomfortable and
   tasteless building. Ah, well. When you become Regent you'll have
   greater latitude to redecorate. The arched windows overlook the
   western gardens, while the exit leads east.
<P>
This description follows several paragraphs of introduction, which
announce the player character as one Primo Varicella, Palace Minister to
a recently deceased king, and Machiavellian schemer for the throne. Even
without that introduction, though, this room description would frame the
character aptly. From the "lion's share" clause we know that the
character is in charge of improvements to a palace, and from the room
name we know that he is in the Salon mentioned in the first sentence;
therefore we can conclude that he is employed by the palace in which the
game begins -- a succinct way to bring across Varicella's position and
occupation. Moreover, the phrase "live among" tells us that he resides
at the palace as well. The "tiger's share" clause gives us an example of
his sardonic humor, and the "Philistines" reference an example of his
snobbery. His identification of the chairs and tea service, and the
contrast to the "uncomfortable and tasteless" remainder of the building,
communicate clearly that this is a man of very strong preferences, a
persnickety aristocrat whose refined tastes run to the extremely
expensive. Finally, the character's ambitions, and the drive behind
them, are summarized neatly: "When you become Regent you'll have greater
latitude to redecorate." Just by seeing one room through this
character's eyes, we learn all the essential facts about him that will
carry throughout the game. 
<P>
If there's a continuum that measures the degree to which a game's
room descriptions blatantly shape character, it's fair to say that
_Varicella_ is probably on the extreme end of it. Does that mean that
the room descriptions of games on the other end don't shape character
at all? Predictably, my answer is no -- the effect is just a bit more
subtle. To illustrate, let's compare descriptions from two different
games, neither of which has character as its focus. First, from
Andrew Plotkin's _A Change In The Weather_ (1996):
<P>
   Rocky Outlook<br>
   A wide angular tongue juts out from the hillside. The park stretches
   off to the north and west, a vast expanse of luminous meadowland,
   patched with the dark emerald of forest. The streams are already
   shadowed in their beds. In the distance, a lake reflects red fire,
   beneath the greater fire that leaps silently on the horizon.
<P>
   A trail leads southwest down the hill, towards the bridge. From where
   you stand, it turns southeast and continues upward, deeply cut into
   the hillside. A narrower trail leads more steeply up to the east.
<P>
_Zork I_ (1981) by Infocom offers a location that is very nearly
analogous:
<P>
   Rocky Ledge<br>
   You are on a ledge about halfway up the wall of the river canyon. You
   can see from here that the main flow from Aragain Falls twists along
   a passage which it is impossible for you to enter. Below you is the
   canyon bottom. Above you is more cliff, which appears climbable.
<P>
Though their locations may be similar, these two characters are very
different indeed. _Weather's_ wanderer takes the entire first paragraph
to describe the area with intense, poetic language. The words don't
directly narrate the emotions felt by the character, nor impute opinions
like the descriptions in _Varicella_, but they deploy vivid adjectives
like "luminous" and "dark emerald", and powerful metaphors -- the tongue
of rock, the red fire of sunset reflected in a lake, the setting sun as
a "greater fire that leaps silently on the horizon." This is a character
whose soul is moved by the grandeur of a natural landscape. Only after
this reverent depiction does the character notice practical details: the
trails and where they lead.
<P>
_Zork's_ PC, on the other hand, goes directly for the practical. She
mentions the river's passage only in terms of whether she can enter it.
What she notices about the cliff is that it is climbable. Though the
natural scene -- a canyon, a river, a waterfall -- is probably quite
impressive, the description is almost entirely mechanical. There are no
rapturous sentences about the stark rock of the cliff or the sparkling
river. Adjectives are almost entirely absent, and where they do exist
their purpose is highly prosaic: "river" further identifies "canyon", as
"Aragain" does "Falls" and "canyon" does "bottom." Other descriptors
exist solely to describe travel options: "impossible" and
"climbable". Indeed, she sees every element of the scene only in terms
of how it can be manipulated or traversed, and this viewpoint is
consistent throughout the game, just as the intense description of
natural phenomena is a constant in _Weather._ Both games' main focus is
puzzle-solving, but when we compare how their characters each view a
similar scene, it becomes clear how different the characters are from
each other.
<P>
Comparing the PCs of two different games illuminates important
differences between the characters, and the effect is even more potent
when several points of view are available within the same game --
instead of seeing how two different characters view analogous locations,
we get to see how they view the exact *same* location. Several recent
games have made use of this technique: J. Robinson Wheeler's _Being
Andrew Plotkin_ (2000), Stephen Granade's _Common Ground_ (2000) and my
own _LASH_ (2000) among them. The current apex of POV-diversity, though,
probably belongs to _Heroes_ (2001) by Sean Barrett. This game offers a
minimal landscape of something like a dozen locations, but gives five
different viewpoint options through which to view it. For instance, the
opening location of the game as viewed by a Zork-like adventurer:
<P>
   Temple Way<br>
   The grimy, ramshackle buildings of Oldtown dutifully try to reform
   themselves as you progress east down Temple Way, but nothing besides
   the temple itself makes any real pretense of belonging anywhere other
   than Oldtown. Or rather, nothing besides the temple and Baron
   Sedmon's nearby mansion.
<P>
a King:
<P>
   Avenue<br>
   This broad avenue leads right into Temple Square, the heart of
   fabulous New Oldtown. Towering over the square to the east you do
   perceive your stark white Temple of Justice, beautiful and
   well-appointed, offering a statement to the neighborhood: this, this
   is what progress is about. Sadly, the buildings around you are
   scarcely up to this new standard; Baron Ventillado's house north of
   the square is much more satisfactory. How you hate having to come
   here. This would all be so much simpler if Blackhelm were found dead
   one morning, but it's never happened yet, despite your best efforts.
<P>
a thief:
<P>
   Shadowy Road<br>
   Sturdy, functional buildings lie in and out of shadow on the road to
   the temple square. Simple architecture, devoid of handholds; closely
   spaced buildings, devoid of alleyways; uncut walls, devoid of
   windows: the builders in this area knew how to encourage amateurs to
   go elsewhere.
<P>
a mage:
<P>
   East-West Road<br>
   Randomly arranged paving stones form this street, proceeding east
   towards a more attractive arrangement. The darkened buildings lean
   sloppily over the edge of the street, reducing the energetic
   potential of the strict east-west layout. West the road leads back
   into the seething mess that is Oldtown.
<P>
and finally, a dragon:
<P>
   Open Tunnel<br>
   We were surrounded by the man-things' structures, structures of dead
   trees and rock and distortions of iron. Beneath us we felt the
   arrangements of stone into a path for man-things' mobile receptacles.
   We could smell hints of the Crystal along the path to the east.
<P>
Where the adventurer just sees a temple, the King sees the temple as his
own possession, a symbol of his attempts to renovate and improve the
city. Where the mage sees leaning buildings distorting the street's
pristine geometry, the thief sees those same leaning buildings as a
source of precious shadow. Through the use of a past-tense,
second-person plural voice, _Heroes_ renders the dragon's viewpoint
quite alien, and emphasizes that dissonance by showing us how the dragon
sees the street: an "open tunnel", contrasted with the more irregular
shapes of nature and constructed by contemptible "man-things." _Heroes_
takes excellent advantage of Landscape's ability to reveal Character,
and through its use of multiple viewpoints, it leverages the power of
the Landscape-Character axis to accomplish something more: the
revelation of Landscape via accumulated details from a variety of
characters. The descriptions coalesce in the player's mind to create a
picture of the location that is much more complete than any one
viewpoint could provide, while at the same time establishing distinct
portraits of each viewpoint character. 
<P>
Other games have made use of changing room descriptions in order to
demonstrate change or progression in a single PC, or to give us that
character's revised perspective as a situation changes. _Nothing More,
Nothing Less_ (2001) by Gilles Duchesne is a case in point. The first
puzzle of this slice-of-life game takes place in a bathroom, initially
described like so:
<P>
   Bathroom<br>
   I've seen bigger bathrooms, but must admit this smaller one suits our
   needs well. There's a small sink with a cabinet under it, a mirror, a
   bathtub (equiped [sic] with a shower head and curtain) and a toilet.
<P>
However, after the character urinates [6], the toilet clogs and begins
to overflow. Unprompted, the game reprints the room description, which
now reads as follows:
<P>
   Bathroom<br>
   I've seen bigger bathrooms, but must admit this smaller one suits our
   needs well. There's a small sink with a cabinet under it, a mirror, a
   bathtub (equiped with a shower head and curtain) and a toilet.
   Right now, my attention is also grabbed by: the toilet tank.
   Water keeps flowing from the tank, nearing the bowl's edge.
<P>
The room description stays the same, but the game adds a sentence to
demonstrate that the character's attention has become focused on one
particular aspect of the room: the toilet tank. This sentence serves
gameplay purposes, indicating that the toilet tank is in fact
implemented and thereby hinting toward the solution of the "overflowing
toilet" puzzle. In addition to this, the attention sentence demonstrates
a shift in the character, showing us his revised perspective as well as
the fact that he's quick-witted enough to think immediately of the
toilet tank in this crisis. The other sentence is typical of IF room
descriptions, indicating an action currently taking place in the room
and lending urgency to the character's desire to solve the puzzle. After
the character opens the tank, lifts the toilet float, and fixes the
stuck valve to stop the toilet running (alas, too late to prevent water
flowing onto the floor), the game once again reprints the room
description, this time altered considerably:
<P>
   Bathroom<br>
   I m now standing barefoot in some icy water. I've seen bigger
   bathrooms, but must admit this smaller one suits our needs well. In
   fact, at this very moment I m terribly glad the floor isn t bigger,
   as it would only mean more water to remove. There's a small sink with
   a cabinet under it, a mirror, a bathtub (equiped with a shower head
   and curtain) and a toilet.<br>
   Right now, my attention is also grabbed by: my towel.
<P>
There are several changes, doing several different sorts of work within
the description. The first, the "icy water" sentence, indicates a change
in the room itself, one that is reflective of situation rather than
character, though of course the way the character chooses to relate this
situation -- emphasizing discomfort by noting his bare feet and
describing the water as "icy", conveying a mood of urgency without panic
-- does accomplish some characterization. A later sentence takes a fact
of the bathroom addressed by earlier descriptions (its small size) and
relates it to the new situation, revealing a practical and rather
optimistic side to the viewpoint character. This sentence also
demonstrates that the character's perspective, while pragmatic, is not
particularly scientific, since a larger floor wouldn't actually mean
more water to remove, only a greater surface area from which to remove
it. Later, we get a new "attention" sentence; the toilet tank is no
longer in focus, and instead the character is thinking of his towel.
Note that this towel was not mentioned in any of the previous room
descriptions, because the character had no particular need of it.
_Nothing More, Nothing Less_ makes extensive use of this technique,
heightening realism by filtering not only the general experience of
landscape through the PC, but also specific points of focus as well.
Finally, once the toilet is plunged and the water toweled and mopped,
the PC has showered, and his feline nemesis has entered the room, the
bathroom's description changes to this:
<P>
   Bathroom<br>
   This a bathroom, of which I ve seen more than enough in the last
   minutes. Come to think of it, I ve seen enough of it for the whole
   day. And the presence of that hairy pest doesn't improve my morale.
   Azrael licks one of his paws, while keeping an eye on me.
<P>
The character's perspective on the bathroom has changed once more,
marking the end of his progression from bland interest, through urgent
focus, and resting finally at mild exasperation. The emotional registers
aren't extreme, but the room descriptions convey very clearly the
changes taking place within the character as a response to the changes
that occur around him. In games like this, Landscape does even more
shaping of Character than usual by virtue of its changing prose. 
<P>
A final aspect of how Landscape reveals Character lies in the concept of
elision: what rooms does the game *avoid* describing, and how do those
gaps influence our understanding of the character? Many games take the
character, via non-interactive cut-scenes, or even simple transitions,
through landscape that we never get to see from the PC's perspective. My
experiences as an author have taught me about this phenomenon; in my
first game, _Wearing The Claw_ (1996), I elided an entire sea voyage. In
practical terms, I made this choice because I didn't have the time,
energy, or skill to implement the journey as an interactive experience,
but its absence from the game couldn't help but affect the PC's
characterization. His reluctance to relate the details had to be
explained somehow, so I made him someone who is deeply intimidated by
the ocean, someone who would want to block out the experience of being
at sea as much as possible:
<P>
   Soon you find yourself at sea for the first time in your life, and
   you learn that the rocking and swaying of a small boat on a choppy
   sea does little to relax you. Nausea swells and recedes like the the
   [sic] waves beneath you, and though the journey to the isle of the
   Goergs takes little more than an hour, it ends none too soon for you.
<P>
I'm not willing to make the claim that elision *always* contributes to
characterization -- sometimes cuts are in place just to serve a story's
structure, leaving things unimplemented even though the character
certainly would notice them. However, there are times that what isn't
described is just as important as what is. These sorts of gaps are
particularly noticeable when they contrast with the player's
expectations, as happens from time to time in Kevin Wilson's _Once And
Future_ (1998). One particularly memorable absence in that game is the
matter of the cat: late in the game, Frank Leandro (the PC) is required
to obtain a bit of cat hair for a magical recipe, and conveniently
enough happens across a stray cat who sheds a bit into his hand and
rides his shoulder for a while. A while later, that cat jumps into the
chimney of a boarded-up house (chasing a bird) and disappears. Frank has
a sword that cuts through anything, but the game forbids him from
cutting through the boards to find the cat, saying "You could, but
there's not much point to it." So however much the player may want to
make sure that the kitty is okay, she is constrained by Frank's
disinterest; the inside of the house isn't part of the map, because
Frank doesn't see the point of exploring it.
<P>
<P>
A PC-CENTRIC VIEW OF INTERACTIVE FICTION<br>
[This section contains minor spoilers for The Beetmonger's Journal, 
medium-level spoilers for Hamlet, and major spoilers for Photopia.]
<P>
It's possible that objections may arise to some of the points I make
above, on the grounds that what I ascribe to character could just as
easily be seen as a particular author's writing style, a game's depth of
implementation, or even the formal constraints of IF itself. It's quite
true that I'm taking a PC-centric view -- this is how I experience
interactive fiction, and it's easy to feel that it's simply how the form
*works*, but I certainly acknowledge that there are other, equally valid
approaches. It's also true that the PC is not the only possible point of
view within a work of Interactive Fiction. In _The Beetmonger's Journal_
(2001) by Scott Starkey, for instance, some very nifty POV-jumping
occurs in sections where the PC is the hero of some stories being read
by the frame characters -- from time to time those characters are
interrupted in their reading, and we get a small cut-scene from their
point of view.
<P>
However, what I would argue for is the extreme difficulty of
disconnecting the point-of-view from the Player Character at the point
of action. The IF prompt implies a certain kind of remote control: the
player is to type in an action which will then be executed within the
game. Invariably, this action is performed by the PC. Indeed, this is
the very definition of Player Character. Similarly, landscape
descriptions, especially when that landscape is available for traversal
and manipulation from the game prompt, almost cannot help but be
filtered through the PC, because all the knowledge conveyed in them is
available for use at the point of action. If room description were to
convey something that the PC couldn't possibly know, such as the color
of an object when the character is blind, the result would be severe
cognitive dissonance for the player. If we type "OPEN BLUE DOOR" and the
blind PC is able to do so, we must conclude that the PC is not blind
after all -- that's how powerful the connection is between Character and
Action. Because Landscape, Character, and Action are so intimately
connected, it's quite difficult to avoid making Landscape a function of
Character, especially as the two get nearer and nearer to Action.
<P>
Given this PC-centric take on IF, it's worth asking what possibilities
reveal themselves as open or closed in its light. We've already seen
some of what's opened, from _Heroes'_ cumulative place-building to
_Shade's_ resonant evocation of the familiar, and no doubt future games
will continue to explore the power of the Landscape-Character axis.
Conversely, one element that seems rather alarmingly curtailed is the
possibility of dramatic irony. For instance, imagine Shakespeare's
_Hamlet_ as an IF game, in which the player controls Hamlet, but is
allowed (as a reader) to see Polonius stepping behind the arras in the
queen's bedroom. In order to retain the dramatic irony of the scene,
Hamlet must stab the arras and inadvertently kill Polonius, but why
would the player order him to do so, knowing what Hamlet doesn't? In
other words, how can the player be allowed to know things that the
character doesn't if that knowledge is expected to facilitate dramatic
irony? The only answer I can think of is to force the PC's actions, to
make Hamlet stab Polonius no matter what the player orders, but as soon
as that happens, the interactivity drops out of the IF game, and thus
Action is removed from the equation. I'm not prepared to contend that
this sort of dramatic irony is impossible, but the game that solves this
problem will be a major breakthrough. 
<P>
The work that's probably come the closest to this grail is Adam Cadre's
justly revered _Photopia_ (1998). Thanks to its fragmentation of the
narrative line and its array of POV characters, when the climactic scene
arrives, we know all the awful freight of what's about to happen. We
also can't stop it -- in order to achieve its dramatic irony, _Photopia_
must remove our power to act. There's an argument to be made that this
sort of moment becomes even more powerful in interactive fiction, the
useless prompt underscoring the inevitability of the character's tragic
fate. That's as may be, but it doesn't change the fact that PC and
Action are still inextricably connected, and the only way the PC can be
made to do something inevitable is to remove control from the player.
Photopia cleverly makes the inevitable moment a car accident, thus
giving the PC only a split-second to react (and thus providing a
plausible context for lack of choice) and making his default desires
identical to the player's desires (STOP THE CAR!), but in the final
analysis, the moment is still achieved by removing control from the
player, and indeed the great majority of the criticism directed towards
_Photopia_ has been of its non-interactivity. 
<P>
If Action is to retain its place in the IF triangle, Landscape and
Character must remain inextricably connected. Their powerful bond to
each other creates many exciting possibilities for the development of
both, possibilities that have begun to be exploited in the last several
years, and which no doubt will continue to yield opportunities for
development. What's also true is that noticing this connection and its
potential still only scratches the surface of character development and
landscape exposition in IF. Character can be revealed not just through
landscape, but through objects, plot, direct narrative, and many other
devices. In turn, while character is the primary lens for landscape,
that landscape can alter greatly from the passage of time, from plot
events, from NPC actions, or hundreds of other vectors, and each change
to character and landscape deepens both. We've only just started finding
the techniques, and it's a heady feeling. We're at the beginning of an
art form -- there's much more undiscovered territory to explore.
<P>
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[1] A note about terms here: First, I should note that by "interactive
fiction", I refer to text IF. Some of the points here are certainly
applicable to graphical or mixed-media IF as well, but some may not be.
Secondly, the general concepts of Landscape, Character, and Action
aren't meant to be taken too literally. IF could be (and in many cases
has been) created with a map of entirely abstract locations, or one
location, or location descriptions that consist entirely of describing
what's absent. Similarly, actions might involve no actual action (WAIT,
for example, or THINK), and a character can be anything from an intrepid
adventurer to an ear of corn. However, I would contend that these
elements are present in some form in all IF -- indeed, the absence of
these elements (such as the absence of landscape in _Eliza_) removes the
work from what might reasonably be called interactive fiction.
<P>
[2] This trait isn't entirely restricted to text games, but while no
text game offers continuous space, some graphical games, such as _Half-
Life_ and _Zork: Grand Inquisitor_, do in fact offer a continuous,
unbroken environment through which the PC travels. In that case, map
design becomes a much less powerful factor in fixing Character, and in
fact it might be argued that in those cases, the term "map design" has
more or less lost its meaning, and might be better called "level design"
or something similar.
<P>
[3] The subject of how description influences our perception of PC
gender could occupy another entire essay, and is out of scope for this
one. Consequently, in the case of games that don't explicitly specify the
gender of the PC, I'll rather arbitrarily select one, trying to hit a
more or less even ratio between the two. 
<P>
[4] _1981_ is credited to the pseudonymous A.D. Mcmlxxxi, and Cadre has
never claimed credit for it. In private correspondence, he explained
that this is because the game was a bit of a rush job, not polished
enough for something he would put his own name on. He agreed to be
credited for the game in this essay on the condition that I put in a
note explaining that he "wasn't actually *trying* or anything with that
one." That _1981_ is the game Cadre produces when he isn't even breaking
a sweat is a testament to his skill as an author.
<P>
[5] Or a bisexual of either sex, it probably should be said.
<P>
[6] This is one of the very few times that excretion has appeared in an
IF game without being a function of rather dodgy toilet humor. Instead,
the game plays it completely straight -- just another element in its
realistic scenario.