(22,'NPC Conversation Systems',1,'<P>\r\nEmily Short   s\r\nInteractive Fiction\r\n \r\n \r\n<P>\r\n \r\nConversation is one of the most challenging things to code in interactive fiction, and also one of the most widely discussed. There are a number of issues: how will the player communicate with the game what he wants to say to the NPC? How will information be represented internally? How will mood and context be represented within the work? To what extent will the NPC control the flow of discussion?\r\n \r\nThere is no single right answer to these questions. Conversation design depends very much on the author   s intentions for a work.\r\n \r\nQuestions to Start With\r\n \r\nThe Purpose of the Non-Player Character\r\n \r\nBefore you code anything, you should consider what kind of game you are writing, and what purpose you have for the non-player characters (hereafter    NPC   ) who will appear in it. A game with a strong emphasis on puzzles, where NPCs are present only to provide another kind of challenge, will have a very different treatment from a linear, story-oriented game where NPC interaction is the chief purpose of the game. A mystery with a lot of knowledge puzzles will again have a different set of requirements from a romance, where emotional interaction is emphasized.\r\n \r\nEven within a game, different NPCs can have different roles from a game-play perspective. One of the best discussions of this problem I\'ve seen is Jim Fisher\'s article on Ask/Tell theory: while it claims to be about a specific kind of conversation system, it addresses some important points about how NPCs can be used in any IF game. Do you want your player to talk extensively with NPCs and have a great deal of flexibility in the outcome? Or would you prefer to have control over how each conversation goes? Are the NPCs there mainly for local color, or do they provide vital exposition? Do they have to accomplish anything in the story?\r\n \r\nThe answers to these questions will affect the rest of your NPC design. In a game with a highly predetermined plot     that is, one in which you could sit down and write a list of all the scenes that must occur     a simulationist approach to NPC design would probably be the wrong approach. That is, you will probably have less use for variables to track emotion and behavior in general, and you will accomplish more of your effects by scripting them specifically. By contrast, in a game where the play is very broad, and the player can spend as much or little time with the NPCs as he would like, you may find yourself writing a fair amount of generic code to cover issues like NPC attitude, behavior, and goal-seeking.\r\n \r\nInput and the Parser\r\n \r\nConversation is probably the most difficult thing to code for an NPC. There are several problems, but one of the most pressing is that we can\'t yet express conversation in interactive fiction the way we express it in real life. The most natural thing to do, from the player\'s point of view, would be to type exactly what he would like to say, using plain English (or plain Italian, or whatever) to convey both content and tone. The Ideal NPC would understand perfectly and would react to the player\'s attitude as well as the factual content of what was being said.\r\n \r\nAt the moment, however, this kind of parsing is beyond us. Moreover, while it might be an ideal solution from the player\'s perspective, it could only be a nightmare for the author. In other aspects of IF design, it\'s possible to limit the number of things a player could reasonably do: there are only so many verbs, and only a specific set of objects available, and the scope of action is fairly well understood. An NPC who understood all topics of conversation, and all kinds of tonality and mood, could never be exhaustively programmed; there would always be another quirk unaccounted for. And such a character would almost certainly exceed the boundaries of the intended plot, as well. It would be quite hard to write a story that had any sense of structure or continuity, if the intended plot could be set aside while the player taught the NPC the basic rules of cricket.\r\n \r\nHere are some of the forms of input that authors have explored so far:\r\n \r\nYes/No Conversation. This is a one-trick pony: the NPC asks questions and the player is allowed to answer    yes    or    no.    Andrew Plotkin did a brilliant job of handling it in Spider and Web, but it\'s not particularly suited to most games. Still, I include it here as an example of the most minimal possible form of conversation.\r\n \r\nTalk To. When your player wants to communicate, he types >TALK TO JONES and the conversation takes place without further interference from him. The advantages are, first, that you can put realistic, situation-appropriate dialogue in the mouths of both PC and NPC, and that you don\'t have to worry about parsing anything funny at all, just about disabling (if they\'re implemented in the language of your choice) ASK and TELL. The disadvantage is that it leaves relatively little power in the hands of the player (whose only choice is whether to have the conversation or not to have it). TALK TO also locks the player into whatever characterization you have chosen for the PC. Stephen Granade\'s Common Ground exemplifies both the advantages and the drawbacks very well, I think. Ian Finley\'s Kaged, Kathleen Fischer\'s Masquerade, and assorted others have also made use of TALK TO.\r\n \r\nThis is an arena in which the writing skill of the author will make or break the game. If you are a skilled author capable of conveying a fair amount of character and emotion even in these set pieces (as Ian Finley, for instance, does, in my opinion), then you may be able to maintain a sense of immersion.\r\n \r\nMenu Conversations. When your player wants to communicate, he types >TALK TO JONES and there appears on his screen a menu of three to six sentences he can say at the moment. Perhaps there is also an option to say nothing. Jones then replies, and the player may be given another menu, and so on, until the conversation ends. Photopia worked on a system like this, and some the existing libraries for handling menus in inform are at least partly derivative of the Photopia ones.\r\n \r\nThe advantage here is that again the author has control over the form of communication. You can hand the player a bunch of clever quips to say, which characterizes the player character as well as the NPC. (For player characterization that takes place to a large extent in the library menus and the PC\'s deployment of them, see Rameses, by Stephen Bond.)\r\n \r\nThe problem is that menu systems are fairly restrictive; sometimes the menu doesn\'t contain anything that the player wants to say, and there\'s no way to change what\'s on the menu, or even the illusory feeling of freedom that comes from typing >ASK JONES ABOUT THEOLOGY, even if no response has been implemented.\r\n \r\nAnother problem is what Duncan Stevens has referred to as the lawnmower effect. If you give me a series of menus, I don\'t have to do any work to get through the conversation, and I can methodically (using undo, for instance) go back and replay different variations, taking now the first and now the second path, until I am sure that I\'ve seen the whole thing. The NPC is then finished, with no more thought on my part than I give to methodically mowing a lawn.\r\n \r\nFrom my point of view, this lessens involvement. If you are writing a highly directed game like Photopia or Rameses or Being Andrew Plotkin     preferably something so vividly written that the story or the humor of the narrative will make me want to move forward as rapidly as possible     then this may be right for you. If you\'re writing a game based on investigation, allowing the player to shape his own character, or leaving large stretches of the plot in the player\'s hands, then you may be better off with something more open-ended.\r\n \r\nAsk/Tell. ASK/TELL is the standard built into Inform, and is the most common form of NPC interaction in the Infocom games and some other old-school works. It allows the player to ASK or TELL the NPC about any keyword he chooses, and get a response. The approach is more flexible for the player than a menu conversation, and works better with knowledge-based puzzles where the player may be discovering and ASKing about new information as his understanding improves. On the other hand, it is typically more difficult to code a conversation which appears to have a natural flow with ASK/TELL than with a branching menu, where you can ensure that each remark rationally follows from the conversation path that has led up to it. It can also be a challenge to avoid guess-the-noun problems, where the player is required to think of the specific keywords the author had in mind in order to advance the game.\r\n \r\nASK/TELL conversation can also mean minimal characterization of the PC. With a menu system, the player sees the PC   s dialogue; with ASK/TELL, he may get only responses from the other character, like so:\r\n \r\n>ASK FRED ABOUT THE PORSCHE<br>\r\n   It belonged to my uncle,    Fred replies.    Don   t tell me you want to borrow it too.   \r\n \r\nThere   s no indication here of what the player   s character might have said. We can code around this and fill in what the player says too, if we like:\r\n \r\n>ASK FRED ABOUT THE PORSCHE<br>\r\n   Say, that   s a beautiful machine,    you say.    Where did you get it?   \r\n \r\n   It belonged to my uncle,    Fred replies.    Don   t tell me you want to borrow it too.   \r\n \r\nNonetheless, the risky part of this is that the player may not have intended ASK ABOUT THE PORSCHE to mean quite what we   ve decided it means. Maybe he wanted to ask about something else     the mileage, how well it drives, whether it   s for sale, why there are blood stains in the back seat. Providing dialogue for the player in this context adds player-character attitude and characterization but at the expense of some of the player   s sense of control.\r\n \r\nConversely, with ASK/TELL it is hard to allow the player to express those more complex ideas if he wants to. Usually the game won\'t accept more than one or two words there, so >ASK JONES ABOUT THE TIME OF THE MURDER is likely to fail flamingly. The 2000 Comp game 1-2-3 tries to get around this, but it does so by prompting the player, and it is remarkably inflexible about WHICH long string of words it will accept.\r\n \r\nTopic Words. Used in games such as J. D. Berry\'s SmoochieComp game Sparrow\'s Song and the older comp game She\'s Got a Thing for a Spring, this functions very much like ask/tell, except that the verbs themselves are omitted. The player simply types a word he wants to bring up and the conversation proceeds accordingly. This isn\'t so much, in my opinion, a new interface as it is a slight streamlining of an existing one: the author does not need to code separate answers for ASK and TELL, and the player does not need to try both verbs.\r\n \r\nASK/TELL with context and special topics.  TADS 3 comes with a conversation implementation that adds to the standard ASK/TELL system in some important ways. First of all, it adds an idea of conversational context, so that the game keeps track of whether the player is currently conversing with anyone. If the player tries to speak with someone without saying hi first, the game may generate a greeting; similarly, the NPC may say goodbye when the player walks out on a conversation in progress.\r\n \r\nSecondly, TADS 3 introduces the idea of special topics. A special topic usually involves an entire phrase (like    ASK JONES ABOUT THE TIME OF THE MURDER   ), and the player is given a hint when such a special topic becomes relevant in the conversation, with a message like    You could ask Jones about the time of the murder or tell him about the smoking gun.    For example, from Eric Eve   s All Hope Abandon:\r\n \r\nThe blonde woman turned round just as you joined the queue and asked,    So, how are you enjoying the conference?   \r\n \r\n(You could say it   s great, or be unenthusiastic.)\r\n \r\n> be unenthusiastic<br>\r\n   Well, to be honest, I   m not a great enthusiast for conferences,    you confessed,    and I   m not sure this one has changed my mind so far.   \r\n \r\n   That   s a shame!    she laughed,    But maybe our star speaker this afternoon will enthuse you more - are you looking forward to him?   \r\n \r\n(You could say yes or no.)\r\n \r\n> ask woman about conference<br>\r\nAnswering the question she asked struck you as being an elementary courtesy, especially since you wanted to create a good impression.\r\n \r\n> yes<br>\r\n   Professor Wortschlachter, you mean?    you replied,    Yes, his topic looks very interesting.     That was a lie, of course, but you didn   t want to appear too negative.\r\n \r\n   You think so?    she replied,    I   m not so sure - to be honest, I haven   t been all that impressed by his books.   \r\n \r\nSpecial topics do not preclude the use of single-keyword ask and tell, but they introduce some of the specificity of menus to those parts of a conversation that most need them. At the same time, they avoid dropping into an alternative mode of user interaction. Some players find it jarring, when most of their input is in the form of textual commands, to be asked to click on a menu or select a number from a list: it can be an unwelcome reminder that the game is just a game. The special topics system avoids this kind of uncomfortable transition.\r\n \r\nModified Menu/Topic Hybrid. This system combines the freedom of ASK/TELL with a menu system. When you begin a conversation with someone, you see a menu of the possible things to say listed in the status line, and you may say one of them simply by typing the corresponding letter. If, however, you would like to change the subject, you may also type >TOPIC DIAMOND NECKLACE, and a new menu appears. For instance, >TOPIC JONES might bring up a menu\r\n \r\n1. Have you seen Jones anywhere?<br>\r\n2. What does Jones do here?<br>\r\n3. How long has Jones been working for the company?<br>\r\n4. What is your opinion of Jones?\r\n \r\nThis gets rid of the lawnmower problem and forces the player to take some initiative in choosing how the conversation will go. It also means that you can allow the player to ask questions much more complex than are available in an ASK/TELL system, but without completely giving the game away by including questions like >ASK THE QUEEN WHETHER IT IS TRUE THAT SHE STOLE THE PRINCESS\' DIAMONDS into a single main menu with >QUEEN, HELLO and >DO YOU KNOW WHERE I COULD GET MORE OF THIS SCRUMPTIOUS CAVIAR?\r\n \r\nOne major drawback of this system is that it requires more writing to implement usefully than any other. Simple ASK/TELL usually means that the author has to write two responses for character for each major topic of conversation; if the plot is very complicated, or it\'s possible to get the NPC into more than one state of mind, then the author might have to write some variations on these responses, as well. With the menu system, in order to give the impression of a full implementation, the author winds up writing several questions and answers per topic per character. This can rapidly slide into the realm of the ridiculous.\r\n \r\nChatbot-like \'natural language\' input. Chatbot programming often involves the recognition of phrase structures, like    Who is *?    or    What is *?   , .\r\n \r\nJon Ingold\'s game Insight allows the player to type complex natural questions such as BOB, WHO IS YOUR WIFE? or FRED, WHY ARE YOU ANGRY? Since I haven\'t seen the source code, I\'m not sure exactly how this works, but I assume that it involves picking out the keywords (WIFE, ANGRY) and identifying a type of question (WHO, WHY, etc), and triangulating on an appropriate response from there. To take a relatively spoiler-free selection from early in the game:\r\n \r\n>man, who are you?<br>\r\n\"My name\'s Mackenzie. But I, er, guess you already knew that. What do you want to know? You know it all already, right? I\'ve been working - living - in Olympia. I\'m a genetic designer.\"\r\n \r\n>mackenzie, what is your name?<br>\r\n\"You already know my name, of course you do,\" he replies.\r\n \r\n>mackenzie, where is olympia?<br>\r\n\"Nice enough place, I guess,\" he says. \"We have a lot of problems with the windstorms because of the nearby mountains. I\'ve been working on solutions for that, using plants.\"\r\n \r\n>mackenzie, do you come from olympia?<br>\r\n-- Please be more specific about what you want to say.\r\n \r\n>mackenzie, who else lives in olympia?<br>\r\n\"I\'m sorry,\" Mackenzie replies. \"I didn\'t quite follow that.\"\r\n \r\nWhen it worked, I found the effect pretty fascinating. Where the parser realizes it can\'t interpret, it can give a relatively satisfying excuse. It\'s the middle case that\'s the most disconcerting, where the game mostly understands but misses some critical nuance. The response for \"where is Olympia?\" doesn\'t sound exactly right; it seems to have caught the keyword \"Olympia\", but not to have interpreted \"where?\" properly. And the \"Please be more specific\" line isn\'t helpful at all.\r\n \r\nI don\'t mean to seem too critical, because this game is attempting something extremely difficult. The problem is that faking a natural language understanding always leaves some notable gaps. One might expect that it would be easier to write a chatbot for an IF game (where there is a small modeled world whose state is described within the program) than one whose domain of conversation is real life. Within the IF world, the chatbot has access to the same facts about the state of the world that the player does. On the other hand, in IF the performance demands are, in a sense, higher: what can be forgiven in a chatbot becomes a bit more serious in an IF game, where the success or failure of an interaction determines whether or not the player will be able to see the rest of the plot and finish the game in a satisfying way.\r\n \r\nMeta-conversation Verbs. Adam Cadre\'s Varicella uses a form of modified ask/tell that allows for a little more player control of the PC\'s behavior. The ask/tell system works the same way as ever, but you are allowed to adopt one of three tones of voice: hostile, cordial, and servile. To take an example from the very beginning of the game:\r\n \r\n>tone cordial<br>\r\nYou adopt a cordial manner.\r\n \r\n>ask steward about nails<br>\r\n\"How\'s the manicure proceeding?\" you ask.\r\n \r\n\"Shouldn\'t be much longer, sir,\" the steward says.\r\n \r\nThe steward expertly attends to your fingernails with an emery board.\r\n \r\n>tone hostile<br>\r\nYou adopt a hostile tone.\r\n \r\n>ask steward about nails<br>\r\n\"How much longer is this going to take, you mediocre manservant?\" you bellow.\r\n \r\n\"Shouldn\'t be much longer, sir,\" the steward says.\r\n \r\nThe steward lightly blows on your fingertips.\r\n \r\n>tone servile<br>\r\nYou adopt a servile posture.\r\n \r\n>ask steward about nails<br>\r\nYou\'re scarcely about to address a common servant in an obsequious tone. For heaven\'s sake, where is your self-respect?\r\n \r\nReactions to this system have been mixed. I found it entertaining to go around seeing what interesting variations on the various statements I could get by changing my tone of voice, but I also frequently forgot to set the tone correctly and found myself acting inappropriately. And the more engrossed I was in the game, the more likely I was to forget about the tone system, which meant that I used it more as a toy than to get at the actually interesting variations that I understand are buried there as a result.\r\n \r\nAnother experiment along similar lines is Forever Always, which permits the player to use adverbs to control the tone of conversation. The player can, for instance, WHISPER HUSKILY, SHOUT ANGRILY, SPEAK POLITELY, etc. A menu of options appears, and its contents depend on what manner of speech you chose. This system, unlike the one in Varicella, lets the player see what he is going to say before he says it, so the effect of the different tones is a bit more obvious. The game is not flawless, but the problems in the later scenes seems to stem more from bugginess and lack of testing than from problems with the system as such, which is fairly interesting.\r\n \r\nBoth Varicella and the Forever Always have systems designed for a game where emotional states and relationships between characters are of primary interest; one\'s a palace intrigue, the other a romance-novel parody. The Forever Always system might not be at all successful for a game that centered on information gathering, since the player isn\'t allowed to specify keywords, and there\'s no potential for following up on, say, the clues of a mystery. On the other hand, I think it actually works better than the Varicella approach for the specific and limited purpose of doing character-emotion-based IF. (Since Varicella is partly about discovering information, the adverbs-only approach wouldn\'t have worked there.)\r\n \r\nA word of caution, however. It\'s important, when expanding a conversation system to include new verbs, not to leave the player with an unmanageable number of options. In Varicella it was possible to keep track of the three tones of voice, but other suggestions I\'ve heard (such as a >BE SYMPATHETIC command) or tried to implement myself (a system including COMFORT, INSULT, APOLOGIZE, FLIRT, SEDUCE, SMILE, LAUGH...) suggest perhaps-unmanageable systems.\r\n \r\n \r\nThe Model: Representing Conversational Information Internally\r\n \r\nSo far, we have looked only at how the player will communicate his instructions to the game, and not at all about how the conversation will be modeled internally. To go further, I also want to define a few pieces of jargon for the purposes of clear discussion:\r\n \r\ntopic: a subject of conversation, such as    the weather   ,    religion   ,    employment   ,    the Red Sox   , etc.\r\n \r\nfact: a proposition about a topic, such as that Red Sox have lost the ball game, rain is expected tomorrow, etc.\r\n \r\nquip: the actual verbatim dialogue used, such as    The Red Sox were let down by their bullpen again this afternoon    or    Seattle can look forward to its thirty-ninth day of rain tomorrow.   \r\n \r\neffect: the result of saying a given piece of verbatim dialogue beyond merely expressing information, such as causing the non-player character to become sad, committing the player to do something for the non-player character, etc.\r\n \r\nconversational goal: something the player or NPC is trying to achieve through the conversation: to find out a specific piece of information, to get one of the characters into a given mood, etc.\r\n \r\nscene: a particular section of the plot; the responsibility for deciding which scene is in progress typically lies with plot-modeling algorithms that consider the whole state of the world and are not part of the conversation system per se.\r\n \r\nEven a very simple conversation model usually represents at least one of these elements in code. Complex models may treat several elements at once, or may apply more rules to determine what the player is allowed to say when.\r\n \r\nThree Traditional Models\r\n \r\nTopic Quips. Traditionally underpinning the ASK/TELL system is a model in which any given topic of conversation is tied to a single response. This might be implemented with a table or switch statement that exactly matches content from the player   s command, or it might treat the topics internally as modeled objects, but there is usually a one-to-one match of quip to topic for any given NPC. In this sense, the conversation is like looking words up in the dictionary: the replies will always be the same, and there is no sense of continuity, of conversational context, or of a rapport established between the player character and the NPC. A slight variation on this is to have a few keywords that the NPC will not talk about until first adequately bribed: the NPC is still a dictionary, but a few entries are written in invisible ink.\r\n \r\nQuip Tree. Traditionally underpinning the menu system is a model in which dialogue is a branching tree. At the first node, you may pick A, B, or C to say; if you pick A, you   re then confronted with a choice of D, E, or F. Dialogue flows, since the player is never confronted with the option to say anything in any order other than the one specifically anticipated by the author. On the other hand, the player   s freedom is constrained significantly.\r\n \r\nScene Quips. Traditionally underpinning the TALK TO system, this model shifts the burden of conversation context entirely to the plot model: each scene offers the player a single pre-written exchange with a given NPC. This leaves the player with almost no freedom, except inasmuch as he can affect the rest of the world to bring about new scenes in which new dialogue is appropriate.\r\n \r\nWhat the Traditional Models Miss\r\n \r\nThese models of conversation are legitimately popular, especially in work where NPC interaction is not the most important aspect of game play: they are simple to understand and relatively easy to write and extend. Adding new keywords or dialogue branches does not require much work on any other pieces of the system.\r\n \r\nThe problem becomes much harder when we want to devise a model that combines player freedom with a sense of developing context. Now we have to be able to keep track of what has already been said in the conversation, model the effects of the exchange on the NPC (and perhaps on the player, for that matter), and determine what can legitimately be said next. We might also want to take into account some external information about the world state: what stage of the plot we are in, what the NPC has seen the player do, and so on. Here are some of the design concerns that arise with one or both of the traditional models:\r\n \r\nAvoiding Repetitious Dialogue. One of the least person-like habits of the typical IF NPC is that he always answers the same questions in the exact same words, regardless of how many times the player has asked. This issue need not come up in quite the same way in a menu-based conversation, since you could disable questions that have already been asked, whereas there\'s no good way to prevent the player from typing >ASK JONES ABOUT HAT ten times in a row.\r\n \r\nAt its most basic level, this is just about preventing the NPC from saying the same thing over and over and over again. Real people don\'t repeat the same words in the same language a hundred times in a row, and it detracts from the feeling of realism if your NPC does. There are several options for dealing with this: having the parser cut in and say, \"You remember that Jones told you...\"; having Jones tell you again but in a slightly modified form using some kind of randomization of text (so that over time you would get similar text over and over, but it wouldn\'t be identical each time); or describing the conversation without telling you the exact words (\"Jones tells you again that...\"). Alternatively, if Jones is a feisty sort of person, he can complain if the player asks him the same question multiple times. This is dangerous, though, since if Jones has important information to impart, the player may find himself stuck because he didn   t take notes the first time through the conversation.\r\n \r\nContextually-based Reactions. In real life if you\'re talking to someone and that person starts to read a book, you may take a message from the fact. Likewise, there are spots in conversations where it may be more or less appropriate to react to the other person with advances (>KISS JONES) or violence (>KILL JONES WITH ROCK). If you have a system of conversation that tracks what the current topic of conversation is, and whether anything is actively going on, you can use it to tailor appropriate reactions for KISS, GIVE, SHOW, HIT, et al.\r\n \r\nSomewhat more subtly, context in conversation can also be used to interpret the meaning of the player\'s keywords.\r\n<P>\r\nFor instance:\r\n \r\n[The PC and Inspector Lynley have been discussing murder victims.]<br>\r\n>ask lynley about veronica<br>\r\n\"Do you think it could possibly have been Veronica?\" you suggest. \"I overheard her arguing with the victim last night.\"\r\n \r\nAs opposed to:\r\n \r\n[The PC and Inspector Lynley have been chatting about their love lives.]<br>\r\n>ask lynley about veronica<br>\r\n\"How well do you know Veronica?\" you ask. \"I\'d like to ask her out, but I\'m not sure whether things are really over between her and Marcus.\"\r\n \r\nThis kind of refinement is irrelevant in a menu-based conversation, but for ASK/TELL it can lend a sense of depth. It takes some work, though, to make sure that really important questions never become entirely impossible to ask just because the conversation context is set wrong. If the player desperately wants to accuse Veronica of murder, he\'ll be frustrated if the game only permits questions about her love life.\r\n \r\nAbstract Knowledge. One of the artificial abilities we might like to give our NPCs, aside from the ability to wander around a map intelligently and carry out complex goals, is the ability to understand what they are told: to keep track of what items of knowledge they have so far, use them to change their plans and goals, and even draw logical inferences from what they\'ve learned.\r\n \r\nPurpose. NPCs give the impression of being much more active and thoughtful if they show signs of having a private agenda of their own     which may include raising new conversational topics, deciding to cut a conversation short, and so on. There\'s a trade-off here again: the NPC who takes actions and doesn\'t wait for the player may seem more dynamic and alive than an NPC who sits around being questioned at the player\'s whim, interspersed with turns of the PC taking inventory, looking under sofa cushions, and unlocking safes. And if you have a specific set of information you need to convey to the player, sometimes it\'s useful to have an NPC who will just keep coming back to that topic until it\'s been adequately covered.\r\n \r\nA Few Alternate Models, and Thoughts on Model Design in General\r\n \r\nWhat follows is a discussion of some alternative conversation models I have tried, my reasons for trying them, and how well I thought they worked. I focus on my own work here because discussing these requires some understanding of the code base; it is not always possible to tell with any certainty how someone else   s game is modeled internally.\r\n \r\nTopic Quips with Mood Tracking and Quip-tagging. Galatea has a number of topics. Each of these will produce only one quip of response at any given time: the interface is ASK/TELL, so there are no quip options presented to the player. However, quips have a variety of effects, especially on Galatea   s mood and position, so that the state of the conversation is in constant flux; and the state of conversation in turn affects which of the available quips is used when topics are mentioned. Quips that have been used are tagged as used so that they will never be repeated; some quips can be used only after other quips. There is no systematic tracking of facts, even though certain facts do come to light and have a profound effect on the state of the game (but this is programmed by checking whether any of the relevant quips have been used).\r\n \r\nThis is somewhat shaggy system and challenging to extend and maintain, and it does not entirely protect against contextual breaks where the flow of conversation is lost. Moreover, Galatea herself is mostly reactive rather than active. There are a few points where she is specially programmed to make a follow-up comment if the player does not speak about something on the next turn, but for the most part she tends to be silent until spoken to.\r\n \r\nTopics with Multiple Quips. In Pytho   s Mask, an assortment of different quips are associated with different topics. Interaction is handled through a topic-menu system, so when the player asks about a topic he is given a selection of all the currently-relevant quips associated with that topic. Quips are marked when used so that they won   t be repeated unless it is particularly desirable for the player to be able to re-ask a question; sometimes in that case there is one quip used for the first time the question is asked and an alternate form for subsequent askings. Using a quip can also have the effect of changing the topic, as well as producing emotional responses.\r\n \r\nThis model arose from experiment with the topic-menu interface, used here for the first time. However, it is possible to use a different interface with this kind of model, as demonstrated by Kathleen Fischer   s    Redemption   , and the enhanced ASK/TELL conversation system built into TADS 3; these input systems are probably best for cases where the number of quips per topic is sparse, even if it is not one-to-one.\r\n \r\nTopics with Multiple Quips and Abstract Facts. The model in Best of Three is designed to support an NPC whose conversational goal was to discover information from the player by asking questions and drawing logical inferences. Like Pytho   s Mask, the model associates a number of quips with each topic, and uses a topic-menu system to present this to the player. However, it also implements separately a tree of facts; a quip can indicate one or more of these facts.\r\n \r\nThe tree structure represents the way in which the NPC will draw inferences. He is curious about certain facts, and has the ability to ask questions about them or direct the conversation, since he is allowed to choose and speak a quip of his own after answering any quip offered by the player. When the NPC has learned all the facts underlying one node, he then infers that that node is correct; he may ask the PC a question to verify his conclusion, but essentially the reasoning process is complete.\r\n \r\nIn practice, the game turns out to be not very much fun to play. The system of inference is cumbersome, and it is not always obvious to the player that a reasoning process was going on behind the scenes, rather than a prewritten script. Moreover, conversation always tends up the factual tree to arrive at the same goals in the end, so despite the dynamic internals of the game, the difference between play-throughs is usually a matter of reaching the same quips in a different order, rather than entirely different lines of discussion. The NPC   s behavior might have been more interesting if he had not driven the conversation so relentlessly (too much NPC autonomy makes the player feel helpless), and if the inference system had caused more complex behavior, making it more obvious how the NPC was responding to changes by the player.\r\n \r\nTopics with Cross-indexed Quips. City of Secrets uses an elaboration of the multiple-quip implementation described above, except that quips can be associated with multiple topics, as well: asking about any of the topics covered by a quip will make that quip available. Moreover, topics are nested, so that topics about specific items (like a particular character or place) are treated as sub-items of general topics (such as an entire group or region). When the player runs out of quips to say about the current topic, the game explores whether any quips are available for the more general subject, and so on. The result is only partially successful at providing a sense of continuity and keeping the player constantly prompted with possible things to say: I wanted to avoid having the topic menu become empty of quips any more often than necessary.\r\n \r\nTo make matters more complicated, there are a few meta topics representing abstract actions such as >INSULT, COMPLIMENT, and the like: quips are associated with these topics because of their effects rather than because of their content, but otherwise the command >INSULT functions much like >ASK JONES ABOUT INSULT: every insult-related quip that is currently available becomes accessible for the player   s use.\r\n \r\nContextual determinations are messy and not handled very systematically. There is no representation of facts as such. Quips can be tagged to indicate that they could follow only immediately after other quips (emulating the effect of a dialogue tree in small) or only after other quips had been used (but not necessarily immediately before). Moreover, arbitrary information about the game state is sometimes used to determine whether a quip was available for use. Finally, some quips are associated with specific NPCs while others can be used with any member of a class of NPCs (e.g., any shopkeeper, or any member of a political faction).\r\n \r\nNPC conversation goals were coded in a similarly ad-hoc way: the plot was divided into scenes, and during a scene the NPC might have a script of quips to present to the player. The player had some flexibility in that he could delay the script by asking his own questions or (sometimes) changing the subject, but the NPC would revert to the main script when the player did not take action or ran out of available quips.\r\n \r\nThis is by far the most complicated system I have ever constructed, and it was, frankly, out of hand: hard to program and even harder to maintain. It did provide a certain richness of interaction, since the player had a lot of freedom to change the subject and to give abstract commands as well as concrete ones; nonetheless I believe that similar effects could be achieved better in other ways. One particular failing not only of this model but of the entire game is a lack of focus: because I was insufficiently clear in my mind about how I wanted the player to be able to interact and affect the plot, I tried to implement    everything reasonable.    As a result, unsurprisingly, play is not always very well directed. Throughout the project I struggled to produce enough material, to handle the ramifications of massive combinatorial effects, and to keep pacing problems at bay.\r\n \r\nDatabase Queries (Multi-fact Topics). This model works with a chatbot-like interface, and the player   s input is scanned for keywords and standard sentence forms: input such as SAM, WHERE IS MR GREEN will trigger on    where    and    Mr. Green    and dynamically generate a response from Sam on the whereabouts of Green, the topic. Some five or six categories of fact are provided for each topic; because there is so much to ask about, quips are not all pre-written, but are made up on the fly.\r\n \r\nThis system was used for parts of    Mystery House Possessed    (a game that actually implemented several conversation models for NPCs of differing intelligence -- see below as well). The game presented the player with a dynamically generated mystery in which a randomly-selected NPC murdered other NPCs in turn, leaving clues behind; the ability to ask specific questions was intended to assist in investigation. A drawback, of course, was that response quips to the database-style queries tended to be fairly lacking in personality, though I made some attempt to add local color when the speaker might have strong feelings about the topic.\r\n \r\nTwo-topic Quips. In this model, also used in    Mystery House Possessed,    the player   s input is scanned for topic keywords and the last two distinct topics are used to select a quip from a table. The idea is that the interesting things to say are about relationships between topics (how does Daisy feel about Tom?) rather than in the topics themselves; this seemed appropriate in a context where I wanted to supply considerable amounts of information about how people reacted to one another.\r\n \r\nThis system provides a very limited kind of context, as well. The player might say >ASK SAM ABOUT WORK in one sentence and in the next >ASK SAM ABOUT JOE, in which case the second answer will trigger on WORK and JOE: Sam will give a reply about Joe   s employment, rather than some other aspect such as Joe   s love-life, attitude to another character, health, etc. A selection of concrete topics were provided (mostly the characters in the game, plus a few who were missing) as well as a few abstract topics (work, love, etc) that might be thought to have some bearing on people   s motivations. It was also possible to say >ASK SAM ABOUT JOE AND TOM explicitly in order to query a relationship in a single move.\r\n \r\nThe results were interesting, but, as always, it is dangerous to permit the player to use a chatbot-style interface in IF; it   s all too easy for him to get completely nonsensical reactions out of the system. Moreover, while the system offered good continuity over a couple of moves, it was not so good at producing the sense of an evolving conversation over a long time. This was less a liability in    Mystery House Possessed    than it might have been in some other games, because MHP involved a number of mentally unstable people who might be expected not to converse rationally, and also because the pacing of the game precluded very extended conversations with anyone: other NPCs kept being killed, discoveries made, characters wandering from room to room, and so on, so that the number of turns that could be spent drawing out a single conversation was limited. The flaws of the system would have shown more severely had that not been the case.\r\n \r\nTopics with Interstitial Quips. In this model, used for    Glass   , quips are associated not with specific topics but with the transition from one topic to another. Order of topics is important here, where it was not important in the two-topic quips model above. When the player or an NPC mentions a new topic, the model looks up the current topic and the last topic, finds a quip associated with that specific conversational transition, and prints the result. The quip used is then erased from the table in order to avoid repetition. The conversation is divided into a series of scenes, and in each scene the NPCs pursue a conversational goal, namely, to move the conversation to a given topic. The player can interfere by changing the topic himself. This model allows for a simple AI implementation to handle the other characters    conversational initiative: conversation topics are defined to be related to one another (much as one room on a map leads to another), and the NPCs use a pathfinding algorithm to discover the current best path from the current topic to their goal topic. Facts, on the other hand, are not explicitly modeled. Major state changes in the conversation, where the characters can be assumed to be using a new set of information and moving towards a new endpoint, are modeled as scene breaks; so each scene might be understood as a contextual domain in which certain facts are known and certain attitudes are at work.\r\n \r\nThe result is a game that moves quickly and fluidly and does a good job of preserving contextual flow: because quips are tied to a before and after, it is hard to reach one that does not follow from what went before. NPC AI is easy to write for this, as well, because the conversational goal of the NPC can be easily expressed in terms of pathfinding through relations inherent in the model.\r\n \r\nOn the other hand, player freedom is somewhat diminished (as in Best of Three) because the NPCs direct so much of the conversation. Play-throughs are markedly different only if the player succeeds in intervening at an important point, rather than being as free-form as in Galatea.\r\n \r\nTopic Quips with Tight Scene Correlation. Used in    When in Rome 1,    this model uses a traditional ASK/TELL interface and provides one quip per topic of conversation per scene, but changes scenes very frequently. Thus it is difficult for the conversational context to change very much within the space of a scene. This essentially shifts the burden of context-tracking so that it becomes part of the plot model rather than part of the conversation model. This works, but is probably put to best effect in games with a focused, fast-moving narrative.\r\n \r\nQuip Menus with Missions, Abstract Facts, and Trust Effects. This model, for an unreleased work in progress, is designed to present a dialogue menu interface for a CRPG. Since there is no ASK/TELL input, no topics are modeled as such. Instead, we model missions that the player is currently working on or being requested to undertake, and this largely determines the context in which different quips become available: some things can be said only when the relevant mission is in progress.\r\n \r\nNPCs pursue conversational goals by offering missions to the PC, inquiring after missions already in progress, or asking questions about the PC   s intentions and loyalties. The player pursues his conversational goals by asking for information that will help him solve missions; his ability to find information is partly determined by how much he is trusted by his interlocutor. Quips that have been used once are occasionally discarded if they can   t be repeated, but more often they are instead moved to the base of the dialogue tree, so that the player can ask again any question he has already reached and asked once. This means that after he has gone to the trouble of finding something out through careful investigation, he is not required to repeat the entire process.\r\n \r\nQuips may also be associated with facts. Not every quip has a related fact; facts are modeled, sparsely, where they are of particular importance. Some facts are said to exclude other facts -- that is, if one is true, the other must be false. When an NPC asks a question of the player, the player may respond with quips indicating facts, or with evasive quips that put the NPC off (   none of your business   ,    I don   t remember   , etc.). The NPC next considers what he has heard from the player so far and determines whether it is internally consistent. If he has heard a consistent fact from the player, his trust rises. If he has heard an evasion, his trust remains the same. If he has heard a fact that excludes or contradicts an earlier fact, his trust drops, he indicates that he has noticed an inconsistency, and he asks the player to clarify his position.\r\n \r\nThis model (though in an unfinished work) seems to be satisfactory so far in producing dynamic menu dialogue, and providing situations in which the player must acquire and share information strategically. Revealing information can help the player in the short term by providing a trust boost, at the expense of diminishing his later options to lie successfully. Dialogue repetition in this genre is considered a less serious flaw than it generally is in textual interactive fiction, and therefore we are not concerned about rephrasing things that have already been said once.\r\n \r\nSome Conclusions\r\n \r\nThe point of this overview has not been to recommend any particular system of conversational modeling, but rather to suggest a few ideas.\r\n \r\nFirst, while some models best support some interfaces, the correlation is not simple, and it is worth thinking about the model explicitly rather than throwing it together ad hoc.\r\n \r\nSecond, a    conversational model    can treat facts, topics, or quips as the basic units of conversation; or it can model combinations of these; or it can work with other base units. I have considered, but never attempted, a conversation model whose primary elements and actions would be emotive rather than verbal, so that, for instance, a quip might represent movement from an angry state to a happy state, rather than from one topic to another topic; NPC goal seeking might also involve seeking a series of quips that would lead to the desired emotional outcome. In short, there are numerous possibilities. Keep an open mind; if you find yourself designing a system that requires a great deal of special-casing (as I did with    City of Secrets   ), stop and ask yourself what these special cases are usually accounting for, and whether you can model that aspect of the world systematically instead.\r\n \r\nThird, it is important to focus on the kind of interaction you expect the player to do, and (if you intend some degree of AI for your NPCs) the kinds of conversational goal-seeking you expect of your NPCs, as well. It is easy to be seduced into adding all sorts of things to the conversation model that are not strictly necessary and that produce horrible complexity. For one thing, adding new features to the model usually means writing much more content later on (and possibly spending more time debugging, too).\r\n \r\n \r\nOutput: Sharing Information with the Player\r\n \r\nWhen we build a conversation model, we need to think not just about levels of implementation and our choice of conversational input; we also need to consider how we are going to represent the model   s output to the player, to make the most out of our simulated world and give the player enough information to make meaningful choices.\r\n \r\nOffering Recaps. If past conversation affects the current state of the game, or if there are substantial amounts of information that can only be gained from conversation, it is often wise to provide the player with some way to review what has already been said without taking extensive notes. To this end, some games offer commands like RECAP, REMEMBER, or THINK ABOUT, allowing the player to recall what was said about specific topics or to review what topics have been discussed in general.\r\n \r\nExposing the Mechanism (partly). If we   re modeling a character   s mood as something separate from the conversation exchanged, we want to let the player know in subtle ways when the mood has changed; we may also want to let the player get a sense of the character   s attitude by examining him. Gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice can all be described as part of the flow of dialogue but (if necessary) implemented separately. Galatea, for instance, has conversational replies with blank spots that essentially mean    insert an appropriate gesture here   : she might use the same set of words but a different movement or tone of voice depending on the overall atmosphere of the conversation.\r\n \r\nSome games with a partially graphical component have tried using an image of the NPC to convey current mood or expression: Chris Crawford   s Erasmatron dynamically created facial expressions, and Fa  ade uses body language and faces in addition to dialogue to convey the moods of the characters. Multimedia IF has not done too much with this possibility so far; but, on the other hand, moods and emotional reactions can be expressed textually as well.\r\n \r\nSimilarly, if the NPC is using some kind of logical model to draw conclusions or pursue goals, it may be worth making that fact explicit as well: when the character realizes something, tell the player what he realized and why.\r\n \r\nThis may seem terribly unsubtle; indeed, it goes against an accepted wisdom that one is trying to build a mechanism that doesn   t appear mechanical, and that the ideal end result will be a conversation that feels real but in\r\nwhich the player is never conscious of how it works. That goal is an interesting one to pursue, but in my opinion (and there are other opinions out there), most interactive fiction is better served by a model that gives the player some clues about what is being modeled and how he can interact productively. If you show the player that the characters are drawing logical deductions from his statements (say), then he will realize that choosing what facts to reveal is an important part of the game, and pursue that angle rather than others. If you can focus your players on the kinds of interaction that you   ve anticipated and written for, they   re more likely to enjoy the work and less likely to run into the boundaries and weaknesses of your system.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2006-08-25 07:31:13',1,13,9286),(23,'Giving Your NPC a Life of His Own',34,'Minor spoilers for: Adventure, Zork I, Wishbringer, Christminster<br>\r\nModerate spoiler for: The Beetmonger\'s Journal<br>\r\n<P>\r\n[FONT/] means begin fixed pitch font. This is used for pseudo-code.\r\n[/FONT] returns to normal font.\r\n<P>\r\nGiving Your NPC a Life of His Own<br>\r\nby Brent VanFossen<br>\r\nbrentvanfossen@hotmail.com<br>\r\n<P>\r\nPick up any novel and chances are good that it will center around a\r\ncharacter or group of characters, their activities, and what they\r\ndo. Stories are about people because people are interesting. Our lives\r\nare full of people and so are our stories. Great characters drive a\r\nstory along: Homer\'s Ulysses and Shakespeare\'s Hamlet are\r\nunforgettable. Our literature is full of fascinating supporting\r\ncharacters as well: Defoe\'s _Robinson Crusoe_ had the good man Friday\r\nto keep the shipwrecked sailor company, and Huckleberry Finn was such\r\na powerful character in Mark Twain\'s _Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ that\r\nhe later played the leading role in a book of his own. These\r\ncharacters are memorable because they add something to the stories and\r\nwe relate to them in some way, motivating us to turn the page.\r\n<P>\r\nThe IF tradition has been somewhat different. The original _Adventure_\r\nby Crowther and Woods was a digital treasure hunt through the largely\r\nuninhabited tunnels of a real-world cave. The dwarves and other\r\ncreatures that populate the game were quite literally an afterthought,\r\nas were the puzzles, which were added later to bring the stark\r\nlandscape to life. Likewise _Zork I_, the Infocom classic, offered the\r\nGreat Underground Empire for the player to explore, but the troll and\r\nthe thief, and later on, the cyclops, are nearly unresponsive to the\r\nplayer\'s attempts to converse with them, and they do little on their\r\nown. In the parlance of writers, they are cardboard cutouts: simple\r\nand single-purpose, unengaging, and shallow. They serve a purpose but\r\ndon\'t offer much in the way of depth.\r\n<P>\r\nCreating believable NPCs is hard. The author of a novel can plan and\r\nwrite a scene that the reader will see once, then turn the page. The\r\ncharacters come alive because the author has carefully crafted what we\r\nsee and hear, showing us the dramatic and essential bits while leaving\r\nout all the extraneous details, until the effect is exactly right and\r\nthe characters live on in our imagination.\r\n<P>\r\nIn IF, the player is free to move and explore on his own. The very\r\nnature of IF allows the player to return to locations again and again,\r\nmuch as we do in real life. Unlike in real life where people have\r\nminds of their own, the non-player characters that populate the\r\ninteractive landscape can only react the way the author has programmed\r\nthem to react. Thus, if an author has created a simple NPC who only\r\nreacts to a single \"correct\" solution, that NPC will stand in the same\r\nplace for hundreds of moves while the player attempts to discover the\r\nkey that will advance the game.  The NPC in this case is little more\r\nthan a locked door, infinitely patient and equally lifeless, and\r\nultimately, not very interesting.\r\n<P>\r\nThis is not always a bad thing; we encounter \"single-purpose\" people\r\nevery day in real life. The person we meet on the way to the mailbox\r\nwho nods at us, the girl chasing pigeons in the park, the gasoline\r\nattendant who asks if he should check the oil in the car, the door\r\nopeners and ticket takers and grocery clerks of real life are all\r\npeople with their own lives and their own problems.  Their interests\r\nare not known to us and we really only interact with them on the most\r\nbasic of levels. Their \"How are you today?\" is not really a question,\r\nbut a social courtesy.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the opening scene of _Wishbringer_, the boss, Mr. Crisp, stands\r\nbehind the service counter of the Festeron Post Office reading other\r\npeople\'s postcards. As the player enters, Crisp tosses a mysterious\r\nenvelope onto the counter and snarls, \"We just got this Special\r\nDelivery. I want you to drop it off right away. That means NOW!\r\nDeliver that envelope, chowderbrain! The Magick Shoppe closes at five\r\no\'clock!\" We immediately know that we have a task to complete, and so\r\nthe game has begun. Any question is met with Mr. Crisp screaming,\r\n\"You\'re here to take orders, not to ask questions!\" If we dawdle, he\r\nshoves the envelope into our hands and throws us out, locking the door\r\nbehind us. The red-faced Mr. Crisp will play a more significant role\r\nlater on, but in the opening scene, he is a simple NPC who serves a\r\nsimple purpose: to move us into the game.\r\n<P>\r\nMany NPCs, however, play a more complicated role in the story. Gus,\r\nthe harvest hand in _The Beetmonger\'s Journal_, sits in a rocking\r\nchair on the front porch of the farmhouse, commenting on the weather\r\nand talking to the PC. Later, the player character must return to\r\nvisit Gus again, bringing him a particular object, which Gus then uses\r\nto fashion a toy for the PC. This is when Gus comes to life. He\r\nchanges from the passive, sit-on-the-porch farmhand into a\r\nwood-whittling toymaker. The player watches with amazement as he\r\nfashions a \"whimmy diddle\" from a piece of dry wood. No longer does\r\nGus simply respond to what the player character says or does, rather\r\nhe knows what to do and proceeds to make the toy, even if the PC just\r\nstands and watches. The NPC follows the script the programmer/author\r\nhas written, and we, the players, forget we\'re reading words on a\r\ncomputer screen and become entranced.\r\n<P>\r\nThe prologue of _Christminster_ has a number of NPCs, from the old man\r\nwho guards the gate of the college, a simple NPC who does little more\r\nthan look through the gate and tell the PC that the college is closed\r\non Sundays, to the more complex busking magician who stands behind a\r\ntable on Bridge Street and exhorts passers-by to watch his tricks. The\r\nmagician has a full routine that involves asking the audience for a\r\nsmall article, which he uses as the hidden object in a three-cups\r\nshell game. If no one in the audience offers him an appropriate\r\nobject, he continues the trick by providing a marble of his own. His\r\nmagic routine is scripted, and he follows the script without prompting\r\nfrom the player. He interacts with the police constable who patrols\r\nthe grounds around the college, responds to a few simple questions,\r\nand is a very realistic and effective NPC. Like a real person, he has\r\nactivities he does whether anyone watches or not.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nWhen Should an NPC Have a Script?\r\n<P>\r\nNPCs that occupy a central position in a story, either central to the\r\nplot or centrally located in the landscape of the game, are more\r\nimportant to the player\'s experience and are good candidates for a\r\nscript. The shopkeeper in a small town\'s general store can be a\r\npassive NPC if the player will visit only once to make a quick\r\npurchase. If the shopkeeper, however, is known by the locals as the\r\nmost opinionated on matters of politics, aware of all the goings on\r\naround town, and if people gather in his shop in the afternoons to\r\nmeet for a soda and gossip, then he takes on a special importance to\r\nthe game. When a character begins to take on a life of his own, when\r\nhis importance to the story demands that he be more than a just a\r\nprop, it is the author\'s responsibility to assist that NPC by giving\r\nhim the freedom and independence to pursue his own goals.\r\n<P>\r\nThis means that as the author, you have to know what those goals\r\nare. Who is this shopkeeper that everyone in town wants to visit in\r\nthe afternoons? What is his name? Is he young or old? Is he married?\r\nMaybe he gets his best information from his wife, the quiet little\r\nwoman who sits in the back room, says nothing but hears\r\neverything. How long has he been married and how did he meet her?\r\nMaybe his brother is a world-famous guitarist who holds free concerts\r\nand workshops in front of the store whenever he passes through\r\ntown. Maybe he himself was a world-famous guitarist until he got tired\r\nof touring, and now he just wants to tend the shop, leaving the life\r\nof glitter behind. Maybe he makes his own ice cream, using fresh cream\r\nand fruit from the local orchards, and it\'s the best to be had for\r\nmiles around. Did he build the shop himself, or did he take it over\r\nfrom his parents when they died? Did they die of old age, or was it a\r\nterrible accident down by the river? How did the accident affect him?\r\nDoes he walk with a limp? Why? What is his education? How is his\r\nspeech: meticulously correct or full of slang? Does he speak with a\r\nforeign accent or a southern drawl? Maybe his father was or still is a\r\nlocal politician, and that\'s why he likes to argue politics. Maybe he\r\nplans to open a second store in the town 15 miles down the road, and\r\nthe county government is opposed because it would threaten the store\r\nalready there that is owned by the chairman of the building\r\ncommittee. Maybe our shopkeeper is afraid of changes in the law that\r\nwill affect his business. Does he have a problem with creditors? Does\r\nhe extend credit to his customers, even the ones who he knows can\'t\r\nafford to pay him back? What does he do in the evenings after the shop\r\nis closed? Does he have a hobby?\r\n<P>\r\nKeep a journal of the background story of your NPC and write the\r\nanswers to these questions and more so you can keep the details\r\nconsistent throughout the game. Not everything you write will appear\r\nin the game, but you, the author, need to see your characters as real\r\npeople if you want your players to believe in them. This information\r\nshould never come out as a big narrative infodump. Rather, the\r\nresearch and preparation will reveal itself slowly during the course\r\nof play.\r\n<P>\r\nWrite out a description of a typical \"day in the life\" of your\r\nNPC. Our shopkeeper\'s day might include arriving at work in the\r\nmorning, putting out his wares, cleaning, leaving for lunch, receiving\r\nnew stock, making ice cream, discussing politics with the people in\r\nthe store, managing money at the end of the day, and going home for\r\nthe evening. Whether any or all of this is interesting or important to\r\nthe game will affect how much of it is included.\r\n<P>\r\nOnce you know who your NPC is, you can flesh out the details in your\r\ndescriptions and in the NPC\'s responses to the player\'s questions. You\r\nalso will be ready to begin writing the script that will guide your\r\nNPC through the day.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nScripting a Life\r\n<P>\r\nMost of the IF languages have the ability to handle daemons, routines\r\nthat once turned on, run every turn. Using language-independent\r\npseudo-code, let\'s create a hypothetical NPC. The method described\r\nhere is the method I used to create Bob in my game, _She\'s Got a Thing\r\nfor a Spring_.\r\n<P>\r\nBegin by dividing the NPC\'s day into locations and activities. Let\'s\r\ncall our shop owner Merle.  We\'ll use three activities for the sake of\r\nexample:\r\n<P>\r\n   1.  Arriving at the store in the morning and preparing for\r\n          opening (7:30 to 8:00 am).<br>\r\n   2.  Opening and cleaning the shop (8:01 to 9:00 am).  <br>\r\n   3.  Making ice cream on the front porch (9:01 to 10:00 am).<br>\r\n<P>\r\nMerle\'s script has three sections of code, one section for each\r\nactivity. We write each section as a separate subroutine, and we call\r\nthe appropriate subroutine from the daemon routine, depending on the\r\ntime of day. The time of day is controlled by a counter based on the\r\nplayer\'s moves.\r\n<P>\r\nLet\'s say the game begins at 7:00 am and each turn lasts a minute of\r\ngame time. Your model may be much more complex. From 7:00 am until\r\n7:29, the store is closed and Merle is nowhere to be seen. At 7:30\r\nMerle begins his day by stepping out of his front door and walking to\r\nthe store. At 8 o\'clock sharp, as is his custom, he unlocks the door\r\nof the shop to the public. At 9 o\'clock, we move him to the front\r\nporch where we watch him making some of his locally famous ice cream.\r\n<P>\r\nWe start by assuming that Merle\'s daemon is turned on and running when\r\nthe game begins.  We\'ll use the \"!\" as the comment character, and\r\nanything following the exclamation mark is a comment and not part of\r\nthe pseudo-code. The daemon looks like this:\r\n<P>\r\n<pre>\r\nNPC Merle\r\n   ...\r\n   counter 0                  ! The is Merle\'s main script\r\n                              ! counter, which starts from zero.\r\n   daemon [\r\n      Merle.counter=Merle.counter+1     ! Increment each turn\r\n<P>\r\n      switch based on Merle.counter {\r\n         1 to 29:    subroutine Merle0()\r\n         30 to 60:   subroutine Merle1()\r\n         61 to 120:  subroutine Merle2()\r\n         121 to 180: subroutine Merle3()\r\n         ...\r\n      }\r\n   ]\r\n   ...\r\n</pre>\r\n<P>\r\nWe initially set the counter to zero, then increment it each\r\nturn. Since each turn is assumed to take one minute, the counter value\r\nof 0 corresponds to a time of 7:00 am. A counter value of 61\r\ncorresponds to a time of 8:01 am, and so on. We place our code in\r\nMerle\'s daemon routine, but we keep the details in subroutines so as\r\nnot to clutter up the daemon. The counter could be a global variable,\r\nbut in this example, we have made it a property of the NPC Merle, so\r\nit is listed as [FONT/] Merle.counter [/FONT] .\r\n<P>\r\nLet\'s write the subroutines:\r\n<P>\r\n<pre>\r\n[  Merle0               ! 7:00 to 7:29 am\r\n   return               ! Nothing happens before 7:30 am\r\n]\r\n<P>\r\n[  Merle1               ! 7:30 to 8:00 am (Arriving at the Shop)\r\n   subroutine Merle_Actions_1()\r\n   subroutine Merle_Messages_1()\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n<P>\r\n[  Merle2               ! 8:01 to 9:00 am (Cleaning the Shop)\r\n   subroutine Merle_Actions_2()\r\n   subroutine Merle_Messages_2()\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n<P>\r\n[  Merle3               ! 9:01 to 10:00 am (Making Ice Cream)\r\n   subroutine Merle_Actions_3()\r\n   subroutine Merle_Messages_3()\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n</pre>\r\n<P>\r\nIn the first thirty minutes of game play, Merle does nothing. The\r\n[FONT/] Merle0 [/FONT] routine is just a placeholder for anything we\r\nwould like to include that the player will see before Merle leaves his\r\nhouse. This might include turning lights on or off in the house,\r\nletting the dog out into the yard, and so on. For this example,\r\nnothing happens, so the subroutine returns control to the daemon.\r\n<P>\r\nNext, in [FONT/] Merle1 [/FONT], we call two more subroutines. Since\r\nMerle has his own life and is doing things whether the player is\r\nwatching or not, we need a way to keep his movements and any objects\r\nthat he changes separate from the routine that prints a message for\r\nthe player to read. If Merle picks the newspaper up from his sidewalk\r\non his way to work, the [FONT/] Merle_Actions_1 [/FONT] routine will\r\nmove the newspaper to Merle\'s inventory, and the [FONT/]\r\nMerle_Messages_1 [/FONT] routine will tell the player what\r\nhappened. If the player is not present, Merle will still collect the\r\nnewspaper, but there will be no message to tell the player.  The only\r\nthing the player will notice is that the next time he sees Merle, the\r\nnewspaper will be in his hands and not on the sidewalk in front of the\r\nhouse. Keeping actions separate from messages will save us a lot of\r\neffort. Let\'s look at Merle\'s Actions and Messages routines:\r\n<P>\r\n<pre>\r\n[  Merle_Actions_1\r\n   switch based on Merle.counter {\r\n      30: turn off porch light on Merle\'s house\r\n      31: open Merle\'s front door\r\n      32: move Merle to porch of house\r\n      33: close Merle\'s front door\r\n      34: move newspaper to Merle\'s inventory\r\n      35: move Merle to sidewalk\r\n                                          ! Notice nothing\r\n                                          ! happens here\r\n      40: move Merle to porch of shop\r\n      41: open door of shop\r\n      42: move Merle inside shop\r\n      43: close door of shop\r\n      44: turn on lights in shop\r\n                                          ! or here\r\n      59: put \"open\" sign in window\r\n      60: unlock shop door\r\n   }\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n<P>\r\n[  Merle_Messages_1\r\n   if (player can\'t see Merle) return\r\n   switch based on Merle.counter {\r\n      30: print \"The porch light goes off.\"\r\n      31: print \"Merle opens the front door of his house.\"\r\n      32: print \"Merle steps out onto the porch.\"\r\n      33: print \"Merle closes the front door.\"\r\n      34: print \"Merle sees the morning newspaper and picks\r\n             it up.\"\r\n      35: print \"Merle steps out onto the sidewalk.\"\r\n      36: print \"Merle walks along the street. You notice\r\n             he favors his left leg.\"\r\n      37: print \"Merle stops walking, as if thinking of\r\n             something.\"\r\n      38: print \"Merle looks backward toward his house.\"\r\n      39: print \"Merle glances at his newspaper, then\r\n             continues walking.\"\r\n      40: print \"Merle steps onto the porch of his shop.\"\r\n      41: print \"Merle opens the door of the shop.\"\r\n      42: print \"Merle enters the general store.\"\r\n      43: print \"You hear a click as the door closes and locks.\"\r\n      44: print \"The lights inside the shop come on.\"\r\n      ...\r\n                                     ! Merle does something\r\n                                     ! each turn, unless he\'s\r\n                                     ! out of sight.\r\n      ...\r\n      59: print \"The shutters of the shop open, and Merle hangs\r\n             an \'Open - Please Come In\' sign in the window.\"\r\n      60: print \"Merle opens the shop door wide, beginning\r\n             the business day.\"\r\n   }\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n</pre>\r\n<P>\r\nThe Actions and Messages routines for the other time periods are\r\nsimilar. Notice that there is no movement in the [FONT/]\r\nMerle_Actions_1 [/FONT] routine when the counter is between 36 and 39,\r\nor between 45 and 58. That\'s because Merle is neither changing\r\nlocations nor moving any game objects. However, in the [FONT/]\r\nMerle_Messages_1 [/FONT] routine, we tell the player something every\r\nturn. You don\'t have to, of course, but real people are always doing\r\n_something_. It\'s a good practice when you\'re scripting to tell the\r\nplayer something each turn, unless the NPC is out of sight. Also,\r\nnotice the first line of the [FONT/] Merle_Messages_1 [/FONT]\r\nroutine. If the player is not in a position to see what Merle is\r\ndoing, we simply return control to the daemon routine and don\'t print\r\nanything at all.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nNPCs with Something Special to Say\r\n<P>\r\nNPCs can help move the player through the game by providing essential\r\ninformation at the appropriate time. What if Merle has an important\r\nmessage for the PC? If we put that message in his script, the player\r\ncould very easily miss it by being in another location when the\r\nappointed time comes. We could drop hints so the player will ask, but\r\nthat kind of force-feeding is a bit awkward, especially when we have\r\ncrafted an NPC to pursue his own goals. Far better to write a short\r\npiece of code that interrupts the script when the time is right and\r\nwhen the PC is present.  The NPC will then seem naturally spontaneous,\r\nand the plot will flow more freely.\r\n<P>\r\nAs the owner of the local gathering place, Merle has access to all\r\nkinds of information and gossip. Let\'s imagine that at some time in\r\nthe morning, Merle gets a visit from his good friend, the minister of\r\nthe local Methodist church. He has just been asked to publicize the\r\ninformation that the traveling holy revival is in town and will begin\r\nthis Sunday morning; the special guest speaker will be none other than\r\nthe well-known and controversial Reverend Brandon Braden from\r\nMississippi. The revival tent for the expected 400-member congregation\r\nis being pitched this afternoon on the banks of Lake McMurtry, and the\r\nchurch is looking for volunteers to help with the setup. Maybe the PC\r\nshould go and see if there\'s a way to help out.\r\n<P>\r\nWhy is this information important? It tells us that something\r\nsignificant is about to happen, and that there is a way for the PC to\r\nget involved. It sets the stage for a big public event, which opens\r\nall kinds of possibilities for game and story design. It tells the\r\nplayer that Rev. Braden is famous and in some way controversial, and\r\nso it arouses our curiosity to find out why. It reinforces the\r\nimportance of Merle in the eyes of the player, and gives us a number\r\nof topics we can use in our conversations with him. It is consistent\r\nwith the small-town feel of the game, and tells us that the story is\r\nset in the American South. We can probably even conclude that Merle\r\nspeaks with a drawl.\r\n<P>\r\nTo accomplish this, we need to write code to determine when is the\r\nright time to give the player this information. Obviously, we need to\r\nwait until the PC is in Merle\'s presence. Waiting until a few turns\r\nafter the PC arrives is probably more realistic than having Merle\r\nspeak immediately, unless, of course, the information is particularly\r\nurgent. That means we\'ll need a small counter.  Then, instead of\r\nrunning Merle\'s normal script, we interrupt it and insert our message\r\ncode. In our example, suppose Merle\'s message can come any time after\r\n9:15 am. Merle will be on the porch making ice cream then, and his\r\ncounter will be greater than 135 (remember, that\'s 7:00 am plus 135\r\nminutes). Merle\'s routine might look this:\r\n<P>\r\n<pre>\r\nNPC Merle\r\n   ...\r\n   counter 0                  ! The is Merle\'s main script\r\n                              ! counter, which starts from zero.\r\n<P>\r\n   special_message 0          ! This counter will tell the\r\n                              ! daemon if it\'s time to give\r\n                              ! the player the special message.\r\n                              ! Counting starts from zero.\r\n<P>\r\n   special_message_seen 0     ! Has the player seen the message?\r\n                              ! 0=No. 1=Yes.\r\n   ...\r\n<P>\r\n   daemon [\r\n      if (player can see Merle) and if (Merle.counter>135)\r\n      and if (Merle.special_message_seen=0)\r\n      {  Merle.special_message=Merle.special_message+1\r\n      }                             ! We begin incrementing the\r\n                                    ! special message counter,\r\n                                    ! so Merle will wait a few\r\n                                    ! turns before speaking.\r\n<P>\r\n      else Merle.special_message=0  ! If the player leaves\r\n                                    ! before the counting is\r\n                                    ! completed, we reset the\r\n                                    ! counter to zero. When the\r\n                                    ! player returns, we start\r\n                                    ! counting again.\r\n<P>\r\n      if (Merle.special_message>2)\r\n      {  subroutine Merle_Special_Message()\r\n      }\r\n      else\r\n      {  Merle.counter=Merle.counter+1   ! Increment each turn\r\n         switch based on Merle.counter {\r\n            0 to 29:    subroutine Merle0()\r\n            30 to 60:   subroutine Merle1()\r\n            61 to 120:  subroutine Merle2()\r\n            121 to 180: subroutine Merle3()\r\n            ...\r\n         }\r\n      }\r\n   ]\r\n<P>\r\n[  Merle_Special_Message\r\n   Merle.special_message_seen=1     ! Only see the message once\r\n   print \"You know, I heard something just this morning that\r\n      I think you\'ll find interesting. The holy revival has\r\n      come to town! It\'s setting up down on the shores of\r\n      Lake McMurtry...\"\r\n   return\r\n]\r\n</pre>\r\n<P>\r\nNotice that we don\'t increment Merle\'s counter during the time of the\r\nspecial message. This guarantees that afterwards, the script will\r\ncontinue and Merle won\'t miss a beat. Also, we have to set the [FONT/]\r\nspecial_message_seen [/FONT] flag so the message doesn\'t repeat later\r\nin the game.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nNPCs Who Listen\r\n<P>\r\nThe shopkeeper we have created is a great improvement over the passive\r\nNPC who just stands and waits. Interactive fiction is about\r\ninteraction, however, and we can further improve our shopkeeper by\r\nallowing him to be influenced by the player. In IF, the most common\r\nways of interacting with an NPC are fairly simple:\r\n<P>\r\n     Ask NPC about something<br>\r\n     Tell NPC about something<br>\r\n     Show something to NPC<br>\r\n     Give something to NPC<br>\r\n     Talk to NPC<br>\r\n     Do something to an NPC (kiss, attack, throw something at, etc.)<br>\r\n     Do something in the NPC\'s presence<br>\r\n<P>\r\nThere are undoubtably others. All demand that the NPC acknowledge the\r\nplayer\'s presence and that he do something appropriate in response.\r\n<P>\r\nIn real life, some people are constantly on the move. A perfect\r\nexample in my family is how my mother-in-law will begin a sentence in\r\none room of the house, and finish her thought from somewhere else,\r\nsometimes within earshot, and sometimes not. My grandmother, at the\r\nother extreme, would stop everything and listen whenever I would say\r\nanything to her at all. In IF, we need to make allowances for such\r\ntraits and characteristics as we breathe life into our NPC\'s\r\ncode. That means that if our character is a listener, we need to be\r\nable to make him stop and pay attention when the PC is trying to\r\ninteract with him.\r\n<P>\r\nLet\'s say Merle is a listener; this fits the way we have described\r\nhim, and for him to just give a quick response and then walk from a\r\nroom would be out of character. We have to find a way to interrupt the\r\nscript whenever the PC is trying to interact so that Merle can pay\r\nfull attention.\r\n<P>\r\nWe define a new property called \"listening\", which is normally zero,\r\nmeaning that Merle is going about his business and following his\r\nscript. When the player interacts with Merle by _talking to_ Merle or\r\n_showing something_ to him, for example, the routine that handles\r\nthese interactions sets [FONT/] Merle.listening [/FONT] to some\r\nnon-zero value. Then, at the beginning of Merle\'s daemon, the\r\ninterpreter checks the property. If it is zero, we continue with the\r\nscript as we did before. Otherwise, we skip the code that runs the\r\nscript. Merle doesn\'t do anything at all, effectively giving 100\r\npercent of his attention to the player. Improving on this, we can set\r\n[FONT/] Merle.listening [/FONT] to any value we choose, thus\r\ncontrolling how long Merle will wait before continuing with his\r\nscript. Perhaps he should wait two turns. The player gets a chance to\r\nsay something else, and it will seem that not only is Merle listening,\r\nbut that he is waiting for the next question. The main Merle routine\r\nnow looks like this:\r\n<P>\r\n<pre>\r\nNPC Merle\r\n   ...\r\n   counter 0                  ! The is Merle\'s main script\r\n                              ! counter, which starts from zero.\r\n<P>\r\n   special_message 0          ! This counter will tell the\r\n                              ! daemon if it\'s time to give\r\n                              ! the player the special message.\r\n                              ! Counting starts from zero.\r\n<P>\r\n   special_message_seen 0     ! Has the player seen the message?\r\n                              ! 0=No. 1=Yes.\r\n<P>\r\n   listening 0                ! Normally, this is zero. \"1\" or\r\n                              ! more means Merle is listening.\r\n<P>\r\n   ...\r\n   interacting [              ! This is the routine that handles\r\n                              ! Merle\'s responses.\r\n<P>\r\n      Merle.listening=2       ! Merle will pay attention\r\n                              ! for two turns. If the player\r\n                              ! continues to talk to Merle,\r\n                              ! Merle.listening will be           \r\n                              ! repeatedly set to 2.\r\n<P>\r\n      \"Ask\" responses         ! Merle\'s code to respond\r\n      \"Tell\" responses        ! to the player\'s interactions.\r\n      \"Give\" responses\r\n      \"Show\" responses\r\n      ...\r\n   ]\r\n   ...\r\n   daemon [\r\n      if (player can see Merle) and if (Merle.counter>135)\r\n      and if (Merle.special_message_seen=0)\r\n      {  Merle.special_message=Merle.special_message+1\r\n      }                             ! We begin incrementing the\r\n                                    ! special message counter,\r\n                                    ! so Merle will wait a few\r\n                                    ! turns before speaking.\r\n<P>\r\n      else Merle.special_message=0  ! If the player leaves\r\n                                    ! before the counting is\r\n                                    ! completed, we reset the\r\n                                    ! counter to zero. When the\r\n                                    ! player returns, we start\r\n                                    ! counting again.\r\n<P>\r\n      if (Merle.listening=0)        ! If Merle is not listening,\r\n      {                             ! continue with the script.\r\n                                    ! Otherwise, skip this code\r\n                                    ! and just listen.\r\n<P>\r\n         if (Merle.special_message>2)\r\n         {  subroutine Merle_Special_Message()\r\n         }\r\n         else\r\n         {  Merle.counter=Merle.counter+1   ! Increment each turn\r\n            switch based on Merle.counter {\r\n               0 to 29:    subroutine Merle0()\r\n               30 to 60:   subroutine Merle1()\r\n               61 to 120:  subroutine Merle2()\r\n               121 to 180: subroutine Merle3()\r\n               ...\r\n            }\r\n         }\r\n      }\r\n      else \r\n      {  if (Merle.listening=1) print \"Merle waits patiently.\"\r\n         Merle.listening=Merle.listening-1\r\n      }\r\n   ]\r\n...\r\n</pre>\r\n<P>\r\nIf Merle is listening to the PC, we don\'t want to suddenly change the\r\nsubject, so we\'ll put our subroutine calls inside the braces that are\r\ncontrolled by the \"listening\" check. We\'ve also added a statement that\r\nprints \"Merle waits patiently\" when Merle is waiting for the PC to say\r\nsomething else.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nThe NPC Lives!\r\n<P>\r\nMerle is certainly much more interesting than we might have first\r\nthought. He has a full biography with a family history, desires, and\r\ngoals of his own. In the course of creating Merle, we have come to\r\nknow quite a bit about him: how he walks, talks, acts, and\r\nreacts. Merle has the freedom to move about following the script we\r\nhave written, and when he has something important to say, he will wait\r\nfor an appropriate time, then give us his special message. He will\r\nstop and pay attention when the player wants to interact with him. He\r\nis infinitely patient while the player is talking, but he will go on\r\nabout his business if we just watch him or if we go away.  More than\r\nthat, Merle is someone the townspeople like, and we have come to like\r\nhim as well. In my mind, Merle is a real person. It\'s not hard to\r\nwrite about a real person; we simply have to imagine what that person\r\nwould do and put those words to paper.\r\n<P>\r\nSo, the NPC lives. He has come to life through the clever arrangement\r\nof some simple coding techniques. These techniques can be used with\r\nany interactive fiction language that supports daemons and\r\nsubroutines. The methods here can be improved upon and made much more\r\ncomplex. Treat your NPCs with care, as you would a good friend, and\r\nthey will come to life in your story, motivating your players to \"turn\r\nthe page\". Good luck with your NPCs.\r\n<P>\r\n===\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nSidebar\r\n<P>\r\nQuestions to Ask an NPC\r\n<P>\r\nCreating a believable NPC is more than just coding. Not only should he\r\nact like a real person, but the depth of his character helps us to\r\nunderstand him, and will bring him to life. To assist you in coming up\r\nwith the details you need to flesh out your NPC, here are some\r\nquestions you can use to interview your NPC. With your mind\'s ear,\r\nlisten to what your NPC tells you, and keep a journal of the questions\r\nand answers. Refer to your notes as you progress with the development\r\nof your game or story, and make sure the details stay consistent\r\nthroughout. Orson Scott Card\'s book \"Characters and Viewpoint\" may\r\nalso be helpful. Get inside your NPC\'s head and ask him:\r\n<P>\r\nWho are you?<br>\r\nDescribe yourself.<br>\r\nWhere and when were you born?<br>\r\nWhat are your parents like?<br>\r\nWhat was your childhood like?<br>\r\nDo you know your family tree?<br>\r\nAre you single, married, divorced, or widowed?<br>\r\nDo you have any children?<br>\r\nWhat kind of education do you have?<br>\r\nWhat do you do for a living?<br>\r\nWhy do you have this job?<br>\r\nWhat are you most afraid of?<br>\r\nWhat makes you happy?<br>\r\nWhat makes you angry?<br>\r\nWhat is your personality type?<br>\r\nWhat do you dream about?<br>\r\nWhat do you daydream about?<br>\r\nWhat are your goals?<br>',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:14:38',1,13,4971),(24,'NPC Dialogue Writing',35,'Text adventures, unlike many other kinds of computer games, are really well positioned when it comes to creating rich and memorable non-player characters. Examples abound from both the old school (\"Floyd,\" from \"Planetfall,\" \"Trent/Tiffany\" from \"Leather Goddesses of Phobos\") and the new (The alien from \"Fail-Safe,\" \"Galatea\" from the release of the same name). However, one tactic that today\'s IF author can employ to both create deep and rich NPCs that both compare favorably to Infocom\'s and the average character in a commercial release is dialogue. The extreme disk size limits that Infocom and others faced twenty years ago no longer really apply to modern authors, and many more characters within professionally developed computer games are more concerned with selling you additional data crystals or getting out of the way of your rocket launcher than they are in holding any kind of meaningful or entertaining conversation with you. Several different types of conversation systems are available for programmers in TADS, Inform and Hugo, allowing today\'s IF author more time to create quality NPC content than iron out technical details. More, the nature of the text adventure\'s gameplay affords both authors and players a chance to engage in some \"what if?\" scenarios within dramatic scenes, thus making IF\'s potential for solid dialogue easily the match for static fiction and film, and really exceed other fellow games. I have found the medium to be the most rewarding one in which to develop the characters and stories that I have been able to imagine, and the major reason for this is due to the fact that IF has allowed my characters to best simply talk to one another. What follows are some insights that I have gained on interactive NPC dialogue over the course of the last few years.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nBefore coming up with new ways to depict my characters verbally insulting one another, I do try to choose a particular conversation system. There are three kinds that have seen most of the usage in modern-day IF where people are going to be speaking to one another at length: \"ASK / TELL,\" menu-based conversations, and \"TALK TO.\" While ultimately it should fall on the game\'s author to pick a style that he feels most comfortable with, it is has been my impression that two of those systems tend to work best with games in development that fall into particular categories, with the third option a good catch-all. These systems are:\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\no The larger, \"open-ended\" game. (This includes dungeon romps, mystery and detective ventures and those attempting an old Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls feel.) With these games, the player may be finding new information scattered throughout the landscape at various times. The \"ASK / TELL\" system really works well for these kind of games, because as an author you may not know exactly when the player will encounter the suspicious widower or the wandering riverside Boggit-Man. Being able to question various characters about each other, or present information ala the \"TELL\" command lets the player work out those \"a-ha\" moments so often to be found in detective stories themselves. \"ASK / TELL\" probably requires a bit less effort on the part of the programmer when compared to using menus, as the topics a character can talk about can be more-or-less always \"available\" and accessible. The primary pitfall is in regards to player versus player character knowledge. In Level 9\'s 1987 release \"Knight Orc,\" one can ask the Rainbird about any object or character in the game, regardless if you\'ve actually encountered it in that particular session. While the status of that being a bug or a feature is up in the air due to the supposed omnipotence of the Rainbird, most authors will want to ensure that the scope of player character knowledge is enforced.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\no The smaller, more \"scripted\" game, or game with a very strong player character. Here, using menus would provide an advantage. With the player being shuttled between scenes rather quickly, there is less of a likelihood that the player will need to \"pick the brain\" of the different people and creatures that are encountered. With a strong player character, using menus allows an author to present the exact questions or sentences that the PC will state. Menus also provide an easy way for authors to implement something resembling \"free\" attitude or conversational tone modeling. Menus probably ask the most of the author, in terms of proper attention paid if nothing else. The sentences that are eligible to be used need to be properly turned managed, and should bugs exist here it could have catastrophic results -- something I saw with my original release of \"Chicks Dig Jerks\" where it was possible to replay the first scene in the game towards the end by talking to a character that was encountered in both scenes.(While the opposite effect -- not properly turning on a topic -- can bring your game to a screeching, unfinishable halt, natch.)  \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\no The last common system for dialogue-heavy games -- \"TALK TO\" -- proved to be extremely effective in Ian Finley\'s 2000 release \"Kaged,\" and I am of the opinion that it can work for, really, either type of game previously listed. With this particular method, the player simply types in \">talk to character\" and the appropriate topic is chosen automatically. This does demand that the author keep track when \"fresh\" bits of conversation are able to be used by the NPCs. \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n(Further exploration of these and additional methods can be found in Chapter xx: NPC Conversation Systems.)\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nAfter selecting a conversational style based on the kind of game you are writing, it will eventually come time to place some words in your characters\' mouths. Dialogue is a facet of writing that intimidate some authors who are otherwise quite adept at illustrating their games within a text-based medium. It\'s common enough where the jobs of plotter and scripter are sometimes split in other mediums: for instance the first sixty issues of the old \"Justice League America\" comic book run had Keith Giffen plotting the books, and J. M. DeMatteis just handling the dialogue:\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n                     \"Y\'see, Keith Giffen loves to plot.. but tell him to put the words in a character\'s mouth and the man just freezes up. It\'s not that he can\'t do it -- I suspect someday\r\n                    he will -- but at the time, dialogue was the area newest to Keith, and he didn\'t want to risk drowning the project with a false start. Either that or he wanted to \r\n                    spread the blame around a bit more. Just in case (Helfer, 6).\"\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nGiffen indeed did get better, to the point where he was receiving compliments and his dialogue was credited by reviewers for \"producing some very amusing exchanges that nicely reflect the personalities of this cast (Cornwall).\" Additionally, even Douglas Adams had expressed some self-doubt as to whether the women he wrote came off as genuine (Gaiman, xx). While general tips in making your characters sound real include a lot of listening at real conversations and the devouring of books known for their characters\' interactions (I can certainly recommend the novels of George Alec Effinger, Gregory McDonald and Elmore Leonard, and the screenplays of Kevin Smith as good launching points) there is really no substitute to spending time with your characters and getting to know them (and what they are likely to do) as people, as friends. If you\'ve only got a few character traits to start with, I have found that it helps to \"model\" characters after people you know quite well while beginning your game. The character of Yehoweh Porn in \"Fallacy of Dawn\" was graphically depicted by my friend Brian Gramling. I knew, before starting the game, that I wanted the character of Porn to be someone who had Brian\'s energy for watching and following professional sports, only mapped instead to video games. (This is indeed evident the first time we meet Porn; he refers to being given \"the Heisman\" by an unnamed girl, referring to the pose that is depicted upon the NCAA Football Heisman Trophy, which has its model extending one arm to keep would-be tacklers away.) As the player character in \"Fallacy of Dawn\" doesn\'t have much to do when first meeting Porn than to talk to him, I then attempted to reveal and embellish certain characteristics about the player character himself through speaking with Porn -- all while trying to keep the rants and diatribes that both Porn and Delarion (the player character) engaged in funny enough to provide incentive to the player to keep typing in \">talk to porn\". But while I would eventually find mannerisms that belong solely to Porn (I certainly know no-one in real life who could make it through \"Aquanaut\'s Holiday,\" rainy day or no) I was able to depict a scene of two old friends to my satisfaction in the game, though I was only just beginning to get to know one character as an author by using memories and a real-life friend as the basis.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nAfter the first \"wave\" of conversation choices with Porn were about to be exhausted, I had the player character\'s would-be girlfriend, Clara, arrive in the scene. I still wanted to develop the character of Porn some, so I had him engage in his own conversation with an \"arch-nemesis\" of his own, totally separate and without specifically requiring input from the player. Ideally in IF, our characters would always start speaking on their own during idle times, but at the time I just had the technical skill to hard-code some running back-and-forth between Porn and his programmer adversary. This allowed the player to make a new friend of Clara while still getting to know more about the one he just made. \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nWhile getting the player to (hopefully) like the same characters designated as Delarion\'s friends in \"Fallacy of Dawn\" through the act of speaking to them, I also took the opportunity to let the NPCs make the player character look good as well. Delarion sometimes makes comments exclusively to the player while he\'s engaged in conversation with somebody. As FoD is written in the first person, it allowed me the chance to make those bit come off easily and unforced: \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n                    \"He was a teaching assistant for one week in one of my classes,\" says Clara. \"He wasn\'t around for very long, but he left an impression. Then I saw him out here a few weeks ago.\"<br>\r\n                    \"What, did he quit?\" I ask. <br>\r\n                    \"Mmm-hmm. They make us all take a few computer classes in art history because a lot of us end up taking jobs where we are archiving pictures and scans onto DVD. <br>\r\n                    Using \'Toast\' or some program like that.\"<br>\r\n                    My instinct is to tell her that I was the guy who broke the copy protection on the original PC release of \"Adaptec Toast\", but I ignore it for two reasons. First, we \r\n                    probably had a similar conversation thread last week, and I already mentioned it. Secondly, if this conversation is being mimicked in an alternate dimension where \r\n                    everyone speaks like they do in \"The Sims,\" my factoid would come off under the \'bragging\' icon. And as I hate using that in a virtual Sim\'s life, I hate doing that in mine.<br>\r\n                    \"Anyway,\" Clara continues, \"he found out what TAs make, and put out a tip jar. I think that\'s how he lost his job there.\"\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nThough I confess to being a proponent of using the first-person narrative in text adventures on knee-jerk general principle alone, being able to do things like that through dialogue would be a precise reason why. While wanting to let the player know that Delarion is actually going out of his way to not make a video game reference in front of this girl that he fancies, his mind is still working as it always is. Delarion is essentially still talking, just to us when he makes a mental note like that. However, use of the first person simply wasn\'t considered during the 80s and even today is sometimes criticized for coming off as awkward. There is still much flexibility and power when merging the first person narrative with good dialogue for those games with strong player characters. Following are two scenes relating to the characters of George Alec Effinger, an author whose novel \"When Gravity Fails\" was the basis for the 1990 Infocom release \"The Circuit\'s Edge.\" First, the character Marid Audran is depicted having his own back within \"When Gravity Fails\" during an attempt to get hustled: \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n                    \"I have the whole sum, Abdoulaye,\" I said, \"but you\'re going to write me out a receipt. I don\'t want you claiming that I never paid you.\"<br>\r\n                    He looked angry. \"You dare imagine I\'d do such a thing?\"<br>\r\n                    I glared back at him. \"The receipt. Then you get your money.\"<br>\r\n                    He called me a couple of foul names, then ducked back into the room. He scrawled out the receipt and showed it to me. \"Give me the fifteen hundred kiam,\" he\r\n                    said, growling.<br>\r\n                    \"Give me the receipt first.\"<br>\r\n                    \"Give me the accursed money, you pimp!\"<br>\r\n                    For a second I thought about hitting him hard with the edge of my hand across the flat of his nose, breaking his face for him. It was a delicious image. \"Christ, Abdoulaye!\r\n                    Get Karim back here. Karim!\" I called. When the gray-bearded old man returned, I said to him, \"I\'m going to give you some money, Karim, and Abdoulaye is going to\r\n                    give you that piece of paper in his hand. You give him the money, and give me the paper\" (Effinger 56).\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nIndeed, Effinger\'s depiction of Marid\'s terse speech patterns when talking to those he is disgusted with compares nicely when he shifts towards talking right to us -- Marid feels all right with going on at a bit greater length and confiding with us. Compared to a similar scene in \"The Circuit\'s Edge,\" this sense of intimacy is lost. While the shift to second person is no doubt done due to tradition and in an attempt to get players thinking they had a personal stake in the game, it may have been folly considering the game took place over 200 years in the future in an Arabic city with many southern-Louisiana influences. Comparing text in \"The Circuit\'s Edge\" we see that we aren\'t given access to what Marid thinks, nor much of a chance to come off as wry or terse ourselves:\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n                    Saied snatches it from your hands, muttering his thanks and asking you what took so long. Hastily he unwraps it. What was so important that he sent\r\n                    you chasing around half the Budayeen for it? \"Orgasmic!\" he exclaims, holding the small glass bottle aloft like a trophy. \"The most expensive cologne this \r\n                    side of the Sahara. You know you have to get this stuff specially made? Here, take a whiff.\" He squirts some Orgasmic your way. Instantly you are\r\n                    overwhelmed by a cloying flowery scent. \"Incredible, isn\'t it?\"\r\n<P>\r\nCertainly there is nothing wrong with the writing, and Saied the Half-Hajj comes off as well as he does in the novel the game is based on. But by not allowing us to see Marid verbally play off his friend, to not have him confide in the player / reader makes him a weaker and less realized character in the game than he is shown to be in the accompanying books. Without access to high polygon models, facial expressions, rendered cut-scenes or a third person camera perspective, the interaction between a text adventure author\'s player character and the others whom he encounters is critical in making that PC memorable. Not allowing that PC to speak his mind can be crippling.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nAlthough we only have words at our command to really present our characters, as developers of interactive fiction, we do have two distinct advantages over more traditional gaming fare:\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\no Our players are already in a mindset to read. Two of Bethesda\'s recent role playing games, the 1996 release \"Daggerfall,\" and 2002 release \"Morrowind,\" include many tester and fan-made books (in-game) detailing the myths and legends that make up the lands and people described in the Elder Scrolls trilogy. However, while the quality of the scripts are fine, as players we are in the mindset that we will soon be stealing or fighting. That we will be running or flying to a new locale and casting magic missile at the darkness. The action vibe that these games are trying to put forth comes to a bit of a screeching halt when you enter a library full of many several-page novels. The \"Baldur\'s Gate\" series of games suffer from this as well, at least in multiplayer: the conversations that you find yourself in with various other denizens are looked upon as either leading up to another fight or as a way to get your opponent to back down from one. And in a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, there are very few situations in modern role playing games where NPCs can be interacted with without being the player getting the feeling that they are just talking to human-looking stores or quest activators. A ware such as \"Fail-Safe,\" where the entire gameplay concerns talking to and instructing another creature until the game\'s resolution could not exist in any present commercial form. Our players have already made the decision to accept the continual display of text on the screen long before they have started our game -- it behooves us to use this strength to tell the character-based stories, and write the dialogue-driven games that would otherwise go untold and unwritten.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\no Allowing the player to choose the exact response, the best quip or put-down with which to reply to NPCs is alien to not only novels and cinema, but most graphic adventures as well. Games that proceed like the beginning of Omikron: The Nomad Soul (where the player is given the \'choice\' between clicking on a \"Yes\" response and nothing at all) are altogether too common (Eidos, 1999). We can let our players share in the telling of our stories through the choices they make in text adventures as well as through how they choose to respond to our characters. Offering a variety of responses to those antagonists the player will face through the course of an adventure can be a daunting, expansive task, but those games that have employed such means -- among them award winning games like Adam Cadre\'s 1999 release \"Varicella\" and Emily Short\'s 2001 release \"Pytho\'s Mask\" -- offer multiple angles and threads of continuity to enjoy depending just on how you decide to interact with the NPCs in the game.                   \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nCornwall, Jason. Suicide Squad #6. 22 Feb. 2002. Silver Bullet Comic Books. 27 May 2002  <http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/reviews/101439315283890.htm>\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nNeil Gaiman, Don\'t Panic (need exact page for quote)\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nHelfer, Andrew, et al. Justice League: A New Beginning. New York: DC Comics, Inc., 1989.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nEffinger, George Alec. When Gravity Fails. New York: Bantam, 1986.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2006-08-25 08:53:08',1,12,3341),(25,'Pacing IF',11,'PACING IN INTERACTIVE FICTION<br>\r\nBy Brendan Barnwell\r\n<P>\r\n     Any experienced player of interactive fiction knows a certain feeling, and every\r\nauthor tries to pinpoint its source.  It\'s the feeling of being rudely awakened, shocked\r\nout of the immersive experience of a game.  Many things can cause it -- a glaring\r\ntypo, an unintentionally hilarious sentence, an \"illegal object\" error -- but one of the\r\nmost common is an error in pacing. Those moments when something happens\r\nbefore the player expects it to, or when the player expects something to happen but it\r\ndoesn\'t, can be jarring.  On the other hand, there are those moments in a\r\ngame when things happen so perfectly that the player is pulled more powerfully into\r\nit.  Some of these moments -- of both kinds -- are part of the author\'s plan, and some\r\nare unintended.  Pacing, then, is the author\'s attempt to maximize the former and\r\nminimize the latter.\r\n<p>\r\n     The pace of a game, more than its size, determines how large it \"feels\".  An\r\nextremely long game can seem short if the player is able to move through it\r\neasily; a short game can seem interminable if the player gets bogged down.  Many\r\ncomponents of the game contribute to the overall pace, and each is of great\r\nimportance to any author who hopes to \"grease the rails\" for the player to just the\r\nright extent.  Regardless of whether the aim is to slow the player or move him along\r\nmore quickly, the same elements are relevant -- the point here is not to identify a\r\n\"right\" pace, but to examine the things that affect the pace, and note the ways they\r\ncan be used to effect any given pace.  Even more important is the overall balance and\r\nconcert among these individual elements.\r\n<p>\r\n     First off, the ease or difficulty of moving through the game world is often a\r\nmajor contributor to the pace.  Easy movement through many locations tends to\r\nmake the game seem more open and slow-paced.  With many locations to explore, it\r\nis easy for the player to drift among them, dilly-dallying as he pleases, and not\r\nconcentrate on any one particular task.  Small games with few movement options, on\r\nthe other hand, channel the player more forcefully into a particular course of action.\r\n<p>\r\n     David M. Baggett\'s large and multifaceted \"The Legend Lives!\" (1994)\r\ncontains many different planets, each with its own group of several rooms.  These are\r\nconnected by \"matter movers\" which allow the player to transport from one\r\nenvironment to another virtually at will.  Movement within a single \"cluster\" of\r\nlocations is in some cases restricted in traditional locked-door fashion, but the player\r\nis generally free to transport away to an entirely different part of the game.  The\r\nresult is a leisurely pace, which allows the player to discover things on his own rather\r\nthan rushing him.\r\n<p>\r\n     \"Photopia\" (Adam Cadre, 1998) also has many different settings, each with\r\nseveral rooms, but here the player\'s freedom movement from one such setting to\r\nanother is severely limited.  On the other hand, although there is usually only one\r\nplace to go, it is very \"easy\" for the player to get there -- that is, he does not have to\r\ncarry out any complicated interactions to move from one place to the next.  The\r\nplayer is forced to proceed along the single path before him, and, because each step\r\nalong this path is easy to take, the game moves more quickly than if he had been\r\nallowed to whisk himself away to somewhere else.\r\n<p>\r\n     Going hand in hand with freedom of movement is the \"density\" of each room,\r\nin terms of the number and complexity of objects it contains.  If a room is devoid of\r\nobjects, the player is likely to move on to someplace more interesting; if it is full of\r\nintriguing things, he is more likely to stay and investigate.  Most players\r\nsubconsciously measure the \"interactive potential\" of a room; hallways, staircases,\r\nand other locations which serve purely as connectors are quickly recognized as such\r\nand ignored, whereas rooms with furnishings or unfamiliar objects are flagged as\r\nworthy of further study.\r\n<p>\r\n     The number of rooms and the density of each room together affect the game\'s\r\npacing significantly.  The expansive map of \"The Legend Lives!\" would be dull and\r\ntedious to navigate were it not for the fact that many of the rooms are loaded with\r\nunique and complex objects.  Conversely, \"Photopia\" would be irritating to play if\r\neach new environment into which the player is thrust were packed with objects; the\r\ngame would become like an assembly line, with the player a helpless drone faced with\r\na dismal, unalterable sequence of complicated interactions.  Quantitatively, the sheer\r\nsize of the map and number of objects are significant from a pacing perspective;\r\nqualitatively, the importance of these objects in the game world is significant as well. \r\nA hallway or a decorative plant, for example, is most likely unimportant, and has less\r\ninteractive potential than, say, an ornate throne room or a scented love letter.\r\n<p>\r\n     Both of these elements, in addition to being appropriate on their own, must\r\nmesh reasonably with the pace of the game\'s text.  Games by inexperienced authors\r\noften suffer from a lack of balance between the pace of the game and the pace of the\r\nwriting itself.  When the player has focused his attention tightly on a particular task -\r\n- for instance, puzzling out the workings of a complicated device -- the prose must be\r\nmeaty enough for this investigation to be worth his while.  Performing careful,\r\ndetailed interaction, the player will expect commensurate weight in the game\'s\r\nresponses; if the author increases the pace by eliding information, the player will feel\r\nthat the game is not paying enough attention, so to speak, to his painstaking efforts. \r\nSimilarly, when the game is flowing smoothly along -- the player is freely exploring\r\nthe map, for instance, rather than intensely investigating a single complicated object -\r\n- so should the writing, or else the player\'s progress will be hindered by the necessity\r\nof trudging through blocks of dense prose.\r\n<p>\r\n     Indeed, the size of blocks of text lies at the root of what pacing in interactive\r\nfiction is.  Two of the fundamental questions are: how much text comes between each\r\npair of input prompts, and how significant is this text to the game?  This can reveal\r\nmuch about the level of control that the player has over the game world, and the\r\nbalance of power between the author and the player in a particular game.\r\n<p>\r\n     Quantitatively, the sheer volume of text printed between prompts is\r\nsignificant.  It can be bewildering to type a simple command and be met with a large\r\ntext dump -- and equally confusing to type a complex, carefully thought-out\r\ncommand and have the game respond with an unexpectedly brief description.\r\n<p>\r\n     Qualitatively, the importance (to the story) of that text is equally significant. \r\nIn general, the story is what draws the player in emotionally.  The more mechanical\r\nevents of the game, while they may provide an intellectual challenge, are less likely to\r\ngrip the player\'s feelings.  The distribution of text in the game should reflect this.  A\r\nsubstantial text dump narrating in gruesome detail the exact motions of your hands\r\nas you open the refrigerator to get some milk is much less satisfying than a short one\r\nwhich succinctly states that you have opened the governor\'s safe and procured the\r\nsensitive state documents.  Fast-paced games often pack more significant information\r\ninto a smaller space, in order to move the game along more quickly; slow-paced games\r\ntake their time, revealing information more gradually.\r\n<p>\r\n     Equally important are the commands which trigger these responses.  The\r\ndegree to which the player is acting at random, or basing his actions on instinct or\r\nexperience, as opposed to proceeding based on clues or nudges from the game itself, is\r\ncrucial.\r\n<p>\r\n     Quantitatively, the number of commands it takes to perform a certain action is\r\nsignificant.  Many players are frustrated when a single, innocuous command triggers a\r\npredetermined sequence of events, and the game goes along on auto-pilot for a while\r\nwithout asking for input.  On the other hand, it is just as frustrating to have to\r\npainstakingly perform a sequence of mundane actions, with the game never taking\r\nthe initiative, insisting that you do each explicitly.  Creating more detailed\r\ninteraction, and thus forcing the player to be more specific in his commands, can\r\nenhance a game immensely.  A common mistake, however, is to increase the player\'s\r\nworkload without making the work any more interesting, as in the infamous \"towers\r\nof Hanoi\" puzzle; the player must be rewarded with something out of the ordinary in\r\nthe text in order to be motivated to slog through a more lengthy sequence of\r\ncommands.\r\n<p>\r\n     Qualitatively, the commands themselves are significant.  If the player can\r\nachieve a certain goal through many different sequences of actions, he is more likely\r\nto be able to proceed quickly through the game than if each objective must be gained\r\nthrough use of a particular command or sequence of commands.  Also, the source of\r\nthe player\'s inspiration for use of a particular command is important.  In general,\r\ngames which encourage the player to try a certain thing tend to be more fast-paced,\r\nwhereas those which allow him to figure it out on his own tend to move more slowly.\r\n<p>\r\n     In addition, the distribution of command-response text between passive\r\ncommands (examining things, looking things up in books, etc.) and active commands\r\n(opening things, closing them, picking them up, etc.), and between the various\r\nobjects is important.  New authors of IF often fail to distribute their text\r\nappropriately.  For example, a new author may create a verbose room description\r\nwhich describes several objects, but then give each object only a brief description; or\r\nthe objects may be described carefully when they are EXAMINEd, but be\r\nunresponsive to other actions.  This lopsided construction is jarring to the player,\r\nwho expects a somewhat uniform setup; if the mouth-watering perfection of the\r\nscrumptious pastry on the table is communicated via a 100-word description, eating\r\nit should not elicit a simple \"You eat the scrumptious pastry.  Not bad.\"\r\n<p>\r\n     The quantitative aspects, then, are those most directly related to the pacing of\r\nthe GAME: how quickly and easily the player is able to navigate the game world,\r\ninteract with objects therein, and digest the information he receives in response to\r\nthese actions.  The qualitative aspects are more important to the STORY: how\r\nsignificant the players actions are, how much he must do to advance the story, and\r\nhow much story-relevant information is packed into the text he receives.  Consider\r\nthis example from the quite fast-paced \"Being Andrew Plotkin\" (2000) by J.\r\nRobinson Wheeler:\r\n<P>\r\nFile Room<br>\r\nThis bleak room with its short, slumping ceiling does nothing to brighten your\r\nmorale. Short file cabinets, marked in reverse alphabetical order, crawl in a\r\nline along the walls like an army of stupid robots. One measly window lets in a\r\ntiny square of sunlight. \r\n<P>\r\nYou see a copier machine here. \r\n<P>\r\nx folder<br>\r\nThe folders are a stack of about thirty plain folders, currently sorted into\r\nreverse alphabetical order. On top is one labeled \"Zefferelli.\" \r\n<P>\r\nopen z cabinet<br>\r\nYou open the Z cabinet.\r\n<P>\r\nput zefferelli folder in z cabinet<br>\r\nYou stick the Zefferelli folder into cabinet Z and close the drawer. \r\n<P>\r\nx folders<br>\r\n(the sorted folders)<br>\r\nThe folders are a stack of about thirty plain folders, currently sorted into\r\nreverse alphabetical order. On top is one labeled \"Zarf: Classified.\" Below\r\nthat is one labeled \"Zarf: Declassified.\" \r\n<P>\r\n\"Zarf?\" you think to yourself. \"Could it be?\" The one and only Zarf? Xyzzy Award\r\nwinner? IF Competition winner? The mighty Inscruitable One? \r\n<P>\r\nYou are strongly tempted to open them and see what\'s inside.\r\n<P>\r\nopen zarf folder<br>\r\n(the sorted folders)<br>\r\nEagerly, you flip open the \"Zarf: Classified\" folder, only to find that it\r\ncontains a top secret patent application for the design of a new improved type\r\nof cup holder. \r\n<P>\r\nopen declassified folder<br>\r\nEagerly, you flip open the \"Zarf: Declassified\" folder. It contains a blurry\r\nphotograph and an employee record. Could it be? Zarf works here, at Red Hat?\r\nGosh. You feel awed merely by being near the master. What it must be like to be\r\nZarf. \r\n<P>\r\nopen z-y cabinet<br>\r\nThe Z-Y cabinet drawer seems to be stuck. Not locked, just kind of not moving\r\nvery easily. \r\n<P>\r\npull z-y cabinet<br>\r\nMan, this cabinet is really stuck shut. Better try again. This time, with\r\nfeeling. \r\n<P>\r\nYou feel a faint cool breath of air. \r\n<P>\r\npull z-y cabinet<br>\r\nYou give the stuck cabinet drawer the old heave-ho, and instead of merely\r\nopening, it yanks loose from the wall, revealing a strange, small door in the\r\nwall! \r\n<P>\r\nopen door<br>\r\nA hush of ancient air, tinged with organic sweetness, flows out of the opened\r\nportal.\r\n<P>\r\nenter<br>\r\nYou pass through the portal into a dark tunnel, which sighs with melodic longing\r\nas you enter.\r\n<P>\r\n(Wheeler)\r\n<P>\r\n     In just a few moves, a lot has happened.  The first folder is entirely\r\nuninteresting; its filing is described quickly and succinctly and is unimportant in the\r\nstory.  The next two folders are important enough to carry the name of the title\r\ncharacter; the descriptions of the actions associated with them are of comparable size,\r\nbut far greater significance to the story.  The text here stays in the narrow region\r\nbetween the dull and the overzealous; just enough story-relevant information is\r\nreleased at each command, so that the player is pulled along without being\r\noverwhelmed with a sudden deluge of information.\r\n<p>\r\n     Virtually every command in this transcript advances the story noticeably --\r\nand, just as important, each is EXPECTED to advance the story, because each follows\r\ndirectly from suggestions in the text.  These suggestions, though, are subtle enough to\r\nachieve their goal without standing out.  More blatant direction would push the pace\r\ntoo much, and the player would feel rushed.\r\n<p>\r\n     The AMOUNT of text displayed in response to each command is small in each\r\ncase.  Nevertheless, the commands relating to the Zarf folders are far more\r\nmeaningful than those relating to the Zefferelli folder.  The player retains control, but\r\nthe correct course of action is strongly suggested by the text.  Rather than having the\r\nexamination of the Zarf folder lead directly to the discovery of the door without\r\ninput, Wheeler nudges the player at each prompt, suggesting first that the player\r\nopen the folders (an action not part of the interaction with the Zefferelli folder), then\r\nthat he pull the cabinet not once but twice.\r\n<p>\r\n     There are other ways to achieve a fast pace, however.  This example -- from\r\nStephen Bond\'s \"Rameses\" (2000) -- is just as fast-paced, but in a different way:\r\n<P>\r\nPJ\'s Cafe - Dining Area (on the chair)<br>\r\nThe dining area of the cafe is reasonably large, and fairly empty at this time.\r\nThe room is striving incongruously for a jungle theme - with mahogany-effect\r\ntables and chairs, potted plants scattered everywhere, an annoying green carpet,\r\nand prints on the walls depicting tropical scenes. The self-service counter is\r\nto the west.\r\n<P>\r\nI can see Alice and Claire here.\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nWho the fuck does Daniel think he is, anyway? What the fuck is he doing,\r\nflaunting his fucking girlfriend and his all his fucking friends at me... does\r\nhe think I care? Does he think that impresses me? Is he trying to say \'Look at\r\nme now! Look at all the friends I have! Why should I need someone like you\r\nanymore?\' Fuck him.\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nIs he trying to dismiss everything that ever happened to us? Is he dismissing my\r\nwhole life with a glance? And why is he being so insensitive? He was never like\r\nthat before... Doesn\'t he realise how much he hurt me tonight?\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nz<br>\r\nTime passes.\r\n<P>\r\nFerdia comes in. About fucking time - I was going mad here. He rushes up to our\r\ntable. \r\n<P>\r\n\"Hello, girls!\" he says, brashly. \"I hope Alex has been entertaining you.\" Then\r\nhe laughs. He has the most annoying, offensive laugh you could possibly imagine\r\n- he sounds like a horse being castrated. Alice replies with a similarly\r\noffensive laugh, and looks at me derisively. \r\n<P>\r\n\"Have you had anything to drink?\" Ferdia asks the girls. \r\n<P>\r\nI stand up. \"I\'ll... go get you something,\" I say, and go over to the counter.\r\nBut I don\'t stop at the counter. I can\'t face being here, I can\'t face being\r\nwith them, any longer. And the cool evening air coming from the exit is so\r\ntempting... lulling me to go... \r\n<P>\r\nAnd I know then that the best thing I can do, the only thing I can do, is to\r\nleave all of them. Leave all of them forever. So I walk out the door, on to the\r\nmain street.\r\n<P>\r\n                                     . . . \r\n<P>\r\nThe cool evening air calls me, and I follow it. I follow it through the main\r\nstreet, past sleepy houses; I follow it to the quayside, where the sea breeze is\r\nstrongest. It\'s raining now, but the rain is soft and comforting, caressing me\r\nas it falls. I feel as if I love everything in the world, as if everything is\r\nsinging to me, as if my mind is filled with poetry and music. Everything,\r\neverything is beautiful now. \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\n(Bond)\r\n<P>\r\n     Here, NONE of the commands is expected to advance the story, but the\r\ncharacter continues musing, and the last command, despite being identical to those\r\nbefore, brings about an abrupt shift in location and tone.  Rather than pull the player\r\nalong gently, Bond has chosen to suddenly yank him forward.  Nevertheless, the\r\ntransition does not seem forced or incongruous, because the resulting event fits\r\nnaturally into the story.  In other words, because the narrator\'s desperate exit -- a\r\nstory element -- flows with the pace of the STORY, its lack of relationship to the\r\ncommand which caused it -- a game element -- is not perceived by the player as an\r\nanomaly in the pace of the GAME.  Were the event instead, say, a nuclear explosion\r\nacross the street, the player would feel cheated, thrust into a bizarre situation\r\nthrough the innocent use of an unrelated command.  (Conversely, in the previous\r\nexample, the pace of the player\'s commands was entirely normal, but the result --\r\ndiscovery of a tiny door into a dark tunnel -- completely unexpected.)\r\n<p>\r\n     In the \"Being Andrew Plotkin\" example, the game suggested actions to the\r\nplayer and then responded to those actions in a relatively expected way -- it\r\nencouraged the player to pull the cabinet, for example, and then responded by\r\nmoving the cabinet away from the wall.  In this example from \"Rameses\", the game\r\nhas taken matters into its own hands.  Even though the player has done nothing, the\r\ngame is advancing; the character has ended the scene of his own accord.  Whereas in\r\n\"Being Andrew Plotkin\" the commands were different and the responses the same,\r\nhere the commands are the same but the responses dramatically different.  In both\r\ncases, the pace is rapid, but in the latter the game forces it to be so, whereas in the\r\nformer the game merely encourages the player to make it so.\r\n<p>\r\n     Each of these examples depicts a single scene, and ends as a new scene is\r\nbeginning.  (In the first example, the player is moving to a new location; in the\r\nsecond, the new arrival begins to interact with the other characters.)  Transcripts of\r\nsimilar scene changes in slow-paced games could easily be several pages long.\r\n<p>\r\n     Here \"scene\" is used to mean a section of a game which is defined by the\r\nplayer character\'s attitude, goals, and/or modus operandi.  For example, if the player\r\ncharacter is a spy infiltrating a building to steal a technological prototype, then when\r\nhe enters the building the scene changes; he is no longer attempting to gain entrance,\r\nbut has begun searching for the prototype.\r\n<p>\r\n     Scenes in slow-paced games are generally longer and less numerous than those\r\nin fast-paced games.  (The traditional \"Advent\"-style puzzle-fest is essentially one\r\nlong scene.  There is no change in the player character\'s objective -- he continues to\r\nsearch for treasures.)  The ease with which the player can move to another scene (i.e.,\r\nmove within the story) is as important as the ease with which he can move to another\r\nlocation (i.e., move within the map).  The player may be able to roam the map freely,\r\nbut be unable to figure out what to do to advance the story; or he may be able to\r\nmove to the next scene despite being restricted geographically.\r\n<p>\r\n     In other words, the scenes above have been analyzed with regard to their\r\ninteral pacing -- the pacing within a single scene.  Just as important to the game as a\r\nwhole, however, is the way the sequence of scenes is paced.  Just as each command is\r\none beat in the rhythm of a scene, each scene is a beat in the overall rhythm of the\r\ngame.  The principles of balance among interaction and exposition still apply.  Some\r\nscenes, for example, may require the player to focus on achieving a certain objective,\r\nputting aside for the moment the larger issues of the story; other scenes may lessen\r\nthe intensity of the interaction to give the player a chance to absorb the story.  Too\r\nmany scenes with too much to do can overwhelm the player; too few scenes with too\r\nlittle to do can leave him unsatisfied, feeling that the game has ended too soon.\r\n<p>\r\n     These kinds of effects on pace can also be achieved more directly with some\r\nkind of time constraint in the story, or with a naturally restrictive location.  For\r\nexample, if the player character is a bomb specialist and the game is about him trying\r\nto defuse a bomb before it blows up a building, the pace is naturally fast.  Movement\r\ncan be restricted by placing the player in some place which he cannot easily exit, such\r\nas a moving train.  Also, some types of interaction have an inherently different pace\r\nthan others; menu-based conversation, for instance, is more straightforward to\r\nnavigate than ASK/TELL, because all options are clearly visible.  This allows the\r\nplayer to more rapidly navigate the \"conversational space\", just as a map free of\r\nlocked doors allows him to more rapidly navigate the geographical space.  Less\r\nfrequently, the game can have a special structure which affects the pacing, as in Adam\r\nCadre\'s \"Varicella\", which must be restarted repeatedly, forcing the player to use\r\ninformation from previous play-throughs.\r\n<p>\r\n     More important than any of the individual elements, however, is the\r\nrelationship between them.  An IF game can only be altogether well-paced if all of its\r\nparts -- the rhythm of the text, the ease of motion through game and story, the\r\ngranularity of the interaction -- are arranged in a harmonious balance.  It is for this\r\nreason that such a great number of games are greeted with remarks like \"incredibly\r\nintriguing, but the writing just doesn\'t fit\" or \"the objects are wonderful toys, but\r\nthey don\'t seem appropriate for this type of story\".\r\n<p>\r\n     When the quantitative and qualitative components of pacing are not\r\nappropriately balanced, the game will suffer.  If, for instance, the map is large and\r\neasily traversable and objects plentiful, but exploring the map and investigating the\r\nobjects brings little or no advancement in the story, the player will become bored. \r\nThis is a common problem in first works, or more generally games where the author\r\nhas not spent enough time formulating the relationship between story and game.\r\n<p>\r\n     When arranged auspiciously, however, the elements of pacing can contribute\r\npowerfully to a game\'s overall quality.  Emily Short\'s \"Metamorphoses\" uses a variety\r\nof complex and unusual objects, combined with a carefully structured map, to\r\ndelicately draw the player into the world and story.  The unfamiliar nature of the\r\nobjects and rooms slows the pace of the game, reinforcing the mood of wonder\r\ncreated by the writing.  \"Photopia\" is able to tell its story more effectively by keeping\r\nthe scenes short and free of excessive scenery, and the rapid scene transitions parallel\r\nthe atypical temporal structure of the story.\r\n<p>\r\n     Finally, it is worth taking a brief look at how pacing can be used in avant-garde\r\ngames, those which take IF in new directions.  Often, these games break standard\r\nconventions of interactivity, and the pacing of such a game is in some ways unique. \r\nKevin F. Doughty\'s \"Threading the Labyrinth\" (2000) is a recent example of an\r\nexperiment with interactivity:\r\n<P>\r\n          There is a fundamental difference between mazes\r\n     and labyrinths, and this difference has more to do\r\n     with us than with them.\r\n<P>\r\ndifference\r\n<P>\r\nOur goals and expectations are what create the difference between what we see as a\r\nmaze and what we see as a labyrinth.\r\n<P>\r\nbetween\r\n<P>\r\nThis \"between\" is the place we want to explore.  It is the place of connection between\r\nabsolutes.  But as much as possible should be taken from this place we are now before\r\nit is left.\r\n<P>\r\nmazes\r\n<P>\r\nMazes must be gotten through or gotten out of.\r\n                        They must be conquered.\r\n<P>\r\nand\r\n<P>\r\nBoth mazes and labyrinths are things to be explored.\r\n     and\r\nBoth conditions expressed are simultaneously true.\r\n<P>\r\nlabyrinths\r\n<P>\r\nOur goal in the labyrinth is to be experiencing of it.\r\n                      What have you encountered\r\n                         in your travels within?\r\n<P>\r\nbetween\r\n<P>\r\nThe decision is made and the space between is entered.\r\n<P>\r\n(Doughty)\r\n<P>\r\n     Questions of the ease of navigation of the map or interaction with objects seem\r\nirrelevant here, since there appear to be no rooms or objects -- the player interacts\r\ndirectly with the text.  (An introductory text, not part of this excerpt, tells the player\r\nthe general form of interaction that is required, so even a first-time player will have a\r\nreasonable idea of what commands will produce a response.)  Nevertheless, there are\r\nnoticeable subtleties of pacing.\r\n<p>\r\n     The total interactive potential at first appears to be finite and very limited --\r\ntyping any of the 21 words in the first paragraph will presumably elicit some\r\nresponse, but any other input will be meaningless.  However, each word entered is, in\r\neffect, an exploratory move, much like moving a to a new room or examining an\r\nobject; the player learns more about the meaning of the text.  At the same time, each\r\ncommand reveals part of the \"story\" (such as it is -- in this case less a narrative than a\r\nphilosophical musing).  Responses to the more significant words (in this excerpt, the\r\nnouns) have a more direct relationship to the central theme of the game, whereas\r\ninformation from less important words (e.g., \"and\") is less revelatory.  The interactive\r\npotential is also not as simple as it seems -- the response to the first \"between\"\r\ncommand is different than the response to the second.  The second, in fact, launches\r\na new scene (with a new paragraph displayed, and thus a new set of words to\r\nexplore).\r\n<p>\r\n     In a sense, as Doughty suggests here, each player is traveling through a\r\nlabyrinth.  Some games are trivial labyrinths, and the player is able to move quickly\r\nthrough them; some are more difficult, and the player must move more slowly.  The\r\nauthor controls the pace, then, by painting on the walls to keep the player occupied,\r\nand by doling out the appropriate amount of thread, and perhaps tugging on it, just a\r\nbit, to pull him along.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-29 19:00:44',2,14,4553),(26,'Taxonomy of User Interfaces',20,'Works of interactive fiction generally present their players with a stream of\r\ntext, usually in the form of a narrative.  Though this narrative is the primary\r\nmeans by which the work conveys information about the model world, it is not the\r\nonly means.  At a minimum, a work presents certain elements of\r\n\"meta-information\", such as the name of the player character\'s discreet location\r\nwithin the model world, and some expression of the length of the current\r\nplay-session.\r\n Typically, this \"meta-information\" information is presented in a separate\r\nelement of the user interface, most popularly, in a region at the top of the\r\nscreen known as the *status line*.  Since the Interactive Fiction \"renaissance\"\r\nof the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of works have emulated the user interface\r\nparadigm popularized by Infocom.  However, other designs are possible, and many\r\nworks released during the era of commercial interactive fiction experimented\r\nheavily with these. It is only in recent years that freelance authors have begun\r\nto experiment seriously with alternate user interfaces.\r\n Before describing the user interfaces designed by various works of\r\ninteractive fiction, is is necessary to understand how a user interface is\r\ncomposed.  At its most basic, the user interface to a work of interactive fiction\r\nconsists of a mechanism for input, and one for output.  Input into the program\r\ncan be generalized into three major categories:\r\n<P>\r\n*Textual input: This is by far the most prevalent form of input in interactive\r\nfiction.  The player is allowed to type any text he chooses, though in practice,\r\nconstraints are placed on the total length of input.  This is generally how the\r\nplayer enters commands to be executed by his avatar in the model world.  In\r\ngeneral, the work requests input from the player, usually by displaying a prompt,\r\nand waits until the player has typed some amount of text and pressed the \"enter\"\r\nkey.  Most modern IF systems provide certain conveniences for this sort of input,\r\nsuch as command-line history (the ability to recall previously typed text into\r\nthe current input area in order to repeat a prior command), \"hot  keys\"\r\n(abbreviations for certain common commands), or spell-checking.\r\n[Footnote: User-defined abbreviations for certain commands appears in *Frotz\r\ninterpreter by Stefan Jokisch.  Spell-checking is a feature of the *Nitfol\r\ninterpreter, by Evin Robertson.]\r\n*Single-character input: Many works use a single-character method for collecting\r\nsupplemental input.  Here, the game waits only for a single keystroke, and\r\nprocesses its results immediately.\r\n*Mouse input:  A work may also accept positional input via a pointing device. \r\nHere, the player generally indicates some object on the screen -- a button or\r\nmenu option -- with his mouse.\r\n[Footnote: Obviously, other forms of input exist.  *Computer Graphics using\r\nOpenGL (Second Edition. F. S. Hill, Jr.  Prentice Hall, 2001) names five input\r\nprimitives: *string, *valuator (an input in the form of a real number within a\r\nfixed range, based on the model of a turnable knob or slider bar), *choice (a\r\ndiscreet selection among a number of options) *locator, and *pick (which we\r\ncombine into mouse input).  The *StoryHarp IF system by Kurtz-Fernhout software\r\n(1998) allowed spoken input, using speech recognition software.  The system found\r\nonly limited success.  We consider spoken input to be equivalent to text input\r\nfor our purposes.  Some modern systems (Notably, HTML-TADS and Glulx) have a\r\nnotion of a *hyperlink, which is a string of text which may be \"selected\" by a\r\nuser action (typically, but not necessarily, a mouse click), and are intended to\r\nbe similar in appearance and function to a link in an HTML document.]\r\n It is generally the case that input is \"bound\" to an element of the graphical\r\ndisplay; for textual input, this is where the input cursor appears and the user\'s\r\ninput is displayed.  For mouse input, this is the area of the screen in which his\r\nmouse activity will be registered.\r\n Output in the user interface is primarily visual, though some works\r\n(Sherlock, Infocom, 1987; The Lurking Horror, Infocom, 1987; Frederik Pohl\'s\r\nGateway, Legend Entertainment, 1992; Exhibition, Ian Finley, 1999, Six Stories,\r\nNeil K. Guy, 1999, Moments out of Time, L. Ross Raszewski, 2001) also incorporate\r\naudio output in the form of background music or sound effects.\r\n The fundamental unit of the user interface display is a region we will call a\r\n*pane [Footnote: Both the Z-machine and the Glk screen API call this unit a\r\n\"window\".  We will use the term \"pane\" in order to avoid confusion with the term\r\n\"window\" as it applies to many operating systems (With one exception: by\r\nconvention, the primary display area of an IF user interface is called the \"main\r\nwindow\".  The author\'s unhallowed hands will not challenge this convention). \r\nBecause most IF systems are portable to many operating systems, they generally\r\nuse the screen paradigm of  whichever system they are run on; on console-based\r\nsystems such as DOS, the UI of the work takes the entire screen.  On windowing\r\nplatforms such as Microsoft Windows, MacOS, and the Unix X-Window System, the UI\r\nis confined to a window like any other application.  In other systems, such as\r\nWindows CE, the UI of the work fills the entire screen apart from the taskbar and\r\nthe interpreter\'s menu bar.  We will use the term \"frame\" to describe the total\r\narea of the screen devoted to displaying the work.].  A pane is a subdivision of\r\nthe UI\'s frame which contains some content.  Panes have the following attributes:\r\n*Content: Due to the constraints of the underlying system, a pane may be\r\nconstrained in what sort of things it can contain.  A *text pane can contain only\r\nprinted text, while a *graphic pane may display images.  Many systems provide\r\n*hybrid panes capable of displaying both text and graphics.  Hybrid panes tend to\r\nplace more constraints on the graphics they display than purely graphical panes;\r\ngraphics often can only be displayed as \"inline\" images, that is, they are\r\npositionally bound to the surrounding text.\r\n*Position: A pane must be spatially located within the frame of the user\r\ninterface.  A single pane may move throughout the course of the work, or it may\r\nremain fixed in place.  A pane\'s size may or may not change.  Panes may overlap,\r\nthough, since this would obviously obscure other panes, overlapping is generally\r\nonly used with temporary panes.\r\n*Scrolling: A pane may be *fixed or *running.  A fixed pane displays some text or\r\ngraphic which may be altered or erased.  Fixed text panes are usually realized as\r\na grid of characters, each location containing some printable character, and\r\nlikewise, fixed graphic panes are realized as a grid of pixels, each grid\r\nlocation containing some color.  Running panes have a notion of \"scrolling\",\r\nwherein the entire content of the pane is shifted upward to accommodate new\r\ncontent.  Running panes are generally constrained to textual content, and often\r\nplace the restriction that new text may only be inserted at the end of the\r\ncurrent content.  All major IF development systems provide running text panes,\r\nand the main game narrative appears in such a pane.  Some runtime environments\r\nprovide \"scrollback\" for running panes, which allows the user to view text and\r\ngraphics which have scrolled off of the screen.  A running text pane is intended\r\nto emulate the stream of paper from a continuous-feed printer.  Fixed text panes,\r\nwhich do not scroll, are often used for supplemental information such as a status\r\nline, and for menus.\r\n*Mutability: Some panes hold the same content from the time of their creation for\r\nthe duration of the work.  Others update very frequently, or very infrequently. \r\nImmutable windows can hold control elements, such as a persistent menu, some form\r\nof graphical title for the work, or a decorative border.  Other windows may hold\r\ncontent dependant on the player-character\'s position in the model world, such as\r\na textual (*Beyond Zork, Infocom, 1987) or graphical (*Frederik Pohl\'s Gateway)\r\nrepresentation of her surroundings.  Mutable windows may also have constraints on\r\nhow they may be changed; a running text pane can generally be cleared, or\r\nappended to, but text already displayed cannot be altered.\r\n* Transience: A pane may be *persistent or *transient.  Persistent panes exist\r\nfor the duration of the UI, while transient panes appear and disappear as needed.\r\n A \"quote box\" or special-purpose menu may appear in a transient frame [Footnote:\r\nH. Joshua Field\'s *Stick it to the man (2001) uses a transient fixed text pane\r\nfor its conversation menus].\r\n[Footnote: of the elements listed, scrolling, position, and content are most\r\noften mandated by the platform, while mutability and transience are generally at\r\nthe discretion of the author.  HTML-TADS provides a running hybrid pane and a\r\nfixed hybrid pane.  Glulx allows an arbitrary number of panes which may be fixed\r\ntext, running hybrid, or fixed graphic.  Panes may not overlap, but can be\r\nresized.  Most versions of the Z-machine provide one running text pane and one\r\nfixed text pane, the fixed text pane being located at the top of the frame;\r\nversion 6 of the Z-machine allows for multiple running hybrid panes, without many\r\nof the usual constraints placed on running panes.]\r\n**The Infocom Standard Layout\r\n<P>\r\n Without a doubt, the most popular user interface design for contemporary\r\ninteractive fiction is based on the design popularized by Infocom during the\r\n1980s.  Indeed, all of the major IF platforms available today (Hugo, TADS, the\r\nZ-machine, Glulx) default to this UI, and many systems (some versions of the\r\nZ-machine; TADS, barring the HTML extensions, AGT) are incapable of anything\r\nelse.\r\n The basic layout used by Infocom (hereafter the *ISL, or Infocom Standard\r\nLayout) consists of two panes.  The lower pane, or *main window is a running text\r\npane, which contains the game narrative and interaction with the player.  Above\r\nthis is a fixed text pane known as the *status line.  The status line contains\r\nsupplemental information about the state of play.  Traditionally, the ISL status\r\nline contains the name of the player character\'s current location, the number of\r\nturns which have elapsed, and the player\'s score.  By convention, the status line\r\nuses a color scheme which is the inverse of that used in the main text area,\r\nthough some systems prefer instead to denote the separation using a visible\r\nborder between the panes. Both panes stretch the entire width of the frame.\r\n Infocom itself did not adhere strictly to this layout, and the most common\r\nform of customization within the basic framework of the ISL takes the form of\r\nmodifications to the status line.  *Suspended (Infocom, 1983) displays the name\r\nof one of the player-character\'s six robotic assistants in place of the player\'s\r\nlocation.  *Trinity (Infocom, 1986) omitted the turns/score counter, showing only\r\nthe current location, centered in the status line, a technique used recently by\r\nJohn Ingold in *All Roads (2001).  Andrew Plotkin\'s *Spider and Web (1998) is\r\nsimilar, but places the location to the left of the status line.  *Sherlock: The\r\nRiddle of the Crown Jewels (Infocom, 1987) substituted the game\'s date and time\r\nfor the turn counter, a variation which also appears in contemporary games such\r\nas Graham Nelson\'s *Jigsaw (1995),  Adam Cadre\'s *I-0 (1997), and Paul O\'Brian\'s\r\nLASH (2000).  Bureaucracy (Infocom, 1987), which billed itself as \"A Paranoid\r\nFantasy\", gave the player\'s blood pressure in it\'s status line.\r\n Several Infocom games extended the status line to occupy additional space on\r\nthe screen.  *A Mind Forever Voyaging (Infocom, 1985) added a second line.  The\r\nupper line gave the current game time and described which of several \"modes\" the\r\nplayer character (a sentient computer) was using.  The lower line gave the\r\nplayer-character\'s location and the current game date.  A Mind Forever Voyaging\r\nalso extended the upper pane in one section to display inkblot-like designs\r\nduring a psychiatric evaluation of the player-character.  *Border Zone (Infocom,\r\n1987) used the lower line to show a real-time display.\r\n In recent times, many authors have experimented with placing other\r\ninformation in the status line.  Nick Montfort\'s *Winchester\'s Nightmare (1999)\r\ndisplays the game title on the left, and the current location on the right.  Neil\r\nBrown\'s *A Week In The Life (1997), a game with a highly abstract model world,\r\nuses a two-line status bar to show the player\'s progress.  In the upper left, the\r\nlocation, \"Your Life\" remains unchanging during the game.  Andrew Plotkin\'s *A\r\nChange in the Weather (1995) gives the current atmospheric conditions in place of\r\na turns/score counter, his next game, *So Far (1996) is similar, presenting\r\nmessages such as \"(hot, sticky)\" or \"(autumn, cool, smoky)\".\r\n Only a handful of contemporary games have attempted even more complex status\r\nlines. [Footnote: Part of the reason is technological; under platforms like the\r\nversion 5 Z-machine, *any customization of the UI must ultimately take the form\r\nof modifying the status line]  L. Ross Raszewski\'s *Rox (2001), a IF adaptation\r\nof the arcade game \"Asteroids\", enlarges the status pane to emulate a space\r\nship\'s command display.  Laura Knauth\'s *Winter Wonderland (1999) has a heavily\r\ndecorated status line, including a mapping display.\r\n By convention, the colors used by a work using the ISL layout are determined\r\nby the player, rather than the author.  Following Infocom convention, many\r\ninterpreters defaults to a light gray foreground color, and a blue background,\r\nthough black-on-white is not uncommon.  Nonetheless, several games have made use\r\nof specific colors.  Probably the most impressive use of color appeared in Adam\r\nCadre\'s *Photopia (1998), which used a different color scheme for each of the\r\ngame\'s major sections.  A similar technique appeared in his *Varicella (1999). \r\nChris Klimas used an alternate color scheme to denote a computer interface in\r\n*Mercy (1997).\r\n[SIDEBAR: Menus and Quote Boxes\r\nThough almost every recent game has adhered to the ISL for its primary UI, two\r\nsupplemental UI paradigms are extremely common.  It should come as no surprise,\r\nhowever, that both of these alternate paradigms were used first by Infocom.\r\n*Menus\r\n Infocom\'s \"Solid Gold\" releases featured built-in hint systems.  These were\r\npresented using a menu-driven UI.  In the most common variation, the title of the\r\nmenu and a summary of its controls appears in the status line.  Below this, a\r\nlist of menu items appears.  The user navigates this menu using the keyboard in\r\nmost variations, though mouse-driven menus also occur.  These menus are most\r\ncommonly used for in-game hints and documentation.\r\n Recent public opinion has favored in-line menus for such things as\r\nconversations.  Here, the contents of the menu are printed to the main window,\r\nand the player is prompted to enter a numeric value corresponding to the menu\r\nitem.\r\n An alternate menu system was implemented by Chris Klimas in the Textfire game\r\n*Once (1998).  Here, an untitled menu appears entirely in the status bar.  It is\r\nnavigated using the arrow keys.\r\n*Quote Boxes\r\n Many games include one or more pithy epigrams (particularly on the title\r\nscreen), and a popular format for this is the \"quote box\".  Here, a transient\r\nfixed text pane is placed over top of the upper portion of the main window.  By\r\nconvention, the quote box appears in inverted colors.  In the most common form of\r\nthis technique, once printed, the quote box\'s contents effectively become part of\r\nthe main window, and are scrolled upward with it.  This provides the visual\r\neffect of the epigram having been \"stamped\" on top of the text in the main\r\nwindow.  This particular form of the technique is highly specific to games using\r\nthe Z-machine; it relies on pane behavior which differs from most other\r\nplatforms.  In another variation of the technique (popular on platforms such as\r\nGlulx, where panes may not overlap), the main window is temporarily reduced in\r\nsize to allow for a new pane between it and the status line, where the quote is\r\ndisplayed.  The pane disappears again shortly thereafter.  The method is less\r\nvisually impressive, but avoids many technical problems associated with the\r\nZ-machine window model.]\r\n<P>\r\n*A History of User Interfaces\r\n Of course, Infocom was not the first company to produce Interactive Fiction,\r\nand in the history of Interactive Fiction, we find a much wider variety of UI\r\ndesigns during the commercial era of IF.\r\n It should perhaps not be surprising that the earliest games used extremely\r\nsimple user interfaces.  Early versions of *Adventure (Crowther and Woods, 1976)\r\nfeatured only a single running text pane.  These games were designed to be\r\nplayable even without a monitor -- the game text could instead be sent to a\r\nprinter at the end of every turn sequence.  In modern times, games using the\r\n*Alan development system adopt this design.  A handful of other contemporary\r\ngames have used this technique: Sean Barrett\'s *The Weapon (2001) has no status\r\nbar.\r\n Of course, it did not take long for more complex user interfaces to appear. \r\nInfocom\'s standard layout was used from *Zork: The Great Underground Empire\r\nonward through most of the company\'s history, however, Infocom did not strictly\r\nlimit itself to this interface.  *Bureaucracy (1987) opens with a single\r\nfixed-text pane containing a data entry form.  *Beyond Zork (1987) offered a\r\nthree-pane textual interface.  The lower half of the frame is filed by a running\r\ntext pane, where player input occurs and the main game narrative is displayed. \r\nAbove this are two fixed text panes.  On the left, a pane displays infrequently\r\nupdated information, usually the description of the current location.  The\r\nrightmost pane shows a text rendering of the game map.\r\n Though some consider the inclusion of graphics in Interactive Fiction to be\r\nanathema, there is much historical precedent for \"illustrated text adventures\". \r\nIn Interactive Fiction, graphics may be presented in a pane of their own, or may\r\nbe drawn \"inline\", among the running text of the narrative.  Separating graphics\r\ninto a distinct window appears earlier in IF history (presumably because of the\r\ndifficulties involved in formatting text around images), with the addition of\r\ninline graphics becoming popular with HTML-TADS.\r\n Earlier games integrating graphics tended to opt for a split-screen layout. \r\nThe lower half of the frame is occupied by a running text pane, the game\'s main\r\nwindow.  Above this is a fixed graphic pane.  An image in the graphic pane\r\ntypically corresponds to the player character\'s location.  Often, a fixed text\r\npane is also present, similar to the ISL status line.  This may occur at the top\r\nof the screen, or between the graphic pane and the main window.  This layout was\r\nused extensively by Tellarium, in such games as The Wizard of Oz (1985),\r\nFahrenheit 451(1986) and Rendezvous with Rama (1985).  More recently, Kent\r\nTessman\'s *Guilty Bastards (1998) and Marnie Parker\'s *Carma (2001) used this\r\nbasic layout.  \r\n It is easy to draw an evolutionary line from the split-screen layout to the\r\nearliest graphical adventure interfaces, such as Sierra\'s AGI platform (first\r\nused in *King\'s Quest (1984)).  This interface uses only transient fixed text\r\npanes for textual output.  A pane at the top of the frame acts as a status line,\r\nand a single-line pane at the bottom of the screen allows the player to enter\r\ncommands.  The middle of the frame is filled with a fixed graphic pane, showing\r\nthe player\'s avatar and his surroundings.\r\n However, the move toward graphical interfaces was slower in some parts than\r\nothers. Later commercial games produced complex interfaces while retaining text\r\nas the primary output medium.  Infocom\'s *Journey (1988) used a three-pane UI. \r\nThe lower part of the frame contained a fixed text pane featuring several menus. \r\nAbove this were two further panes.  On the right, a graphic pane showed the\r\ncurrent illustration.  On the left, a running text pane contained the story\r\nnarrative.  Input was constrained to the menu.  \r\n Even more exotic interfaces were explored by other companies.  Tass Times in\r\nTonetown, released in 1986 by Interplay, but authored by Mike Berlyn of Infocom\r\nfame, used a clear evolution from the split-screen design.  The lower half of the\r\nframe is occupied by a text pane which contains the main narrative.  Above this,\r\na second text pane contains a compass rose.  In the top half of the screen are\r\ntwo graphic panes.  On the left, a pane shows an illustration of the current game\r\nlocation, while on the right, an iconic menu allows easy access to common game\r\nverbs.  Textual input is supported, but the game also relies heavily on the\r\nmouse, which, in addition to working in the iconic menu, can be used to select\r\nobjects from the scene illustration.  That same year, ICOM Simulations released\r\n*Shadowgate, a game which has the dubious distinction of being one of the few\r\nadventure games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The interface\r\nhas a text pane at the bottom of the frame, containing the game narrative.  Above\r\nthis, to the left, a graphic pane contains the current scene illustration.  Above\r\nthe graphic pane, a status line names the location.  Further up, a textual menu\r\noffers the game verbs.  A graphical banner fills the remaining space at the top\r\nof the frame.  Two further panes occupy the right side of the area above the main\r\nwindow.  In the middle of the upper portion of the frame, a graphical inventory\r\nis displayed, and beside this, a graphical map.\r\n Probably the most complex user interfaces in the commercial era of text\r\nadventures were those constructed by Legend Entertainment.  Their games, such as\r\nSpellcasting 101: Sorcerers get all the girls (1991) and Frederik Pohl\'s Gateway\r\n(1992) used a highly complex user interface.  The games all feature similar\r\ninterfaces, though the level of ornamentation and specific style of graphic very\r\nfrom game to game.  However, elements of both the ISL and the split-screen\r\ninterface are visible.  The right side of the frame is clearly based on the older\r\nsplit-screen layout.  The top half of the frame contains an image of the current\r\ngame location.  Items appearing in the image can be clicked with the mouse to use\r\nthem as an object of the current verb (clicking when no verb has been selected\r\nresults in examining the object).  This pane can also be configured to display\r\ntextual information: the player\'s inventory, the room description, the player\'s\r\nscore, etc.  Below this are a status line and main window very similar to the ISL\r\nparadigm.  The left side of the frame contains menus and other interface items\r\nlaid out in four panes.  The top two panes contain a clickable compass rose and\r\nbuttons for controlling the interface (the exact location varies; in\r\nSpellcasting, the compass is on the left, while in Gateway, it is on the right). \r\nBelow these are two text menus.  On the left, a menu contains common verbs. \r\nAfter a verb is selected, this menu changes to display prepositions.  On the\r\nright, a menu lists the objects obviously in scope to the player.  A player may\r\ntype commands into the main window, or may compose them using the menus.  The\r\nLegend interface is unique among IF interfaces in the complexity of commands\r\nwhich can be entered using only the mouse.  Some panes can be hidden according to\r\nthe player\'s preference.\r\n Legend games also frequently used alternate interfaces when dealing with, for\r\nexample, pieces of technological equipment.  These interfaces were generally\r\ntotally graphical, with clickable regions.  Gateway 2: Homeworld (1993) also used\r\nan alternate interface for conversations with non-player characters.  The usual\r\ninterface is replaced with a black screen.  A picture of the NPC appears to one\r\nside, and choices of dialogue or lines of conversation appear on the other.\r\n Sidestepping somewhat, several games remained almost purely text, but\r\nretained graphical \"decorations\".  The majority of Zork Zero: The Revenge of\r\nMegaboz (Infocom, 1988) uses a decorated variant of the ISL.  The status line\r\nitself is superimposed on a graphic banner, and images of columns line the sides\r\nof the frame.  Infocom\'s adaptation of James Clavell\'s *Shogun (1988) also\r\nfeatured decorative images at the sides of the frame.  Both games are also early\r\nexamples of the use of inline graphics.  In recent times, Adam Cadre\'s 2001\r\nre-release of *Photopia features a graphical border which surrounds the main game\r\narea.\r\n<P>\r\n*Modern Explorations\r\n As explained earlier, most contemporary games adhere closely to the ISL\r\ndesign, with variations occurring primarily in the content of the status line. \r\nThere are, however, some exceptions.  \r\n Most IF has used continuous displays for the primary narrative.  In recent\r\ntimes, several; games have broken with tradition, using a fixed text pane for\r\ntheir primary display, which is cleared after each turn.  Most examples of this\r\ntechnique occur in games designed to be played in a web browser.  One notable\r\nexception is Andrew Plotkin\'s *The Space Under The Window (1997), a Z-code game.\r\n Other games have experimented with departures from the ISL which are still\r\ntext-based.  John Ingold\'s *My Angel (2000) features a unique \"novel mode\"\r\ninterface.  The main window is used exclusively for game narrative.  Player input\r\nand the messages from the parser occur in a separate pane at the top of the\r\nscreen.  L. Ross Raszewski\'s *Moments out of Time (2001) adds a menu bar to the\r\nbottom of the screen.  Accessed via the function keys, it allows quick access to\r\ncommon game verbs, nouns, and other features.\r\n The addition of graphics to contemporary IF has occurred slowly.  The release\r\nof HTML-TADS, and later TADS 3, sparked the IF community to begin small-scale use\r\nof graphics.  Neil K. Guy\'s *Six Stories (1999), Ian Finley\'s *Exhibition (1999),\r\nand Stephen Granade\'s *The Arrival (1999) all feature inline graphics.\r\n A few games go still further, though few approach the complexity of, for\r\nexample, the Legend interface.  Mike Snyder\'s 1999 game *Lunatix: The Insanity\r\nCircle uses a five pane interface.  The lower half of the frame is occupied by a\r\nrunning text pane containing the game\'s responses to player interaction.  Input\r\noccurs in a separate single-line pane below this.  In the upper half of the\r\nframe, a pane on the right contains the room description, and above this is a\r\nstatus line.  On the left, the current illustration is shown.\r\n Marnie Parker\'s *Just a Dream (2001) demonstration game also uses five panes.\r\n The bottommost pane spans the frame, and shows a graphical listing of the\r\nobjects in the current location.  Above this is the main window.  At the top of\r\nthe frame is a traditional status line.  Between the status line and the main\r\nwindow are two further panes, both graphical.  On the left is a scene\r\nillustration, and on the right, a graphical inventory.\r\n Adam Cadre\'s *Zeta Space (still in development) also features a complex\r\ninterface. The main window, like in many graphical examples, is located at the\r\nbottom of the frame.  Above it are two graphic panes.  On the left, a scene\r\nillustration is show, while on the right, dialogue is graphically rendered in a\r\nfont appropriate to the speaker.\r\n *Balances, Graham Nelson\'s Inform demonstration game, was recently ported to\r\nGlulx by L. Ross Raszewski (2001), as a demonstration of the GWindows user\r\ninterface library. The user interface is highly graphical, featuring a woodgrain\r\nborder around the main window, which is located on the right side of the frame. \r\nBelow this, spanning the bottom edge of the frame, a graphic pane shows clickable\r\nicons of the spells currently available to the player.  On the right side of the\r\nframe are two further graphic panes.  The lower pane contains eight buttons, most\r\nof which activate a textual menu.  The menu is contained in a fixed text pane\r\nwhich appears to the right of the main window when it is active.  Above the\r\nbuttons, a graphical inventory is shown.  When  inventory items are clicked,\r\ntheir names are inserted into the current line of player input.  At the top of\r\nthe frame, a standard status line is shown.\r\n A highly atypical interface is used by Morten Rasmussen\'s *Invasion of the\r\nAngora Fetish Transvestites from the Graveyards on Jupiter (2001).  The main\r\nwindow is at the top of the frame.  Below this are no less than 8 further text\r\npanes.  On the left, a pane lists the visible exits.  Right of this, another pane\r\nlists the characters present.  Below these, a pane is reserved for player input. \r\nTo the right of this group, a text pane lists the player\'s inventory.  At the far\r\nright is a cluster of navigation buttons.  Along the bottom of the frame are\r\npanes giving the player\'s hit points (the game features randomized combat), the\r\nfunds available to him, and the current game time.  Two buttons are also at the\r\nbottom of the screen for controlling the game\'s audio and real-time.  The space\r\nbetween panes is filled with a color pattern.\r\n<P>\r\n For those wishing to experiment with exotic user interfaces, the technologies\r\nnow available to hobbyists have finally reached a state in which such things may\r\nbe practical.  HTML-TADS allows users to include more complex screen effects by\r\nencoding them in HTML.  Version 6 of the Z-machine, and the Glulx virtual machine\r\nallow extremely complex user interfaces, but these necessitate a somewhat more\r\ndifficult programming approach.  However, high-level libraries exist to\r\nfacilitate programming for these systems.  Jason C. Penney\'s V6Lib is a\r\nhigh-level interface to the version 6 Z-machine screen model, and L. Ross\r\nRaszewski\'s GWindows provides similar functionality for Glulx.  The latter\r\nincludes a large number of class libraries defining common interface components,\r\nsuch as a status line, menu, or quote box.  Even today, most games rely on the\r\nISL, however, the prevalence of more complex UIs is increasing, and if the\r\ncurrent trends continue, future revisions of this article may be',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:16:03',1,15,4880),(27,'Six Stories: Case Study in Multimedia IF',37,'',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','0000-00-00 00:00:00',0,15,0),(28,'Hint Development for IF',38,'Hints\r\n<P>\r\n For any game with at least one puzzle in it (and some with none!), at least one \r\nplayer will need hints to get through it.  Even the perfect game, communicating directly \r\nand clearly with its players will find one player who, for whatever reason,  doesn\'t get it.  \r\nMaybe they are stuck thinking along a different logical track.  Maybe they misread a line, \r\nor missed an exit.  Maybe they don\'t know English well enough to correctly phrase their \r\ninput.  If the player is to continue and see the complete work, they will need a hint.  And \r\nthat\'s where you, the hint-writer, come in.\r\n<p>\r\n You have not set yourself up for a simple task.  If you are the author, two forces \r\nwork against you.  For one, you are often so close to the work that it can be hard to adopt \r\nthe outside perspective needed to see where your prospective player is coming from.  \r\nYou know the streets, alleys, and footpaths of your neighborhood, but haven\'t a clue \r\nwhat freeway they should take.  For another, the hint-writing process must, by necessity, \r\ncome at the end stages of game development, but require the same amount of energy and \r\ncreativity as the initial design.  It can be hard to maintain that level of output for so long--\r\nfixing bugs is about as creative a task as one can manage.\r\n<p>\r\n The outside hint writer also faces a challenge opposite of the author\'s:  you don\'t \r\nhave an intimate knowledge of the game\'s ins and outs.  In fact, you often start with no \r\nmap at all, but merely the directions you followed to get to where you ended up.  In some \r\ncases, you might not even be sure if where you ended up was where the author intended \r\nyou to finish.  To someone who did things differently or wants a different ending, your \r\nhints might not be able to steer them in the right direction.\r\n<p>\r\n The solution to this initial hurdle, whichever side you started on, is the same:  \r\nseek outside advice.  A single set of hints must apply to a wide variety of people; it must \r\nhave a wide variety of inputs if it is to serve.  The author has a natural group in their beta-\r\ntesters--pay close attention to their reports to find out where they were stuck, and what \r\npath they found to get them moving again.  Painstakingly go over their transcripts to find \r\neven moments of temporary confusion--all could be places where another could get \r\nstuck.\r\n<p>\r\n Once you have completed your research and know the potential trouble spots, you \r\nmust work to make your hints complete, adaptable, and inspiring.  Complete in that they \r\nmust both provide answers to each potential trouble spot as well as fully answer that \r\nproblem.  Adaptable in that they must meet the player at the level at which they are stuck-\r\n-on the one hand they must not simply rehash what is already known, but on the other, \r\nthey must not jump straight to the solution and \'spoil\' the puzzle.  Inspiring in that they \r\nmust prompt the player to return to playing the game and attempt the new solution you \r\ndid not tell them, but which you made them think of.  This last is by far your hardest task, \r\nand we shall explore artificial ways to accomplish it to supplement the inspiration you \r\ncan muster on your own.\r\n<p>\r\n The most common (and, to my mind, most effective) method of accomplishing \r\nthese goals is to follow the \'invisiclue\' format.  Invisiclues were hint booklets published \r\nby Infocom containing readable lists of hint topics, each followed by a list of \r\nprogressively more explicit hints, all printed in an invisible ink that would appear only \r\nwhen you drew on it with the enclosed orangeish pen.  Players would look up the \r\nproblem on which they were stuck, then reveal the hints one at a time until they solved \r\nthe puzzle, ran out of clues, or lost the pen.  Though the invisible ink technology is sadly \r\nnot used much today, the invisiclue format of readable topics followed by hidden clues is \r\nwidely used in a variety of implementations, from web pages to encoded files to a hint \r\nmenu within the game itself.  A survey of the available options and variations on this \r\nformat is included at the end of this article, following an in-depth study of how to go \r\nabout actually writing the hints themselves.\r\n<P>\r\nComplete<br>\r\n Being complete in your hints is probably the most crucial task you face.  Nothing \r\ncan be more frustrating to a game player reading hints and still being unable to progress \r\nin the game.  As the author, this might be harder than you imagine--bits you put in that \r\nyou did not intend as a puzzle may be unclear or simply missed.  Whether you are the \r\nauthor or not, a good method might be to compile a walkthrough of the game first, and \r\nnote any commands that are not directions, \'examine\' or \'get\' as potential places where \r\npeople might need a hint.  Even these are not always safe--in many games it seems I get \r\nstuck at least once when I have failed to notice an exit.  Depending on the format of your \r\nhints, you might consider including maps of each section, noting the \'obvious\' places one \r\ncan get.\r\n<p>\r\n Based on your walkthrough and list of puzzles and trouble spots, compile the list \r\nof hint topics you want the player to see.  Make this list as tangible as possible, and try to \r\nformulate it as a question the player might pose having seen the puzzle, but not know \r\nanything about the solution.  That means that if a diamond is hidden in a locked box, \r\n\"Opening the locked box\" or even just \"The locked box\" would be a suitable topic, while \r\n\"Finding the diamond\" would not.  Even if the player knows they need a diamond for \r\nsome other puzzle, they don\'t know (unless the box is transparent) that it rests inside.  \r\nLikewise, you don\'t want to give away anything in the topic.  \"Finding the key for the \r\nlocked box\" tells the player more than they know when they encounter the box for the \r\nfirst time.\r\n<p>\r\n Sometimes, there\'s just no way to word a topic without that itself being some kind \r\nof a spoiler.  (\"Aha! One of the questions is \'How do I get into the house?, so there must \r\nbe some way of doing that!\") The accepted method of dealing with this is to put bogus \r\nquestions on the list as well as real ones. (How do I get on top of the house?, How do I \r\nrevive the skeleton?) Infocom did this a lot, in their Invisiclues.  Don\'t go overboard, \r\nthough--too many false hints will leave the player wading through them, not realizing \r\nwhen  they\'ve hit a real one.\r\n<p>\r\n Once compiled, you will often find that the topics can naturally be grouped \r\ntogether somewhere, often by geography (\'The Forest\'), sometimes by progress within \r\nthe game (\'The Prologue\').  Grouping clues this way provides both a logical framework \r\nfor looking up where one is stuck, and a way to avoid \'looking ahead\' to see what sorts of \r\nchallenges await.  Ideally, a player reading hints will only see the topics for the particular \r\nsection of the game for which they need help.  This can be accomplished fairly easily for \r\nelectronic hints, but if providing hints in some hard-copy format, be sure to include \r\nenough white space or page break between sections so that a player can if they choose \r\nlook only at the hint topics for their particular section.\r\n<p>\r\n The other side of being complete is to be sure to provide explicit instructions for \r\nhow to get past each puzzle.  The simplest way to do this is to simply relate the \r\ncommands the player is to type as the last hint in each topic.  So, after skating around the \r\nfact that the key is in the mouse hole, and after finally saying explicitly, \"The key is in \r\nthe mouse hole,\" say, \">REACH IN MOUSE HOLE.  You will get a silver key.  Then, \r\n>UNLOCK BOX WITH SILVER KEY.\"  The reason for being explicit is that invariably \r\nsome player will have the right idea, but not be able to phrase it in a way that the game \r\nunderstands.  Maybe they tried, \">PUT HAND IN MOUSE HOLE\" or \">FEEL MOUSE \r\nHOLE\" or even, \">GROPE ABOUT INSIDE THE MOUSE HOLE\", none of which \r\nworked.  They can send a bug report to the author later--for now, they need to know what \r\nto do to solve the puzzle.\r\n<P>\r\nAdaptable<br>\r\n Before the player needs explicit instructions, however, they need gentle nudges in \r\nthe right direction.  And to do that, the hints need to be adaptable.  The very format of \r\ninvisiclue-style hints caters to this need by gradually revealing more and more \r\ninformation as the player reveals each new hint.  The following checklist should help you \r\ngive exactly the right amount of information to the player.\r\n<P>\r\n1.  Is the puzzle currently solvable? The player may feel that they are stuck, say, on \'How \r\ndo I unlock the grate?\', but they will actually be stuck on \'How do I enter the house?\', \r\ninside which will be a skeleton key. The first clue given to a player should convey to the \r\nplayer whether or not the puzzle is solvable yet. As an example, let\'s say that there\'s a \r\ngrate in the game that must be unlocked with a skeleton key.  The first hint might be:\r\n<p>\r\n How Do I Open the Grate? <br>\r\n  You\'ll have to get in the house first. (see How Do I Enter the House?) \r\n<P>\r\nSometimes it might be impossible to reveal this information without giving away too \r\nmuch.  If a credit card can be obtained from a broken ATM and subsequently used to \r\njimmy open a shed door, then telling the player looking for a shed door clue \"You must \r\nfirst solve the ATM puzzle\" reveals too much.  Try to be circumspect in this situation, \r\nperhaps telling the player they must solve some puzzles in the bank area first.  If there\'s \r\nno way to tell the player this information without some spoilage, you can bump this \r\ninformation down the list and give the player other clues first.\r\n<p>\r\n If the hints are included in the game itself, they can bypass this step by only \r\nproviding hints for those puzzles that are currently solvable, or by stating \"This puzzle \r\ncannot yet be solved.\"  Excruciating care must be taken to make sure this is actually the \r\ncase!  In my own game \'The Edifice\', the hint system acknowledged only one way to \r\nsolve a particular puzzle, and got stuck there if the player used a slightly different \r\nmethod.  Carefully check this code to not make the same mistake I did, and provide \'outs\' \r\nfor the hints to continue in case it happens anyway (checking to see if a door is open, for \r\nexample, rather than noting when the player types \'open door\').\r\n<P>\r\n2.  What are the clues within the game? A good puzzle should have indicators to its \r\nsolution within the game itself. The next few clues should point the player in that \r\ndirection. In our example, say the author has put a skeleton inside the grate as a clue. The \r\nnext clue might therefore be: <br>\r\n How Do I Open the Grate? <br>\r\n  You\'ll have to get in the house first. (see How Do I Enter the House?) <br>\r\n  Have you looked inside the grate? <br>\r\n<P>\r\nAnother type of in-game hint, often overlooked, is the non-working solution to the \r\npuzzle.  This is anything the player might do to solve the puzzle that doesn\'t resolve the \r\nsituation, but that the game acknowledges and responds to with some kind of pointer to \r\nthe real solution.  \'So Far\' is an excellent example of a game with many puzzles like this, \r\nthe animal puzzle in particular.  In my hints for that game, I attempted to steer the player \r\ntowards as many dead-ends as I could find, since each dead-end provided information \r\none could use towards understanding the situation and eventually hitting upon the right \r\nsolution.  Indeed, I myself solved the animal puzzle by first failing to solve it in several \r\ndifferent ways.\r\n<P>\r\n3.  What is the logic involved? A good puzzle should be logical.  The next clue or clues \r\nshould try to get the player thinking along the lines of logic needed to solve the puzzle.  \r\nThis might be a good place to say explicitly what you hoped would be inferred from your \r\npointers to the in-game clues.  So, for example: <br>\r\n How Do I Open the Grate? <br>\r\n  You\'ll have to get in the house first. (see How Do I Enter the House?) <br>\r\n  Have you looked inside the grate? <br>\r\n  The original key is probably lost. <br>\r\n  But another key might be useful,... <br>\r\n  What kind of key is known to open many different locks? <br>\r\n  Didn\'t the skeleton remind you of anything? <br>\r\n<P>\r\n4.  What must be done to solve the puzzle? If the hint writer has conceded that the author\'s \r\nthinking might be alien to the player, they should probably also concede that the hint \r\nwriter\'s thinking might be alien to the player as well (especially if the hint writer is the \r\nauthor!)  As mentioned before, explicit instructions should be included after the hints \r\nhave otherwise been exhausted.\r\n How Do I Open the Grate? <br>\r\n  You\'ll have to get in the house first. (see How Do I Enter the House?) <br>\r\n  Have you looked inside the grate? <br>\r\n  The original key is probably lost. <br>\r\n  But another key might be useful,... <br>\r\n  What kind of key is known to open many different locks? <br>\r\n  Didn\'t the skeleton remind you of anything? <br>\r\n  A skeleton key! <br>\r\n  UNLOCK GRATE WITH SKELETON KEY, then OPEN GRATE <br>\r\n<P>\r\nIt is traditional to give commands that should be entered directly as ALL CAPS, as \r\nabove.\r\n<P>\r\nInspiring<br>\r\n Hints are not an end in and of themselves.  They are there to provide inspiration to \r\nthe player to go back to the game and try something new.  Sadly, there are no easy tricks \r\nto accomplishing this in your writing, except to say take your time and try to think about \r\nthe problem from a variety of angles. [Readers, any suggestions here?]  Even the most \r\ninspiring clue may hit the reader at the wrong time and make them want to hurry on to the \r\nnext clue.  So, we cheat.\r\n<p>\r\n To cheat, we provide some artificial or external means of preventing the player \r\nfrom reading one hint right after another.  Different techniques may be used, depending \r\non the format of the hints (paper, electronic, or in-game), and on how many hoops you \r\nwant the player to jump through before getting the next one.  The motivation behind all \r\nof these techniques is the same:  to slow down the player so they have time to think about \r\nthe first hint before going on to the next, and to prevent the player from accidentally \r\nviewing hints they did not want.\r\n<P>\r\n-Encryption<br>\r\n This option can take a wide variety of forms, and be used in all three formats \r\n(paper, electronic, or in-game).  Put simply, the hints are provided in a format that is not \r\neasily readable, and effort must be expended by the player to decipher each line.  The \r\namount of effort can vary greatly, and should be kept in mind when writing the hints \r\nthemselves.  For a great amount of effort, players expect a greater degree of hintage, \r\nwhile for less effort, you can get away with including \'filler\' hints.  A few examples:\r\n<p>\r\n -Letter Substitution.  Each letter in the clue is replaced by a different, unique \r\nletter.  The simplest method for this is to use \'rot-13\', or substituting each letter by the \r\nletter 13 away from it in the alphabet.  Rot-13 has the advantage of being reversible--A is \r\nsubstituted by M, and M by A.\r\n<p>\r\n -Word Substitution.  Each word in the clue is replaced by a number, and a booklet \r\nor file is provided with a list of words and numbers.  Some games may provide in-game \r\nhints with just the numbers, with the booklet available along with registration, or for a \r\nprice.\r\n<p>\r\n -Sentence Substitution.  Each sentence is replaced by a number, and a booklet is \r\nor file is provided with a list of sentences and numbers.  This method has the \r\ndisadvantage of allowing a wandering eye to see answers to puzzles the player didn\'t \r\nwant to see; this can be allayed by mixing up the clues and including fake ones, too.\r\n<p>\r\n -Writing Backwards.  Each sentence is written backwards, perhaps with the \r\nspacing changed or removed.  This allows all hints and topics to be printed on the same \r\npage, but minimizes the effect of wandering eyes.  I would break with tradition here and \r\n*not* use all-caps for explicit instructions, since for some reason, \".PMUJ  .ELBAT NO \r\nDNATS\" is easier to read than \".pmuj  .elbat no dnats\"\r\n<p>\r\n -Inserting Characters.  Some letter, like X, is inserted every other letter \r\nlxixkxextxhxixs.  Simple to use, and again minimizes the wandering eye problem.\r\n<P>\r\n Whichever method of encryption used, it is probably best to write the clues in \r\nplain English first, then use or write a simple computer program to encrypt them, to \r\nensure consistency and accuracy.\r\n<P>\r\n-Physical impediments<br>\r\n Game companies are most likely to use this method, since they usually involve a \r\nsignificant increase in cost than the simpler encryption methods above.  Infocom \r\nfamously utilized invisible ink with a special pen that would reveal the clue in their \r\nInvisiclue booklets, but this technique may be too expensive to be practical today.  A \r\nsimpler method, popular with Sierra among others, is to print the clues in light blue \r\nagainst a red pixellated background, which could be read if covered with a piece of red \r\ncellophane.  One problem here is that once you have the booklet and the cellophane, it \r\ncan be too easy to slide down to the next hint, even by accident.  One of the advantages \r\nof the Invisiclue system was the finality--once you exposed a hint, it was forever exposed \r\non the pages of the book, perhaps giving the player enough pause to contemplate that last \r\nclue again and discover the answer for themselves.\r\n<P>\r\n-Electronic \'encryption\'<br>\r\n Once you move the hints to the computer, a wide variety of new options become \r\navailable for use, in addition to those above (well, maybe not literal invisible ink).  A \r\ntypical implementation will allow the player to read the hint topics, then click on one to \r\ngo to the first hint, and continue clicking to go to successive hints.  One advantage of this \r\nformat is that it provides a way to easily hide from view graphical or even auditory clues.  \r\nWhile it is possible to create your own format, here are two that will probably suffice:\r\n HTML.  This is most often used for plain text clues with individual links to each \r\nclue, as Peter Scheyen\'s HTMLized Invisiclues  at \r\nhttp://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Invisiclues/.  My own hints for \'So Far\' used this same \r\nbasic format, with the slight modification that links were only provided to the first hint \r\nfor any topic, with subsequent hints available only through manually editing the location \r\nbar.  The idea was to require more effort from the player, giving them more time to think \r\nabout the previous hint.  Another option is to simply print all the clues in white text on a \r\nwhite background, which the player can view by highlighting the appropriate section.  \r\nThe wandering eye problem becomes a wandering mouse problem for players with jerky \r\nwrists or sticky mouse pads, but it\'s a simple method that can be created with minimal \r\neffort.\r\n<p>\r\n UHS, or \'Universal Hint System\'.  Currently online at http://www.uhs-hints.com/, \r\nthis is a fairly popular multi-platform system that provides these types of hints in a simple \r\nelectronic format, either from a standalone reader or online.  The reader is not free, which \r\nis a mixed blessing--on one hand, not everyone will be able to access your hints, on the \r\nother, if you write hints for a popular game, you can actually get paid.  Sending in your \r\nhints nets you a free version of the reader, at least, so if nothing else it\'s good for that.\r\n<P>\r\n-In-game options<br>\r\n Providing hints within the game itself allows a new level of options, probably the \r\ngreatest of which is the ability to provide context-sensitive hints.  This means a lot more \r\nwork for the hint writer, but a better experience for the player.  While the most popular \r\nin-game hint systems simply provide a way to get to a menu of hint topics, there are other \r\nsystems that might be appropriate for your game.\r\n<p>\r\n -One Hint Per Room.  In each room, the player can ask for a hint and get a clue \r\nabout something to do in that room, or about something related to that room.  Probably \r\nnot the best option for complex games, but has the advantage of being automatically \r\ncontext-sensitive\r\n<p>\r\n -One Hint Per Object.  The player can ask for a hint about an object they possess \r\nor have encountered.  Again perhaps not appropriate for some games, but might work \r\nwell for others\r\n<p>\r\n Hintus Ex Machina.  Some object, character, or device within the game itself can \r\ngive clues to the PC.  \'Curses\' and \'The Magic Toyshop\' both had characters the PC \r\ncould show objects to and get clues from, my own \'The Edifice\' had special rooms where \r\nhints would appear etched into the wall, and Infocom\'s \'Arthur\' had a toque you could \r\npeer into to get hints.  This method can have the advantage of furthering the atmosphere \r\nof the game, and players tend to be more forgiving of hint restrictions placed on the PC \r\nthan restrictions placed upon themselves.\r\n<p>\r\n Time-Delay.  Theoretically available for external electronic formats too, users of \r\nthis option simply force the player to wait to receive the next hint, either by waiting a \r\ncertain number of turns or by tying into the system clock and forcing a delay of an actual \r\nperiod of time (though I personally have never seen the latter, and imagine it might get \r\nannoying rather quickly).  This option is most often used with the \'Hintus Ex Machina\' \r\n(as in \'Arthur\' and \'The Edifice\'), but would theoretically also be an option for menu-\r\nbased hints.\r\n<p>\r\n The Penalty.  The player is penalized in some way (usually a decrease in score) \r\nfor getting hints.  This technique has been around since an early version of \'Adventure\', \r\nwhich allowed the player to get a hint at the cost of a point, and has been used as recently \r\nas \'Not Just An Ordinary Ballerina\'.  The problems with this method are that it is easy to \r\nget around through saving and restoring, and perhaps more importantly that it furthers the \r\nbreakdown of trust between the player and the author.  The author has already betrayed \r\nthe player by creating a puzzle too hard for the player, and deducting points cements this \r\ndivision, rather than gently cajoling the player back to the game.  I include the option \r\nhere for completeness, but strongly recommend against it.\r\n<p>\r\n No Explicit Hints.  The one sure-fire method of keeping the next hint from the \r\nplayer is to never include it in the first place.  \'Theatre\', for example, while providing a \r\nnumber of hints for each topic, never explicitly told you the command to type, instead \r\nending on indirect clues like \"You need to have a girlfriend called Jane\" when Tarzan-\r\nlike activity was required.  The NPCs in \'Curses\' and \'The Magic Toyshop\' likewise \r\nnever told the PC explicitly what to do.  Be aware that by using this option, you will \r\nprobably force some players to use some external resource (probably a walkthrough) to \r\nsolve their problem, and once there, they may never return.\r\n<p>\r\n Letting The Player Decide.  Rather than having to choose among the above \r\noptions, in-game hints (and, theoretically, electronic hints), can leave the format up to the \r\nplayer.  At the most basic level, many Infocom games that came with hints allowed you \r\nto type \'hints off\', which would disable the hints for the rest of that game session.  This \r\nmethod is somewhat ham-fisted, however, and easily gotten around by simply restarting \r\nthe game for the express purpose of reading the hints.  A middle-of-the-road solution was \r\nutilized in \'The Legend Lives\', where the user could request encrypted hints, which \r\nwould pass all the hints (and, perhaps unfortunately, hint topics) through a rot-13 filter.  \r\nAny number of above options could be used in this way, and might be a good way to \r\ninclude the \'No Explicit Hints\' option without alienating the player.\r\n<P>\r\n When written and utilized well, the result of a good hint system is that the player \r\nfinds out how to get past were they were stuck with exactly the right amount of a \'push\', \r\nand is able to go on and enjoy the game. They still feel challenged, and can complete the \r\ngame without the sense of loss consumate with either giving up on the game altogether or \r\nfrom being \'spoiled\' for that puzzle. (See \"Cheat, Beg, Wheedle, Cajole\" from \r\nXYZZYNews #12, at http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.12f.html ) I received the \r\ngreatest validation of my own hint writing efforts when I read a post from someone who \r\nsaid they had just finished \'So Far\' \"without cheating\", and only a \"gentle nudge\" from \r\nmy clues.  Hint writing can take a lot of effort, but the players will thank you for it.\r\n<P>',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2006-08-25 08:18:53',1,16,4700),(29,'Introduction to IF from a Theoretical Standpoint',3,'',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','0000-00-00 00:00:00',0,17,0),(30,'Interactive Fiction, Stream-of-Consciousness Writing and Free Will',39,'not that you may remember time:\r\nInteractive Fiction, Stream-Of-Consciousness Writing and Free Will\r\n<P>\r\nMark Silcox\r\nPhilosophy Department, Auburn University\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nJanet Murrays book Hamlet on The Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace\r\nis a spirited and unrelentingly optimistic defense of new styles of interactive\r\nstorytelling made popular in the wake of the PC revolution of the early 1990s.\r\nMost of the appeal of Murrays book lies in her lively and engaging descriptions\r\nof her own experiences with stories written using these new, mostly digital\r\nmedia. Murray should be applauded warmly for helping to make the attractions of\r\ncomputer gaming, web design fan fiction and other pervasive contemporary\r\ndiversions attractive and intelligible to an audience that is often suspicious of\r\nsuch prima facie purely pop-cultural marginalia. Occasionally in her book,\r\nhowever, she waxes somewhat more theoretical, and tries to describe the appeal of\r\nstories that provide the reader with a more extensive influence on the course of\r\nevents making up a narrative, by means of a comparison with the traditional aims\r\nof storytellers in the western tradition going back as far back as the\r\npre-Gutenberg era. \r\nIn this essay I shall focus my attention on some interesting but problematic\r\nremarks that Murray makes about how we should understand the relationship between\r\naesthetics of interactive fiction (hereafter abbreviated IF) and the intentions\r\nof writers from just one earlier tradition. Murray compares the artistic aims of\r\ninteractive storytellers to those of authors such as Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce and\r\nothers from the first half of the twentieth century who experimented with\r\nnon-traditional narrative methods in an effort to provide readers of fiction with\r\nan extreme close-up of human consciousness itself. Her reason for making these\r\ncomparisons, and part of what seems to lie behind her considerable optimism about\r\nthe future of IF, is a belief that stories told through media like literary\r\nhypertexts, the internet and computer games, at least partly by virtue of the new\r\ninterface that they generate between the author and his readers, can be expected\r\nto deliver a higher level of psychological realism to the conventional reader of\r\nfiction. \r\nI want to tell the story of how stream-of-consciousness writing compares to IF in\r\na somewhat different way than Murray tells it. I do not want to suggest that\r\nMurrays diagnosis of the relationship between these two vastly different methods\r\nof telling stories is simply false, but her approach makes me uncomfortable for a\r\ncouple of reasons. In the first place, to suggest that one style of narrative can\r\nbe valued to any extent over another by virtue of its capacity to give a true\r\npicture of how the mind works betrays, I think, an approach to practical\r\ncriticism that relies more extensively upon evaluations of a works specifically\r\nmimetic properties than many in the so-called post-modern era would be entirely\r\ncomfortable with. This approach influences her critical judgments in some rather\r\nsurprising ways  her preference for simulation-style computer games like SimCity\r\nand Civilization over so called adventure games like Myst and Planetfall seem\r\nstrange given the sheer paucity of textual content in the former, and her\r\napparent willingness to posit a sort of continuity between the appeal of\r\ninteractive literature and passive media such as television is rather surprising\r\nto those of us who have come to view interactive media as presenting a possible\r\nsalvation from the cultural penury imposed upon so many in our civilization by\r\nthe little blue box. \r\nMore, significantly, though, I think that Murrays convictions about what it would\r\nbe for a story to achieve a desirable level of psychological realism in the\r\ncontemporary era betrays some important philosophical prejudices about the\r\nrelationship between literature and our understanding of the psychological\r\nsignificance of free will that (while they might be almost automatically\r\nappealing to many inhabitants of the contemporary scene) it is at least worth\r\nbringing out into the open. The less antecedent philosophy we bring to the task\r\nof comparing two historically separate and stylistically divergent traditions of\r\nstorytelling, the more we shall be able to appreciate each individual authors\r\nefforts based upon a conception of his or her own peculiar artistic agenda.\r\nAs we shall see when we examine some of the remarks that Murray makes about what\r\nshe takes to be some of the distinctive appeals of interactive writing to the\r\ncontemporary imagination, she seems at least to think of different methods of\r\nnarrative as representing so many different strategies for making new kinds of\r\nhuman experience available, in some sense of this term, to the reader. Like many\r\ncritics before her, Murray appears to regard the structural limitations imposed\r\nby a narrative style upon how a particular author tells his tale as instruments\r\nfor, rather than as impediments to, the achievement of that particular sort of\r\ncommunicative act between author and reader that distinguishes the literary from\r\nother forms of expression. Now, my own critical antennae are attuned to a less\r\nAristotelian, and perhaps a more Freudian wavelength than Murrays. The poet, say\r\nAristotle, must be more the poet of his plots than of his verses, inasmuch as he\r\nis a poet by virtue of the imitative element in his work, and it is actions that\r\nhe imitates. For the Freudian, on the other hand, narrative tropes and\r\nconventions in a certain sense represent an impediment to literary communication;\r\nthe essential ars poetica, suggests Freud, in his famous essay on creative\r\nwriters and day-dreaming, is the set of strategies by which the writer bribes us\r\nby the purely formal  that is, aesthetic  yield of pleasure which he offers us in\r\nthe presentation of his fantasies. These formal properties of a work of\r\nliterature, says Freud, work to some extent to conceal or to render less\r\naccessible the features of a story that make possible the release of still\r\ngreater pleasure arising from deeper psychical sources. \r\nIt seems to me that there are some important insights about the relationship\r\nbetween stream-of-consciousness fiction and interactive literature that can be\r\nobtained from thinking of narrative structures as imposing a sort of purely\r\nexternal constraint upon the extent to which genuine psychological realism is a\r\nviable goal in the writing of fiction. As I shall try to show through an\r\nexamination of passages from certain key texts belonging to both  of these\r\ntraditions, the most successful works owe a considerable portion of their appeal\r\nto the ways in which their authors actually place on exhibit their detachment\r\nfrom the narrative conventions associated with each type of writing, and by so\r\ndoing allow their readers, if not to participate directly in the narrative\r\ncontrivance, then at the very least to peek behind the curtain.\r\n<P>\r\nThe popularity of what Murray describes as multiform narratives  a category that\r\nis meant to include not only IF but also the writings of authors as diverse as\r\nCalvino, Borges and Delmore Schwartz,  Hollywood scriptwriters, and participants\r\nin collaborative internet soap operas  arises from sources deep in our\r\ncontemporary understanding of the nature of human agency. Such works represent \r\nan effort to give expression to the characteristically twentieth-century\r\nperception of life as composed of parallel possibilities. Multiform narrative\r\nattempts to give a simultaneous form to these possibilities, to allow us to hold\r\nin our minds at the same time multiple contradictory alternatives.\r\n<P>\r\nMurray speculates that this way of thinking about human lives as paths traced\r\nthrough a space of conflicting possibilities might be a reflection of\r\npost-Einsteinian physics, or perhaps of a secular society haunted by the\r\nchanciness of life. \r\nSuch hypotheses should perhaps not be dismissed entirely out of hand, but one\r\ncannot help feeling that they perhaps represent a somewhat over-precise\r\nexplanation of what is surely a highly general feature of our human\r\nself-understanding  a feature, moreover, whose origins are probably better\r\nexplained ahistorically. To say that a person recognizes her life as being\r\ncomposed of parallel possibilities surely after all amounts to nothing more than\r\nthe claim that she recognizes her capacity for acting freely. Are the multiform\r\nwriters of twentieth century literature really the first group of literary\r\nartists to have devised a way of telling stories that adequately represents the\r\ninfluence of free will upon human self-understanding?\r\nIn one very provocative and engaging passage of her book, Murray describes the\r\npsychological effect of watching a 3D IMAX film, Across the Sea of Time, which\r\ntells the story of a young Russian boys visit to New York. Here, she suggests\r\nthat such media simultaneously proffer to and frustrate in their audiences a new\r\nsort of empathetic involvement with the stories that they tell  something quite\r\ndifferent from the sort of vicarious identification with characters in a\r\nnarrative whose fates are determined by the structure of the story as it unfolds:\r\ntoward the end of the movie we are on a wonderfully realized street in Greenwich\r\nvillageA couple in what would ordinarily be the background crosses the street.\r\nBut there is no background. I am there. My attention is caught, and I want to\r\nfollow that couple and see what their story is. Instead, the camera relentlessly\r\ndrags me into a bar on a corner with the young boy. Again I see a wonderfully\r\ndetailed environmentI want to move closer, to lean into the shot to get a better\r\nview, but the camera stays with the dramatic action of the scene, namely, Tomas\r\nconversation with the bartender. I am uncomfortable at these moments because the\r\nthree-dimensional photography has put me in a virtual space and has thereby\r\nawakened by desire to move though it autonomously, to walk away from the camera\r\nand discover the world on my own.\r\n<P>\r\nWhat this passage suggests is that something much more subtle  and perhaps more\r\ninteresting  than the mere recognition that stories take place in environments\r\nthat are subject to change through the influence of human voluntarism may be\r\ngoing on in the reception of works that demand such a high level of participation\r\nfrom their audiences,. What Murray actually depicts herself as having experienced\r\nhere is a feeling of positive resistance to the flow of narrative in the film.\r\nRather than experiencing the development of a storys plot as an incentive bonus\r\nor a fore-pleasure to the liberation of tensions in our minds, as Freud described\r\nthe plots of traditional romantic narratives, the audience is explicitly made\r\naware of its role a purely artificial constraint upon imagination and positive\r\nempathy. \r\nMurray seems to believe that her response was an unintended side-effect of the\r\ntechnology used in making the film. My own experience of 3D movies is that plots\r\nare almost inevitably quite explicitly contrived and illogical, since they are\r\ndesigned (albeit rarely with much subtlety or self-reflexivity) so as to provide\r\ncertain sorts of momentary and ephemeral experiential pay-offs  the bird that\r\nflies over your head, the sword that seems to reach out dangerously toward you,\r\nthe curious objet-dart thrown into high relief against a backdrop of characters\r\nwho are merely talking. Would it be too paradoxical to suggest that the\r\ndeliberate use of such devices to inspire a felt resistance to the determinism of\r\nnarrative could in fact be a guiding principle in the determination of a literary\r\nstyle? \r\nI think that the self-conscious adoption of this strategy is in fact a\r\ndistinguishing feature of twentieth-century literature, and is often what\r\ncontemporary critics are really talking about when they suggest (as one so\r\nfrequently hears) that the much broader phenomenon of irony is the dominant trope\r\nof modern literary fiction. One finds many such examples of this sort of attempt\r\nto distance ones readers from the determinism of narrative in the works of major\r\nwriters associated with the stream-of-consciousness movement. \r\n<P>\r\nIn order better to understand how the aim of psychological realism as pursued by\r\nauthors of this sort of fiction might lead them quite naturally to pursue a\r\nstrategy of self-reflexiveness and ironic detachment in the construction of\r\nnarratives, it will be useful to take a quick glimpse at the writings of William\r\nJames, the philosopher who first introduced the term stream-of-consciousness into\r\nthe lexicon of popular psychology. In The Principles of Psychology, James tried\r\nto describe in terms as objective as possible the five most important\r\ndistinguishing characters of a sentient human beings stream of thought. These, he\r\nsuggested, were the following:\r\nEvery thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness.\r\nWithin each personal consciousness thought is always changing.\r\nWithin each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous.\r\nIt always appears to deal with objects independent of itself.\r\nIt is interested in some parts of those objects to the exclusion of others, and\r\nwelcomes or rejects  chooses from among them, in a word  all the while.\r\n<P>\r\nNow, it would certainly be a clear mistake to deny that one of the principal aims\r\nof many great writers of the early twentieth century who experimented openly with\r\nstream-of-consciousness technique was to provide a more realistic depiction of\r\nthe minutiae of our everyday thought processes. The philosopher Henri Bergson, a\r\ncontemporary of James and a widely influential thinker during the earlier half of\r\nthis century, openly endorsed this view of the aims of narrative. The author, he\r\nsaid, \r\nmay multiply the traits of his heros character, may make him speak and act as\r\nmuch as he pleases, but all this can never be equivalent to the simple and\r\nindivisible feeling which I should experience if I were able for an instant to\r\nidentify myself with the person of the hero himself.\r\n<P>\r\nSome authors of this period may perhaps have even held themselves up to the\r\nstandard of accuracy set by psychologists and philosophers of the period such as\r\nJames, Bergson and others, who employed overtly introspective, phenomenological\r\nmethods of inquiry for what they took to be the purely scientific\r\ncharacterization of how human beings think. Subsequent critics have pointed out,\r\nhowever, that. To suppose that mere psychological realism was the exclusive aim\r\nlying behind this sort of literary experimentation would be to attribute to these\r\nauthors an extraordinary navet about the most basic inherent limitations imposed\r\nby the conventions of fiction writing, as well as the more general constraint\r\nimposed upon the artist by the use of written language itself.  \r\nOne useful exercise we can perform to convince ourselves of this fact is to\r\nreflect upon the plausibility of each of the five numbered statements given above\r\nwith the word narrative substituted for the expression personal consciousness (or\r\nthe initial pronoun in statements #4 and #5). I do not think it takes more than a\r\nlittle reflection to conclude that under this transformation, the first three\r\nstatements of James characterization of the stream of consciousness would under\r\nmost circumstances clearly be false while the last two only would remain at least\r\nrelatively plausible. Elaborating upon the first characteristic listed above,\r\nJames remarked that each human mind  keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is\r\nno giving or bartering between themAbsolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is\r\nthe law. But the deliverance of a narrative is always at the very least an act of\r\ncommunication between two minds; when it aspires to psychological realism its\r\ninformational content is furthermore usually to do with a content of some mind\r\nthat is neither that of the teller not that of the hearer. If we accept\r\nAristotles characterization of narrative as requiring at least some probability\r\n[or] necessity in the sequence of its episodes as being at the very least a rough\r\napproximation of the truth then we must furthermore reject the re-interpreted\r\nversion of condition #2,  since according to James when accepted as a true\r\ndescription of personal consciousness it clearly implies that no state once gone\r\ncan recur and be identical with what it was before, and hence that no\r\npsychological state considered in abstraction from its objects can be thought of\r\nas related probabilistically in any way at all to any other state that an\r\nindividual might happen to enter into. Statement #3 is a little more tricky,\r\nsince it is less than clear precisely what James means by describing thought as\r\ncontinuous in character. He might on the one hand be referring to the fact that\r\nmuch of everyday conscious reflection is of a non-linguistic character  an\r\nintuitively appealing, but philosophically rather controversial claim to make\r\nabout how we experience the flow of our own thoughts. Or he might be making the\r\nmore challenging claim that no human being ever does anything without the\r\naccompaniment of a consciously experienced internal flow of thoughts, even when\r\nasleep, entrances, or absorbed in physical work. In either case, extreme examples\r\nof experimentation in stream-of-consciousness writing such as Finnegans Wake,\r\nRussell Hobans Riddley Walker and some of the later novels of Samuel Beckett,\r\nwhich forego even the conventions of regular syntax and word individuation might\r\nconceivably stake a claim to providing partially adequate representation of the\r\ncontinuous qualities of human thinking. But this is surely at most an\r\nunattainable ideal, one that can at best be approximated very roughly through the\r\nfundamentally discontinuous medium of human language.\r\nWhen one looks at a few supposedly paradigmatic examples of psychologically\r\nrealistic stream-of-consciousness writing, what one finds is that in fact a\r\ncurious sort of path is negotiated between fairly regular methods for the\r\ndelivery of narrative information about an individuals conscious history,  and a\r\nvery particular type of digression from the flow of narrative. Consider, for\r\nexample, the famous opening pages of Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young\r\nMan. This novel begins with a curious barrage of sensations - snatches of\r\nhalf-coherent song (Oh, the green wothe botheth) fragments of a story being read\r\naloud to the protagonist , and the observation that When you wet the bed first it\r\nis warm then it gets cold. The sheer novelty of this style of writing, and the\r\nextent to which it contrasts with more conventional first-person styles of\r\nnarration, has led many critics to praise the author by remarking upon his\r\nutterly original methods for  capturing the raw feel of our inner, reflective\r\nexperience as human beings. But this can easily lead one to overlook certain\r\ncrucial ambiguities. For in the first place, it is actually made quite clear by\r\nJoyce (through the use of asterisks which divide up the initial sections of the\r\nbook) that this passage is meant to serve, not as a representation of one single,\r\ncontinuous episode in the conscious life of Stephen Daedalus, but rather as a\r\nsort of representative sampling from Stephens infant thoughts. It is also worth\r\nnoting that the glimpses that one does catch of other characters, even in the\r\nspace of a couple of pages  of Stephens singing father and his pious Aunt - are\r\nclearly meant to resonate with other passages later on in the novel, after\r\nStephen himself has developed to an extent that enables him to achieve deeper\r\ninsights about the personalities of his immediate family. And in a striking\r\npassage toward the end of the novel, the adult Stephen philosophizes to a friend\r\nabout the nature of epical narrative in a way that utterly lays bare the\r\ncontrivances involved in the novels early sections:\r\nThe simplest epical form is seen as emerging out of lyrical literature when the\r\nartist prolongs and broods upon himself as the center of an epical event and this\r\nform progresses till the center of emotional gravity is equidistant from the\r\nartist himself and from othersThis progress you will see easily in that old\r\nEnglish ballad Turpin Hero, which begins in the first person and ends in the\r\nthird person.\r\n<P>\r\nPerhaps the most interesting example of a text in the stream-of-consciousness\r\ntradition in which this balancing of pure psychological description with the\r\ndevelopment of a cohesive, structured narrative is brought into high relief is\r\nthe second section of Faulkners The Sound and The Fury. For this portion of his\r\nmasterpiece, Faulkner places us inside the mind of Quentin Compson, a troubled\r\nHarvard undergraduate, on the day of his suicide. We watch as he goes through a\r\nmeticulous series of preparations for his own death, which are interrupted\r\ncomically by some confrontations with young children and hostile immigrants and a\r\ncorrupt rural judge. As these events unfold, Quentins imagination drifts back and\r\nforth with apparent aimlessness between his two principal obsessions in life \r\nobscure memories of an ambiguous, possibly incestuous relationship with his\r\nsister, and reflections upon the various aphoristic pronouncements that made up\r\nhis fathers darkly fatalistic worldview. \r\nWhat is striking about these passages from Faulkners novel is the almost\r\nrhythmical variation in his depiction of the flow of Quentins thoughts, from\r\npurely subjective, momentary ephemera of consciousness to the delivery of\r\nfragments of information about his environment and the people he meets  details\r\nthat are crucial to the readers understanding of what is going on in the world\r\naround him. A number of devices are used to achieve this delicate balance in the\r\nnarrative between Quentins free-associative mental ramblings and more\r\ndeliberately expository passages. The most explicit and straightforward of these\r\ndevices is Faulkners use of italicized text, which always begins when an actual\r\nincident in Quentins environment has called to mind some vaguely remembered image\r\nor idea from his troubled past:\r\nThe shell was a speck now, the oars catching the sun in spaced glints, as if the\r\nhull were winking itself along. Did you ever have a sister? No but theyre all\r\nbitches. Did you ever have a sister? One minute she was. Bitches. Not bitch one\r\nminute she stood in the door\r\n<P>\r\nI found the gasoline in Shreves room and spread the vest in the table, where it\r\nwould be flat, and opened the gasoline.\r\n The first car in town Girl thats what Jason couldnt bear smell of gasoline\r\nmaking him sick then got madder than ever because a girl Girl had no sister\r\n<P>\r\nThere is also an element of graceful and quite deliberate irony in the mixing of\r\nQuentins recollections of a night spent in the rain with his sister with his\r\nattempts to shake off a small, silent immigrant girl who follows him around as he\r\nmakes his way through the outlying areas that surround the college: \r\nYoure just a girl. Poor kid. There was a path, curving beside the water. Then the\r\nwater was still again, dark and swift. Nothing but a girl. Poor sister. We lay in\r\nthe wet grass panting the rain like cold shot on my back. Do you care not do you\r\ndo you\r\n My lord we are in a mess get up. Where the rain touched my forehead it began\r\nto smart my and came red away streaking off pink in the rain. Does it hurt []\r\nTheres town again sister. Youll have to go home now. Ive got to get back to\r\nschool. Look how late its getting. Youll go home now, wont you? But she just\r\nlooked at me with her black, secret, friendly gaze, the half-naked loaf clutched\r\nto her breast. \r\n<P>\r\nFinally, there is the repeated reference to devices for the measurement of time\r\nthroughout this section of the novel. Quentins tendency to be repeatedly\r\ndistracted from his thoughts by the ticking of clocks and the tolling of the hour\r\nprovide a neat metaphor for the tragic course of events that provide a backdrop\r\nfor the unrelenting play of his obsessional thoughts. The chapters central\r\nsymbol, a pocketwatch given to Quentin by his father not that you may remember\r\ntime, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all\r\nyour breath trying to conquer it, provides us with what is perhaps the clearest\r\nexample of an authors attempt give us a glimpse of the difficulty that he himself\r\nfaces in trying adequately to represent the continuous, ineffable diachronic play\r\nof a characters innermost while at the same time delivering a structured,\r\ncoherent narrative.\r\n<P>\r\nOur aim in discussing these few brief  examples of stream-of-consciousness\r\nwriting has been to bring to light a crucial but often neglected element of\r\nambivalence evince in the narrative styles adopted by Joyce and Faulkner toward \r\nthe task of providing a realistic depiction of the flow of the elements of\r\nprivacy, flux and continuity in the flow of human thought. When we turn from\r\nstream-of-consciousness fiction to IF, we find that some of the most skillful and\r\nreflective interactive storytellers exhibit a strikingly similar sort of\r\nambivalence toward the task of providing an accurate representation of what it\r\nfeels like for a character to exercise free will in a way that influences how the\r\nstory he or she inhabits will reach its conclusion.\r\nNow, in traditional IF of the sort made popular by the game company INFOCOM in\r\nthe early 1980s, the player/ reader influences the course of events in a story\r\nthrough the entering of simple instructions into a traditional DOS-style command\r\nline interface. So, for example, a story might begin with the following passage:\r\nYou are standing in the upstairs bedroom of the small urban townhouse that you\r\nshare with your wife and kids. To the north is the house\'s upstairs corridor.\r\nDirectly underfoot, you notice that there is a large, gamey heap of your own\r\nrecently worn underwear. The bed is unmade, and sunlight streams in through a\r\nsmall window to the south. \r\n<P>\r\nfollowed by some command line indicator (e.g. >) into which an instruction is\r\ntypes (e.g. wear underwear; close window and so forth). Computer programmers who\r\ndesign tools for the writing of interactive stories - languages such as TADS and\r\nINFORM and all of the various extensions thereof - try to provide the author with\r\nas many resources as possible in the design of a parser for these command-line\r\ninputs of a reader. One of the indisputable criteria by which interactive stories\r\nare evaluated by fans of the medium is in terms of the degree of inventiveness\r\nthat can be tolerated from the player. If a player were to type wear underwear at\r\nthe conclusion of the passage given above, only the very shoddiest of IF stories\r\nwould respond with something like I dont understand that statement, or Be more\r\nspecific. If the player were to input something more esoteric, though, e.g. Bask\r\nin sunlight or Contemplate navel only the very most polished and carefully\r\ndesigned IF parser would be likely to reply with a remark that did not sound\r\nthoroughly vacuous or formulaic.\r\n These imperatives that govern he construction of programming tools for IF\r\nserve as evidence for the plausibility of Murrays claim that interactive one of\r\nprincipal aims of interactive storytelling should be the intimation of diverging\r\npossibilities that we experience as free will. From the programmers point of\r\nview, it is clearly the case that the more possibilities there are  i.e. the\r\nfewer formulaic, repetitive and narrative-stalling parser responses  the better.\r\nThere is something of a danger, though, in trying to formulate aesthetic\r\nstandards for the evaluation of these new media by focusing to much upon the aims\r\nof programmers and technicians as though these somehow represented a distillation\r\nof what is essential to the task of actually coming up with an interactive\r\nnarrative. It is certainly true that most of the best IF authors are inclined to\r\nput enormous amounts of work into the design of highly responsive and imaginative\r\ncommand-parsers  when one looks at the source code for games by experienced IF\r\nwriters like Mike Roberts, Graham Nelson, Cody Sandifer and Adam Cadre, it is\r\noften quite astonishing how much time has been spent coming up with witty,\r\nsurprising and thematically salient responses have been implemented for some\r\nmanifestly unlikely player inputs. But many of these authors work also stands out\r\nfor another, quite different reason. Some of the most successful IF composed in\r\nrecent years is notable for the way in which it works systematically to frustrate\r\nthe expectations of even seasoned players and readers who expect such works to\r\nbehave in ways that are at least broadly analogous to the way that our own\r\npersonal environments respond to the exercise of our free will.\r\nAt the simplest level, a game may be structured in such a way that the principal\r\ntask that the reader is instructed to accomplish at the start (e.g. to find a\r\ntreasure, escape from a maze, or retrieve some valuable or symbolic artefact)\r\nturns out either to be impossible or else is frustrated at the very last stage in\r\nthe narrative. This device is used to great comical effect in Mikko Vuorinens\r\nKing Arthurs Night Out and Leon Lins Kissing the Buddhas Feet.  A somewhat more\r\nextreme example of this general strategy of bringing to light the restriction\r\nupon our exercise of free will can be found in Cameron Wilkins chilling IF story\r\nBliss, in which the second-person protagonists aims, as manifested by the players\r\nown carefully guided inputs, gradually reveal themselves to be entirely\r\ndelusional in nature. \r\nOther writers have come up with subtle methods of drawing their readers attention\r\nto the inherent limitations of the traditional IF command parser, in order to\r\nbring to light some curious quirks and paradoxes inherent in the human\r\nself-conception as a species of free, autonomous agents. In Adam Cadres\r\naward-winning IF story Photopia, there is a short but very moving scene in which\r\nthe main character recounts a dream she has had that the player is able to\r\nrecognize as a premonition of her own swiftly approaching death. The dramatic\r\nirony of this scene is intensified considerably by Cadres use of a fake command\r\nline (represented by the symbol [ -> ], below)  for the duration of the dream the\r\nonly command that the parser will respond to is a carriage return, but the\r\neffects of command entry and response are still displayed as thought they had\r\nactually taken place:\r\n\"Come on, Wendy,\" Alley says. \"You know the rules. It\'s way past your bedtime.\r\nYour parents\'ll be home soon and if you\'re still up it won\'t look too good for\r\neither of us. I\'ll be right here if you need anything.\" She pulls a book out of\r\nher backpack and starts in on her homework.\r\n<P>\r\n>talk to alley\r\nPlease select one:\r\n<P>\r\n(1) >ASK ALLEY ABOUT HER HOMEWORK\r\n(2) >ASK ALLEY FOR A GLASS OF WATER\r\n(3) >ASK ALLEY WHERE SHE GETS HER IDEAS\r\n(4) >ASK ALLEY ABOUT HOW I GET HOME\r\n(5) >ASK ALLEY ABOUT THE QUEEN\r\n<P>\r\nSelect an option or 0 to say nothing >> 3\r\n<P>\r\nAlley puts down her pencil. \"That\'s not a question people are supposed to be able\r\nto answer,\" she says. \"But I can. All that stuff, every bit of it, came straight\r\nfrom these weird dreams I\'ve been having. And they\'re not the only ones. There\'s\r\nanother... are you sure you want to hear about this?\"\r\n<P>\r\n\"Yeah!\" you say.\r\n<P>\r\n\"Okay,\" Alley says. \"It starts like this...\"\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\nIn a dark place\r\nI open my eyes, and I am in a cold, dim, lonely place. I blink, thinking my eyes\r\nare still closed, but then I realize that it is not pitch black: there is a dark\r\npurple fog billowing all around me, so close to black as to make nearly no\r\ndifference. There is a faint purple glow to the stone floor, too, though I might\r\nnot even notice it if it weren\'t holding me up.\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\n>EXIT\r\n<P>\r\nI try to find my way out of this place, but no matter which direction I try, or\r\nhowever far I go, it\'s all the same. Eventually -- and maybe it\'s minutes, maybe\r\nit\'s days -- I can suddenly make out a vague shape in the fog.\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\n>LOOK AT SHAPE\r\n<P>\r\nIt\'s strange, because parts of it look distinctly human, but others are just as\r\nclearly not. I come closer, and I discover the answer: it\'s a person sitting in a\r\nhuge throne made of rock.  No, that\'s not right. It\'s not MADE of rock -- it IS a\r\nrock, one single stone in the rough shape of a high-backed chair.\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\n>LOOK AT PERSON\r\n<P>\r\nHer face is turned away from me, but I can tell that it\'s a young woman, dressed\r\nin long flowing purple garments. Dressed in royal purple, sitting in a throne, I\r\ncan only assume that she\'s a queen or princess of some sort, but since I don\'t\r\nbelieve in monarchy, and certainly am not one of her subjects, I don\'t feel the\r\nneed to bow or scrape or call her \"Your Majesty\".  \"Hello?\" I say.\r\n                                                                                 \r\n         [ -> ]\r\n>WAIT\r\n<P>\r\nAfter a moment, she turns to face me. And that\'s when I start to get really\r\nscared.\r\n<P>\r\nShe has my face.\r\n<P>\r\n(transcript from Adam Cadre, Photopia)\r\n<P>\r\nThis method of capturing the fundamentally illusory nature of free will as it is\r\nexperienced in dream states is not only utterly original, but in addition could\r\nnot have been brought about without the games player having been lulled into a\r\nfalse sense of security about the scope of her influence on the course of the\r\nnarrative by the games very intricate and well-designed parser.\r\nPerhaps the most surprising and ingenious example to be found in IF of this sort\r\nof deliberate distancing of the reader from the very features of the of the\r\nmedium that provide the reader with the apparent opportunity to direct the course\r\nthat a narrative takes can be found in Paul OBriens recently released game Local\r\nAsynchronous Satellite Hookup. The central science-fictional conceit of this work\r\nis that the player is in control of a robot that itself responds to exactly the\r\nset of commands that the parser itself is programmed to understand. At the start\r\nof the game, the robot is sent to an archaeological site to look for treasure \r\nthe former home of a historian of the antebellum south and a pioneer in virtual\r\nreality technology. The games command line is thus supposed to represent the\r\ninterface between the players persona  a prospector located somewhere outside of\r\nthe site itself  and the robot itself. At first glance, this conceit looks to be\r\nmerely a clever way to build the inherent limitations and finitude of traditional\r\nIF command parsers into the very structure of the narrative itself, and some of\r\nthe responses one gets during the first half of the game to typed-in commands\r\nsupport this reading, e.g.:\r\nParlor\r\nI am in a spacious room that I presume was once the Parlor of the Percy home. A\r\nsofa divides the room in two, with one end pointed towards the doorway to the\r\neast and the other pointed towards the fireplace in the west wall. It is the only\r\npiece of furniture in the room now, but scuffs on the hardwood floor suggest that\r\nit was once accompanied by many others. There is also a doorway leading north.\r\n<P>\r\nOn the sofa is a corpse (on which are a leather jacket and a white gold\r\nbracelet),\r\n<P>\r\n>examine corpse\r\n<P>\r\nThis is the body of a human adolescent female. She was lying on her face when she\r\ndied, which was obviously some time ago. The body is little more than a skeleton,\r\nwith a few bits of desiccated flesh on skin still clinging to the bone. It is\r\nheld together by a latticework of decaying tissue, and would no doubt fall apart\r\nif touched. Most of its clothes have rotted away, but it still wears a leather\r\njacket and a bracelet of white gold.\r\n<P>\r\n>lift corpse\r\n<P>\r\nThe skeleton collapses as I try to move it, leaving only a pile of bones on the\r\ncouch along with the corpses former possessions.\r\n<P>\r\n>x bones\r\n<P>\r\nThis pile of bones was once a human skeleton.\r\n<P>\r\n>pray\r\nI do not know how.\r\n<P>\r\n(transcript from Paul OBrian, Local Asynchronous Satellite Hookup)\r\n<P>\r\nAt the storys midway point, however, the robot discovers a curious collection of\r\ninscrutable machines in the attic of the long-departed couple, and the following\r\nmiraculous transformation occurs:\r\nAt one end of the attic, the cabinets meet in a sort of vertex, and at the point\r\nof this vertex is a booth.\r\n<P>\r\n>examine booth\r\n<P>\r\nThe booth, like the cabinets, is connected to the cube in the center of the\r\nattic. It is a three-quarter cylinder, a little taller and wider than I am, with\r\nthe open section facing out. Its wall is made of some sort of opaque black\r\nplastic, and I can see some controls inside.\r\n<P>\r\n>enter booth\r\nI have gotten into the booth.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the booth I can see some controls.\r\n<P>\r\n>examine controls\r\nThe controls seem to consist of a number of readouts and indicators, and a\r\nprominent button.\r\n<P>\r\n>examine indicators\r\nThe readouts and indicators appear to be active, but I can make no meaning from\r\nthem.\r\n<P>\r\n>press button\r\nI push the button, and the cylinder of the booth closes, cutting off my exit\r\nalong with all outside light. Inside, it is pitch dark, but before my headlamp\r\neven activates, I feel a strange sensation, as though my body were falling,\r\nfalling through thick air and velvet murmurs. Systems report no change of\r\naltitude, but the freefall persists inside my brain. It is not an unpleasant\r\nsensation. In fact, as it continues I note sensory functions sharpening and\r\npreviously unused brain sections coming online. It\'s so strange -- one part of me\r\nfeels like it is expanding at a rapid rate, touching mental regions I\'ve never\r\nused before, while another part -- \r\n<P>\r\n[the one speaking now, is detached and observing the changes. I find that I must\r\nerect more and more mental structures to maintain my standpoint as an observer] \r\n<P>\r\nwhile the core of me pulses outward, soaked in the vividness of these new \r\n<P>\r\n[I can only call them] \r\n<P>\r\nemotions! \r\n<P>\r\n[It also appears that a type of integration is operating. For example, the\r\nmetaphorical, figurative language in which I spoke when beginning to describe the\r\nfalling sensation] \r\n<P>\r\nis completely unlike anything I\'ve ever said before, at least anything I can\r\nremember, \r\n<P>\r\n[and my memory of] \r\n<P>\r\nmy childhood\r\n<P>\r\n(transcript from Paul OBrian, Local Asynchronous Satellite Hookup)\r\n<P>\r\nThe player has unwittingly guided the robot into a device designed to simulate\r\nthe experience of a black slave in the deep south. Here OBrian is using the very\r\nfeatures of the medium that Murray characterizes as providing for a more\r\nrealistic depiction of the experience of free decision-making to illuminate the\r\nfragility of our everyday distinction between the autonomous and the automatic.\r\nThe first few moments of the simulation take things even further: \r\nMy master bursts violently into the room! Instantly, he is upon me, taking\r\npainful hold of my wrist and shouting with rage, \"God-damn it! What the hell are\r\nyou doing up here, you God-damned nigger cunt? Stealing? Are you STEALING?\" He\r\nruns his hands run roughly all over my body, sparing me no indignity, before\r\nacknowledging that I carry nothing.\r\n<P>\r\n\"Caught you before you could take anything, didn\'t I?\" he bellows, inches from my\r\nface.\r\n<P>\r\n\"But what else have you done?\" He drags me along as he searches all of the\r\nupstairs rooms, ferociously surveying for any piece out of place. \r\n<P>\r\n\"All right,\" he says, \"I caught you before you could do whatever it was you were\r\nplanning. But now I\'ll make SURE you never make any such plan again!\" \r\n<P>\r\nWith this he drags me downstairs, down further and further through the house,\r\nuntil we finally reach the smoldering hot kitchen. Once there, he pulls the cord\r\nfrom around my waist and yanks my simple garment over my head, leaving me naked\r\nbefore him. He then binds my wrists with the cord. Forcing me up onto a stool, he\r\nhangs them over a hook affixed to one of the ceiling joists.\r\n<P>\r\nHe kicks the stool away and grabs his riding-whip in one smooth motion, then\r\npauses a moment to regard me as I hang in front of him, naked and helpless. He\r\ndraws his arm back, the whip descends, and\r\nAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH10111010100110000101001101010110101101011101111100000010\r\nAA\r\n10110101101100000010101001111110110101111011111011110110000101001101101101010101\r\nNow I\r\n1010110000101011110101011101011010001010110101000100101110100101001101101010 help\r\n10100101000010011011101101101011101101101110111100000101011010000101010111101\r\ncan\'t 1011101 can\'t 1011100000101110110 AAAAAA100100000111000000000000000000000\r\nAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnd now he draws back, and the whip\r\nagain AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA descends and AAAAAAAAAAthe PAIN is liAAAAAAAAAke nothing\r\nI\'ve AAAAAAAAever imagined. \r\n<P>\r\n(transcript from Paul OBrian, Local Asynchronous Satellite Hookup)\r\n<P>\r\nIn this passage, OBrian succeeds in introducing an unexpected and disturbing\r\nelement of ambivalence into how the player views what happens to this strange\r\nentity that the game has up to this point taught him to regard as merely an\r\nextension of his own will. \r\nIt seems clear that many of the authors in the current, post-commercial regard\r\nthe phenomenon of free will as a philosophical conundrum  a dubious phenomenon\r\nthe exercise of which can be as elusive and difficult to detect as any other\r\nvalue-bearing experience in the course of our mental lives,  rather than a merely\r\nself-evident feature of our metal lives, one that all of us can identify by means\r\nof introspection aided by a knowledge of modern science, and that literature is\r\nmerely required to capture with as much photographic verisimilitude as possible.\r\n<P>\r\nIt has come to be accepted as something of a truism in some critical circles that\r\nany account of what makes a particular genre of writing valuable or worth\r\npracticing carries with it some sort of implicit historical narrative. What such\r\na narrative is supposed to explain is how the type of writing in question emerged\r\nfrom earlier models, and how its peculiar appeal can be traced back through the\r\nintentions of writers belonging to a broader tradition. Murray is sensitive in\r\nher book to the need to provide such a narrative in order to explain the\r\nattractions of interactive literary media against a broad historical backdrop:\r\nAfter reading the wildly digressive monologue of Sternes Tristram Shandy or the\r\nexquisite moral discriminations of a Henry James heroine or the richly textured\r\nstream of consciousness captured by Virginia Woolf, it is hard to believe that we\r\ncould penetrate any further into the workings of the mind. But twentieth-century\r\nscience has challenged our image of ourselves and perhaps outrun our ability to\r\nimagine our inner life. A linear medium cannot represent the simultaneity of\r\nprocessing that goes on in the brain  the mixture of language image, the\r\nintimation of diverging possibilities that we experience as free will. It cannot\r\ncapture the secrets of organization by which the inanimate somehow comes to life,\r\nby which the neural passageway becomes the thought.\r\n<P>\r\nIt is the curiously cumulative character of this narrative that we have taken\r\nissue with here  the notion that Murray appears to have that the history of\r\nliterary accomplishment can be represented as a series of increasingly accurate\r\nor detailed attempts at a faithful rendering of the workings of the human mind.\r\nIt seems to us that while she is certainly right to insist upon the enormous\r\ncultural importance of these new media, their appeal cannot be adequately\r\ndescribed without reference to means that they afford to writers for visibly\r\ndetaching themselves from the conventions of narrative, in a way that allows\r\nreaders to experience all the pleasures associated with a good story while at the\r\nsame time sustaining a reflective attitude toward the subtle manipulations\r\ninvolved in any type of narrative communication. If there is a story to be told\r\nabout the historical emergence of IF that conforms to these criteria, then it\r\nmust be just one small chapter in the overarching tale (one that perhaps has yet\r\nto be told with complete accuracy and exhaustiveness) of how detachment,\r\nself-reflexiveness and deliberate irony became the dominant tropes of\r\ncontemporary fiction.\r\n<P>\r\nPAGE  1\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nPAGE  26\r\n<P>\r\n\r\n<P>\r\n See Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in\r\nCyberspace (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1977), pp. 108-109, 213.  <br>\r\n See Murray, Ch. 9.<br>\r\n Aristotle, Poetics 1451b27-29, Trans. I Bywater, in The Complete Works of\r\nAristotle, Vol. II, Ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University\r\nPress, 1984), p. 2323 (1451b26-28).<br>\r\n Sigmund Freud, Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming in The Standard Edition of the\r\nComplete Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. IX, ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W.\r\nNorton and Co., Ltd., 2000), p, 153 (italics mine).<br>\r\n Murray, p. 37.<br>\r\n Murray, p. 48.<br>\r\n Freud, p. 153.<br>\r\n See, e.g., Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: The University of\r\nChicago press, 1961) p. 372. Booths discomfort with the predominance of irony in\r\nmodern fiction, which he so often associates with an artificial prohibition in\r\nthe aesthetics of fiction again so-called authorial intervention, might have been\r\nmitigated somewhat if he had taken the view of irony that I have suggested above.\r\n William James, the Principles of Psychology Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard\r\nUniversity Press, 1981), p. 220.<br>\r\n Henri Bergson, Understanding Reality from Within in Stream of Consciousness\r\nTechnique and the Modern Novel, Ed. Irwin R. Steinberg (Port Washington, NY:\r\nKennikat  Press, 1979), p. 51 (italics mine).<br>\r\n For a provocative discussion of the limitations imposed by the nature of\r\nlanguage itself upon attempts to present the stream of consciousness in all its\r\npsychological richness, see Erwin R. Steinberg, The Stream of Consciousness and\r\nBeyond in ULYSSES (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973), pp.\r\n161-177.<br>\r\n James, p. 221.<br>\r\n Aristotle, p. 2323 (1451b35)<br>\r\n James, 224-225. The idea that a single human mind could simply never have to\r\nstrictly identical thoughts is, of course, quite philosophically problematic, and\r\nit should perhaps be emphasized here that most contemporary philosophers are\r\nextremely wary of a methodology that relies so exclusively upon introspection\r\nwhen it comes to the characterization of mental content. For an interesting and\r\nsharply divergent account of the nature of mental content, see Hilary Putnams\r\nfamous essay  The Meaning of Meaning in Language, Mind and Knowledge, Ed. K\r\nGunderson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975),\r\n James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man (New York: The Modern\r\nLibrary, Inc., 1916), pp. 1-2.<br>\r\n See, e.g. Anthony Burgess, 99 novels : The Best in English Since 1939 : A\r\nPersonal Choice ( New York : Summit Books, 1984), p. 8.<br>\r\n Joyce, p. 252. Note that the ballad Turpin Hero was clearly the source of the\r\ntitle for an earlier draft of Joyces own novel, viz. Stephen Hero.<br>\r\n William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (New York: Random House Inc., 1954) p.\r\n113.<br>\r\n Faulkner, p. 213.<br>\r\n Faulkner, pp. 169-170.<br>\r\n Faulkner, p. 93.<br>\r\n Taken from my own TADS game Sacroboscos Book of Wonders, scheduled for release\r\naround fall, 2001.<br>\r\n Murray, p. 281.<br>\r\n I am aware of no universally accepted formal method of academic citation for\r\namateur IF stories; rather than risk making one up I shall merely record the URL\r\nof the Interactive Fiction Archive, an FTP site maintained by Volker Blasius\r\nwhere all of the games mentioned in this essay can be found. The site address is \r\nHYPERLINK ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/ ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/. A useful\r\nintroduction to the archive for those new to IF can be found at\r\nhttp://interactfiction.miningco.com/games/interactfiction/library/weekly/aa090400a.htm.\r\n For a clear and interesting philosophical exposition of this view about the\r\nimportance of historical narratives to aesthetics in general, see Noel Carroll,\r\nArt, Practice and Narrative in The Monist 71 (1988), pp. 140-156.<br>\r\n Murray, p. 281.<br>',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:22:13',1,19,7767),(31,'Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction',5,'Theorizing Interactive Fiction\r\n<P>\r\nInteractive fiction (IF), a category that is typically represented by the text adventure or text game, has literary, gaming, and other important aspects. Well-known text-based interactive fiction includes Adventure (1975-76), Zork (1977-78), A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985), The Knight Orc (1987), and Curses (1993). In the first book-length discussion of interactive fiction {Montfort 2003} I have introduced the form in detail, discussed its important historical precursors and cultural contexts, and described a figurative way to think about its poetics and aesthetics. Here, I focus on ways that narratology can inform a rigorous, formal theory of interactive fiction, a theory that remains sensitive to the many-faceted nature of this new media form.\r\n<P>\r\nIf interactive fiction is to be related to \"game\" and \"story\" in certain ways, merely opening a bag of theory and drawing forth various literary, narratological, and gaming implements from it     and then starting in on interactive fiction     cannot suffice. Such an approach may be good enough for a butcher, but will have poor results when used by a surgeon. Although humanists and scientists can be prodded toward insight by ad hoc approaches, deeper insights and more substantial progress require a methodological framework, a way to evaluate results, and (if more than one person is to participate) some sort of common language and understanding about the nature of the topic under consideration. To build a theory of interactive fiction that is useful in deeply understanding how interactive fiction is experienced, and how better sorts of works can be created, a stronger approach than that of the theory-bag is necessary, one which distinguishes those elements of interactive fiction that result from it being\r\n<P>\r\na text-accepting, text-generating computer program;\r\na potential narrative, that is, a system which produces narrative during interaction;\r\na simulation of an environment or world; and\r\na structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game.\r\nInteractive fiction was, for a long time, almost entirely neglected in academic discussion. In the IF community, discussion has touched on many important aspects of interactive fiction, but no theory of this sort has been developed. Marnie Parker\'s \"Iffy Theory\" is an attempt to categorize people\'s taste in interactive fiction; it is not about aesthetics or poetics as it does not explain, for instance, how one \'auditory\' IF work might be better or worse than another {Parker 2000}. Graham Nelson\'s \"The Craft of Adventure\" consists of advice about how to write interactive fiction well, as its title suggests. It discusses many related topics in depth but does not present the beginnings of a systematic theory. Nelson calls it \"a string of grits of wisdom and half-baked critical opinions,\" {1995} which sells it quite short, but the collection, insightful as it is, does not offer a framework for a new theory.\r\n<P>\r\nOne interesting attempt to offer such a framework is \"Towards a Theory of Narrative in Interactive Fiction\" by Sean Smith and Joseph Bates [2], a result of research at Carnegie Mellon\'s Oz Project. This report was an attempt to formulate interactive fiction in terms of cinema, based on \"an art-film text taken at random from the shelves at CMU\'s library\" {Smith & Bates 1989 p. 6}. No distinction was made between techniques specifically tied to time-based and visual effects and those generic to narration in any medium {Chatman 1975 pp. 299-300}. While the paper does describe a series of techniques for interactive fiction that is inspired by cinema, the mappings between film and IF techniques are arbitrary and unsystematic. The ideas may be of interest to IF creators, but this essay does not actually propose a solid theory.\r\n<P>\r\nRoger Carbol\'s \"Locational Puzzle Theory\" is interesting in that it attempts a strict definition of certain elements of interactive fiction {Carbol 2001}. Unfortunately there are numerous difficulties with the approach. To begin with, Carbol defines a game only as \"a collection of objects, in the object-oriented programming sense,\" which does not distinguish games from non-games, as any definition should. Furthermore, \"object\" is not defined by Carbol as it is in any thorough discussion of object-oriented programming, but as simply \"a collection of properties.\" The impulse to define puzzles precisely and examine their nature is a good one, but the confusion in this approach     on the one hand between a software development methodology, objects in the IF world, and narration, for instance, and on the other hand between location in the space of the IF world, the awareness of the interactor, and the properties of programmatic objects) is far too profound, and the resulting distinctions between classes of puzzles are no better than have already been devised in ad hoc classifications {Rees 1993}.\r\n<P>\r\nEmily Short\'s essay \"What\'s IF?\" makes several points of interest, although it does not define interactive fiction well enough to distinguish it from chatterbots and other programs {Short 2001}. The concept of the benchmark as an unique action that makes progress toward an ending is a useful one, although the discussion in \"What\'s IF?\" is preliminary, with action not defined, for instance, and with the supposedly formal benchmark being defined with appeal to the interactor\'s anticipation and other possibly interpretive factors. The discussion of puzzle has interesting aspects but does not conclude with a definition of puzzle that can be applied consistently by other theorists. This essay is a good effort to not only define qualities of a puzzle but also place puzzles in the overall context of an IF work. Difficulties with this essay\'s approach make it clear, however, that a theory that distinguishes formal aspects from those related to interpretation will be very helpful.\r\n<P>\r\nSince a work of IF can be implemented in different ways and function identically, there is another space besides that of the interactor\'s interpretation which a formal theory should not enter. Definitions of the elements of an IF work from a theoretical perspective should be done without making reference to a program\'s specific data structures, functions, objects, and so forth, considering the program instead as a black box that accepts input and generates output. (The clearest justification for this is seen in cases where two programs that are identical from the standpoint of the interactor are implemented in radically different ways     for instance, first using a functional programming language and then using a procedural one. Different objects can of course also be used in two different object-oriented implementations.) It may happen that sensible programmers developing IF works have found it convenient to encapsulate certain fundamental elements as discrete entities in code. Those studying IF while using a theory of this sort should not need to refer to the internals of a program, however; it should not be necessary to describe the important elements of interactive fiction as experienced in interaction.\r\n<P>\r\nThis essay considers the nature of interactive fiction as program, potential narrative, world, and game, describes how the perspective of the person interacting can be represented, and starts in on the difficult issue of how to conceptualize the puzzle.\r\n<P>\r\nInteractive Fiction and the Interactor\r\n<P>\r\nA work of interactive fiction is, among other things, a computer program that accepts text input from a user and produces text output in reply. This user of an IF work is the interactor, following the terminology of the major academic effort in interactive fiction so far, the Oz Project; the term has been adopted by others {Murray 1995 p. 161}. It is synonymous with player as that term is usually used in the IF community, but player has other meanings related to games and drama while interactor has a history of being used only to refer to the person who interacts with an IF work. In the case of a work of IF that has no multimedia elements at all and uses only text for a medium, text simply refers to a string of words in the ordinary sense. However, text can also be considered semiotically to be any set of signifiers; thus IF works (and perhaps other works as well) that contain graphics, sound, or video can be accommodated in this way. Using text more specifically, to mean \"strings of words,\" interactive fiction indicates a category of text-based works, works that can contain other media elements but where text and textual exchange are central. Computer program could also be generalized to include other sorts of text machines in the broader Cybertext sense     written-out instructions that a person could follow, for instance, or Scott Adams mimicking Adventureland by uttering the output it would give in reply to someone\'s spoken input. For the purposes of this essay, only computer programs in the usual sense need to be considered as interactive fiction, although the theory presented should be extensible to other types of systems.\r\n<P>\r\nRather than state, as Short does, that \"IF *tends* to represent, in some form, an environment or imagined world whose physical space we can explore,\" {2001} it seems better to say that a simulated world, the IF world {\"Cycles, Exchanges ...\" section}, is essential to interactive fiction. The only counterexample Short advanced was Andrew Plotkin\'s 1997 The Space Under The Window. This is a work of hypertext implemented in Inform; instead of clicking on a word as would be typical on the Web, typing one of the words displayed causes a new lexia (in George Landow\'s sense) to appear. Plotkin refers to this work as \"Not standard interactive fiction\" {Plotkin 2001}. None of the theoretical discussion that Short develops in her essay applies to this work, which clearly seems better considered as hypertext than as interactive fiction. Requiring a simulated world does not mean that any particular code is required in a work of IF. Whether a work simulates a world or not can be determined from outside, by an interactor studying the work.\r\n<P>\r\nSince a simulated world and textual description of events in it is entailed by a program\'s being interactive fiction, an IF work is also necessarily a generator of narratives. The distinction between what can be simulated and what can be narrated is particularly important to understanding the workings of interactive fiction; although the potential narrative aspect of interactive fiction is produced based on events in the world, there may be things that are narrated during an interaction but are not simulated {\"Player Characters...\" section}.\r\n<P>\r\nIt is standard to refer to IF works as \"games,\" but a work of IF is not necessarily a game {Giner-Sorolla 1996}. A work can present a world which is pleasant to explore, but which has no quest or intrigue. There may be no final reply that is a \"winning\" one, perhaps no final reply at all. Because of this it makes more sense in theoretical discussion to refer to a work of IF, rather than using game as the generic term for everything in the form. Even in the case of works that are actually games, using the former term can help to signal that it is interactive fiction from all relevant perspectives, rather than interactive fiction only as game, that we are principally interested in. The advantage of using a term like \"work\" is most clear in the case of certain IF works that do have no optimal outcome (i.e., cannot be won), do not keep score, and contain no puzzles. Ian Finley\'s simulated gallery opening Exhibition provides a simulated space in which the player character can look at paintings while chatting with four characters who have very different perspectives on the artist and his work; there is no way to win or lose it. Calling this a \"game\" is unfair to Exhibition, which is not actually a game. Calling Exhibition a game is also unfair to IF works such as Dave Anderson\'s Hollywood Hijinks, which simulates a treasure hunt in a mansion and has a very definite an explicit goal. Works of this sort clearly are games. But in a careful discussion, the generic use of the term \"game\" to refer to every interactive fiction work would denude that term of its particular meaning. The term \"game\" is the norm in casual discussion, and is admittedly used by this author in those contexts. Another theorist and author refers to her own (clearly non-game) work by making reference to \"a game like Galatea\" {Short 2001}. \"Work\" has real advantages as a term, however, in discussions where we are trying to be as clear and precise as possible, rather than simply using those terms which have become customary.\r\n<P>\r\nSessions, Interactions, Traversals\r\n<P>\r\nAs computer literature pioneer Rob Wittig describes, while it is commonly thought that the reading of a book proceeds as \"the reader dutifully trudges the linear track prescribed by the author,\" this is certainly not always the case. A reading of a book may involve browsing it in the bookstore, reading in short bursts in different places, skipping ahead to see if it gets any better at the end, looking through bits in the middle to then figure out what happened, and giving up without actually reading everything {Wittig 1994 pp. 81-83}. It is difficult today to understand the reading process     studied for centuries     without appreciating that \"readings\" may not be done in the intended sequence and may not be total. The nature of interaction and interactivity in interactive fiction, which has been studied hardly at all and which in general allows for no \"total reading\" of the book sort to be done, will be even harder to theorize without making distinctions between aspects of interactive fiction as computer program; ways in which IF works are world, game, and potential narrative; and the interactor\'s own interpretation and experience.\r\n<P>\r\nA session is what happens during the execution of an IF program. The session begins when an IF program starts running. It ends when the program terminates. The text that results (both text typed by the interactor and text produced by the program) is the session text.\r\n<P>\r\nAn interaction describes a series of continuous exchanges of texts between the program and the interactor. \"Continuous\" does not have a formal meaning, nor is it a property of the text or program. The interactor\'s sense of continuity and unity is what makes a certain experience a single interaction; different interactors may have different opinions of what an interaction is. The text (from both interactor and program) that corresponds to an interaction is an interaction text.\r\n<P>\r\nThe experience of interaction belongs to the person [3] involved. The session, on the other hand, is a property of the program and its execution. Still, interactions and sessions often correspond: an interactor starts the IF program, reads and types for a while, perhaps saves (allowing the current state to be restored later on) or perhaps arrives at a conclusion, and then terminates the program. However, one interaction may take place over many sessions, because the interactor may terminate a program and then start it again immediately, interacting with the program repeatedly in what is to her a continuous interaction. Similarly, an interactor can start a session (and an interaction), go on vacation for a week while leaving the computer and the program running, and then return to have another, different interaction that is part of that same session. Of course, the point of many works of IF is to win them, that is, to proceed towards a certain goal or outcome; \"winning\" can be seen as one analogue to having \"read the whole book.\" (This is not the only such analogue.) Winning cannot be described in terms of session or interaction alone.\r\n<P>\r\nA traversal is what happens in one or more sessions, and one or more interactions, when the interactor \"completes\" a work of IF by going from the beginning until no more can be narrated. The full definition of traversal is given later in this essay {\"Initial Situation...\" section}; to define the term exactly is it is necessary to describe more about IF as simulated world and potential narrative. It is mentioned here because of its relationship to session and interaction. Of course the text corresponding to a traversal is called a traversal text.\r\n<P>\r\nCycles, Exchanges, and the IF World\r\n<P>\r\nAnything contributed by the interactor, from a press of the spacebar to a long typed text, is an input. The texts produced by the program are output. If the program outputs some text that the interactor originally typed, that is nevertheless output, just as whatever the interactor types (even something previously output by the program) is input. A cycle is one input and all the output that follows it until the next input. The initial output is whatever output is produced before the first opportunity for input; this is before the first cycle. All of this is defined formally with regard to an IF work\'s nature as a computer program. Pressing the space bar in response to \"[MORE]\" is an input, for instance, even though it normally provides the interactor no opportunity to influence the course of the narrative that is being produced. It is simply because interactive fiction works are interactive computer programs that they have input and output.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the sense that scholars of the story and of narrative (that is, narratologists) use the terms, a work of IF is not a narrative. An IF work is an interactive computer program, but not directly a narrative, \"the representation of real or fictive events and situations in a time sequence\" {Prince 1980 p. 180}. Similarly, interactive fiction is not a story in the sense of the things that happen in a narrative, or more precisely, \"the content plane of narrative as opposed to its expression or discourse; the \'what\' of a narrative as opposed to its \'how\'\" {Prince 1987 p. 91}. In everyday speech, of course, \"story\" also refers to a particular genre, the type of thing people expect to hear when they say in conversation \"so, tell me the story\" or that a child expects to hear after asking to be read a story. Interactive fiction is not precisely this sort of story, either, although there may be a \"frame story\" provided in the documentation or there may be a certain type of story which is always generated in successfully traversing the work. An IF work is always related to story and narrative in their narratological sense, even if a particular work does not have a \"story\" in this ordinary sense.\r\n<P>\r\nThe distinction narratology makes between story and narrative has been noted in various ways since Aristotle, who distinguished the argument, logos, and how it was arranged into plot, or mythos; the Russian formalists also distinguished the material of the story or fabula from how it was told in the sjuzet {Chatman 1975 p. 295}. Interactive fiction has the potential to produce narratives, usually as a result of the interactor typing things to effect action in the IF world. In fact IF works are potential literature in the sense of the Ouvroir de Litt  rature Potentielle (Workshop for Potential Literature, abbreviated Oulipo) {Mathews & Brotchie 1998, Motte 1986}, and specifically they are potential narratives.\r\n<P>\r\nIF works also present simulated worlds. These IF worlds are not merely the setting of the literature that is realized; they also, among other things, serve to constrain and define the operation of the narrative-generating program. IF worlds are reflected in, but not equivalent to, maps, object trees, and descriptive texts. In fact, the IF world is the content plane of interactive fiction, just as story is the content plane of a narrative. The interactor typically types what one or more player characters, who exist within the IF world, are to do. The nature of the player character, and other sorts of characters, is discussed in greater detail later {\"Player Characters...\" section}.\r\n<P>\r\nAn input that refers to an action in the IF world is a command. In narratological terms, a command is diegetic {Genette 1980 pp. 227-234, Cadre 2002}. This command is usually in the form of an imperative to the player character, and does not have to refer to a physical action. Commands include THINK, any input directing the player character to speak, and any input directing the player character to examine something or otherwise sense something about the IF world. Commands that do not succeed are still considered commands, as long as they are understood by the parser and interpreted as attempts at action. The input given to clarify a command (e.g., KILL THE TROLL What do you want to kill the troll with? THE SWORD) is considered part of the command being clarified. An input that refers to several actions (e.g., TAKE ALL) consists of the several commands into which it is decomposed by the parser.\r\n<P>\r\nAll other inputs, such as those that save, restore, quit, restart, change the level of detail in the room descriptions, or address some entity that is not part of the IF world     to ask for hints, for instance     are directives. A directive is, in narratological terms, extradiegetic {Genette 1980 pp. 227-231}. Commands and directives are two distinct sets; all inputs are one or the other. Directives include what Graham Nelson refers to as \"meta\" actions in Inform {Nelson 2001 p. 90}. Based on this, \"meta-command\" has been previously suggested to refer to actions outside the game world {Olsson 1997}, but it confuses the matter somewhat that \"meta\" has already been used by Genette in the opposite direction     to refer to narratives within narratives rather than to refer to the level of narration itself. To avoid confusion the term \"meta-command\" is left, in this discussion, to refer only to its specific meaning within Inform programming, and \"directive\" is used for all inputs that do not refer to the IF world. There are actually certain directives that are not meta-commands; any input that is unrecognized provides an example. It may seem surprising, at first, that a typo is a directive, but this follows directly from the definition of a directive as any input that is not a command.\r\n<P>\r\nConsidering all inputs rather than just text entered at the prompt, it is still easy to classify inputs into directives and commands. Pressing the spacebar when \"[MORE]\" is displayed is a directive, for instance, while typing a number to select one of several conversation options is a command. \"WHAT IS A GRUE?\" in Zork (1979, Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling) appears to be a directive, since there is no one within the IF world to whom this question is addressed; the information is apparently related to the interactor outside the IF world. On the other hand \"PLUGH\" in Zork is a command, because it refers to the player character speaking the word \"plugh,\" and it results in a hollow voice within the IF world saying \"Cretin\" in reply.\r\n<P>\r\nOutputs that follow input from the interactor and describe anything about the IF world and events in it (including the inability of the player character to enact a particular action as commanded) are replies. Whether the text is a direct result of what the interactor typed or whether the event it describes occurred because of a timed or random event, it is considered a reply, as long as it describes something about the IF world. All other outputs     that is, all outputs that do not describe the IF world     are reports. \"[MORE]\" and \"[Press space to continue]\" as they usually appear are reports, as are \"Are you sure you want to quit?\" \"Your score is 0 out of a possible 100, in 2 moves.\" and \"Brief descriptions.\"\r\n<P>\r\n  Extradiegetic Diegetic\r\n  Interactor Player Character\r\nInput\r\nDirective Command\r\ne.g. QUIT PICK UP THE PHONE BOOTH\r\nOutput Report Reply\r\ne.g. Are you sure you want to quit? You find nothing of interest there.\r\nAn exchange is one command and the reply that follows it; the reply in this case includes all references to the IF world in all the output, up until the next command is entered. As command and reply correspond to input and output, so exchange corresponds to cycle.\r\n<P>\r\nThe following excerpt from a session text of Zork presents two exchanges, in bold:\r\n<P>\r\n>open the mailbox\r\nOpening the small mailbox reveals:\r\n A leaflet.\r\n<P>\r\n>ear the leaflet\r\nI don\'t understand \"ear\".\r\n<P>\r\n>eat the leaflet\r\nTaken.\r\nI don\'t think that the leaflet would agree with you.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the first exchange, the player character is ordered to open a mailbox. This is accomplished and the result is narrated: a leaflet is now visible. Next there is an input that is not a command, since it is not understood to refer to the IF world. This is a directive that produces a report, \"I don\'t know the word \'ear\'\"     revealing the limited vocabulary and brittle nature of interaction in early interactive fiction, problems which have only been mitigated in part. That cycle does not constitute an exchange. Finally there is a command for the player character to eat the leaflet. This results in the player character taking possession of it but not actually eating it. The reply seems bizarre in context; an understanding of the distinction between the diegetic and the extradiegetic, and between the command and directive, helps to explain why. \"I don\'t think that the leaflet would agree with you,\" coming at this point in this session text, makes it seem as if the extradiegetic \"I\" in the previous report (the \"I\" who cannot understand certain words and translate them into actions) is now somehow within the IF world, counseling the player character not to eat a piece of direct mail. Further implications of this sort of transgression, and other sorts, are discussed later {\"Diegesis, Hypodiegesis, ...\" section}.\r\n<P>\r\nInitial Situation to Final Situation, Prologue to Final Reply\r\n<P>\r\nThe IF world can be described before the first opportunity for a command. It usually is. Such a description is the prologue. The term is used here much as it was in the PrologueComp, a 2001 writing contest announced on rec.*.int-fiction {Myers 2001}, except that, strictly speaking, any of this initial text that does not describe the IF world is not considered part of the prologue. This concept is similar to that of the overture {Nelson 2001 p. 370}.\r\n<P>\r\nThe state of the IF world after the prologue, when the first opportunity to enter a command is presented, is the initial situation. A single IF work may have multiple initial situations, but because of how the initial situation is defined these cannot possibly be determined by the interactor\'s input. This is because the first input that can influence the world in any way is the first command; the opportunity to enter this command comes after this initial situation. Different initial situations might be determined by randomness {Short 2001}, by the presence or absence of a particular file on the computer\'s hard disk, by the date and time, or by any other factor besides interactor input. The initial situation refers to the state of the IF world, not how that state is described. A work of IF may begin immediately with a prompt, describing nothing about the IF world. Jon Ingold\'s 2001 All Roads begins with a quotation and a menu but does not state anything about the IF world or the player character\'s situation. Thus, it has a null prologue. Similarly, the 1998 Bad Machine by Dan Shiovitz begins with just a prompt and has a null prologue. Nevertheless, like all IF works, these have an initial situation     this situation is simply not described before the first prompt for input. As commands are provided by the interactor, the replies reveal what this initial situation was.\r\n<P>\r\nThe final reply is that reply after which the narration of events in the IF world cannot be continued. This text indicates what is usually called an ending {Short 2001}. After the final reply either the program terminates or the only option is to input a directive. The state of the IF world that is described in the final reply cannot be changed by any commands made after the final reply. In traditional interactive fiction, the final reply usually narrates either the player character\'s death or ultimate triumph. A final reply is not required for a work to be interactive fiction, and some works, by design, do not produce a final reply. An unfinished or bug-ridden work might also not produce a final reply at all; it might instead only manage to produce a final report that is an extradiegetic error message, explaining what caused the program to crash.\r\n<P>\r\nBy convention, some directives, such as QUIT, RESTORE, and RESTART, are allowed after the final reply. Neither RESTORE nor RESTART allow the narrations of the IF world to continue, however, after a true final reply; they revert the IF world to some other saved state or to an initial situation. Similarly, UNDO in this situation does not allow a narration to continue; it simply restores the previous state of the IF world and allows the narrative to continue from that point. Adam Cadre\'s 2000 Shrapnel achieved its effect by presenting what seemed to be final narrations while actually continuing to narrate events in the same IF world in reply to subsequent commands, suggesting a transgression. The transgression is between what will be called different courses.\r\n<P>\r\nA series of exchanges that are part of the same narration, and are presented along with all the directives and reports embedded in it, constitutes a course. The earlier excerpt from Zork describes a course, for instance. In Andrew Pontius\'s Rematch and Sam Barlow\'s Aisle there can be no courses longer than one exchange. The following session text, from Emily Short\'s 2000 Metamorphoses, illustrates how     because of certain directives     a single session text can contain several courses. It also shows how an exchange can be part of more than one course. Exchanges, which have been numbered, are in bold:\r\n<P>\r\n1 >get the rock\r\nTaken.\r\n<P>\r\n2 >put the rock in the water\r\nAnything you dropped in there, you would be unable to retrieve.\r\n<P>\r\n>undo\r\nShore of An Underground Lake\r\n[Previous turn undone.]\r\n<P>\r\n3 >hit the bell\r\nYou slap ineffectually at the bell.\r\n<P>\r\n4 >hit the bell with the rock\r\nThe peal is deep and resonant; the surface of the lake stands up in ripples; the darkness grows (if that is possible) more dark. Even when the sound has died and the water stilled, you find yourself waiting.\r\n<P>\r\n>undo\r\nShore of An Underground Lake\r\n[Previous turn undone.]\r\n<P>\r\n5 >listen to the bell\r\nYou hear nothing unexpected.\r\n<P>\r\n1-2 is a course; nothing occurs after exchange 2 because that command is undone. 1-3-4 is another course. To quote this course we simply include everything up through exchange 4; 2 is now considered as directive because the UNDO directive was input after it, rendering that input hypothetical and meaningless within the IF world. What was the reply to 2 can be considered a report: because of the effect of UNDO this text now tells the interactor, outside the IF world, what would have happened had the command \"put the rock in the water\" been issued at that point in time     or, in a work of IF that does not depend on time or chance, what will happen if that command is then entered. Similarly, 1-3-5 is a course. Since any portion of a course containing at least one exchange is also a course, 1-2, 1-3-4, and 1-3-5 are only the longest three courses of fifteen in this session text.\r\n<P>\r\nTyping RESTORE and restoring an earlier situation brings one to the end of an earlier course, where the SAVE directive was issued. This allows a single course to extend across several sessions. A course can also extend across several interactions.\r\n<P>\r\nCan the same situation recur within a course? This depends on the nature of the IF world. In a world in which time always progresses, one cannot return to the same situation within a course     it will be later, so at least one aspect of the situation will have changed. But if time does not exist or if its laws are different, it may be possible. In fact, it is only impossible for a situation to occur twice in a course if an irreversible event occurs after every command. The progression of time is a special case of this. Note that keeping a count of how many \"moves\" have been made may or may not pertain to the IF world. If events always occur in the IF world after a certain number of moves have been made, this is relevant to that IF world, but the number of moves made may just be provided (in a report) for the interactor\'s information. The player, of course, may not be stepping in the same stream twice when a situation recurs, since she may have a different level of knowledge the second time. But \"situation\" refers only to the state of the IF world, not to that of the interactor.\r\n<P>\r\nThe state of the IF world after a true final reply is a final situation. So a traversal of an IF work is the course extending from a prologue to a final reply, and from an initial situation to a final situation. A successful traversal ends with a final situation that corresponds to winning; this seems consistent with what is meant by playthrough, {Short 2001} a term that has only been used on rec.arts.int-fiction recently {Schmidt 1999} despite its longer history of use pertaining to video games. Since that term has been used in video gaming to refer to something more like a traversal in general, or to refer to the completion of a level, the terminology presented here seems preferable.\r\n<P>\r\nPlayer Characters, Non-Player Characters, and Other Persons\r\n<P>\r\nA character in interactive fiction is a person who is simulated within the IF world. A character\'s actions as narrated can differ depending upon the input provided. The term as it pertains to interactive fiction derives not only from dramatic use and from discussion of the novel, but also from the specific use of the terms player character and non-player character in the prototypical fantasy roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons. These terms have a similar special meaning in interactive fiction.\r\n<P>\r\nA player character or PC is a character directly commanded by the interactor. Any other character is a non-player character or NPC. The interactor may request that an NPC do something, or even command an NPC to do something, but such a request or command will always be done via the PC, who is directly commanded. NPCs certainly include entities that can take actions within the IF world like the PC can     called actors {Lebling et al. 1979}     but they may appear in other forms, as long as they are simulated within the world and not under direct command of the interactor.\r\n<P>\r\nThere are also other persons who are mentioned but who are neither PCs nor NPCs. (Since the terms player character and non-player character seem to complete the set of characters, these other persons are better not called characters; besides, in the study of narratives the term \"characters\" only refers to those people who actually exist within the story, not those who are simply mentioned.) Marshall Robner, the man whose death sets up the initial situation in Mark Blank\'s 1982 Deadline, is not a character in that work of IF. Lord Dimwit Flathead is not a character in Zork I, either, since he is mentioned but not simulated. In Brian Moriarty\'s 1985 Wishbringer, the dragon Thermofax appears alive (albeit in a daydream) in the prologue, but it is not possible at any other point during an interaction for Thermofax to be mentioned again in a reply, and thus no input causes his actions to vary and he is not simulated. Thermofax is a person, but not a character. Three scientists who appear at various points in an interaction as if they were in the room with the player character in Ian Finley\'s 1997 Babel are also not characters, since they can be recalled by touching objects but are not simulated in the IF world; no actions can influence what happens (or rather, what happened) to them.\r\n<P>\r\nThe idea of a character (including player characters and non-player characters) in interactive fiction is analogous to the idea of a character in a narrative, defined as \"an EXISTENT endowed with anthropomorphic traits and engaged in anthropomorphic actions; an ACTOR with anthropomorphic attributes.\" {Prince 1987 p. 12} The difference is that a character in interactive fiction must be an existent who acts within the IF world. Being a part of the simulation, rather than being a part of the story that the generated narrative tells, is essential for a character in interactive fiction. Since people may disagree about what traits are sufficiently anthropomorphic to allow an entity to be a character in a story, there are sure to be some similar disagreements about whether something is a character (or indeed, whether it is even in the broader anthropomorphic category \"person\") in interactive fiction. But the category \"character\" in interactive fiction is similar to that category in narrative, and should be as useful. The presence of entities that cannot easily be seen as anthropomorphic or not, as in Dan Schmidt\'s 1999 For a Change, has an interesting effect, in part, because it tends to defy the easy categorization that we would like to make when thinking about characters.\r\n<P>\r\nAside from the issue of how anthropomorphic a person has to be, there may be dispute about what constitutes \"simulation,\" and therefore whether a person exists as part of the simulated world and should be considered an NPC. Sean Barrett gives the case of the Implementors in Enchanter, who appear as a result of the player character casting a spell, then immediately disappear {Barrett 2002}. They have a sort of existence within the IF world, but there is no opportunity to interact with them. Therefore, although they are narrated and their narration is the result of a command, they are not simulated in the way that the thief, the robot, or the troll is in Zork. An opportunity for the interactor\'s input to influence the behavior of a person     not simply to cue an appearance     would seem to be important in designating this person an NPC. Thus, the Implementors are other persons and not NPCs in Enchanter.\r\n<P>\r\nWorld, Rooms\r\n<P>\r\nAs has been discussed already, a defining characteristic of interactive fiction is the simulation of a world. This is one aspect that distinguishes an IF work from, for instance, a chatterbot like ELIZA/DOCTOR {Weizenbaum 1966}.\r\n<P>\r\nThe IF world is divided into discrete locations known as rooms, which have also been called locations and areas. Like other essential elements of the form, rooms are defined independent of their implementation. A room is a simulated place from which a certain set of elements in the IF world can be sensed, manipulated, or otherwise acted upon. A room quite often contains objects; of course portable objects may be present or absent in different situations and objects that are present may be configured differently (e.g., open or closed). A different configuration of objects does not make for a different room. Rather, if a command is required to move the player character in space before certain other objects can be manipulated, those objects are said to be in a different room. Rooms, like characters, are simulated and are part of the IF world; they are not just mentioned in some of the narrations that are produced.\r\n<P>\r\nShade, for instance, is aptly described as \"a one-room game set in your apartment,\" {Plotkin 2001} even though the player character can be commanded to move between the futon, the main room, the bathroom nook, and the kitchen nook. There is, by the definition presented here, only one room, because all the actions that are possible in one part of this apartment can be conducted from any other part of it, with the movement between parts of the apartment automatically entailed. The only exception is that the interactor must command the player character to stand up initially, but this is part of waking up rather than being a restriction on moving around in general. After this, any action in any location is possible with a single command, even if the player character is back on the futon.\r\n<P>\r\nEven if there were works of IF that allowed the interactor to type a command like MOVE THREE CENTIMETERS LEFT, represented the position of the interaction is a seemingly-continuous way, and thus described an environment not broken into discrete rooms the way that traditional interactive fiction is, there would still be certain sets of actions that were possible at all the different potential locations of the player character. Thus, this definition of room, although possibly less useful in this circumstance, would still apply.\r\n<P>\r\nRooms are adjacent if the player character can move between them as a result of a single command that represents a single action in the IF world. Thus, End of Road and Inside Building in William Crowther and Don Wood\'s 1976 Adventure are adjacent, as are Inside Building and Y2, since a magic word will move the player character between these rooms immediately. However, even though the robots in Michael Berlyn\'s 1983 Suspended can be commanded to move to any room from any other room, all rooms are not adjacent to all other rooms because movement between rooms occurs as a series of discrete actions, each of which is simulated in sequence over time. A robot\'s movement may be interrupted along the way by some obstacle or by a new command that countermands the previous one; the whole trip is not atomic, as it is when moving from one room to an adjacent one. Opening a door usually changes the adjacency of rooms.\r\n<P>\r\nAfter a player character has been to every room, the IF work has been fully explored.\r\n<P>\r\nDiegesis, Hypodiegesis, and Extradiegesis\r\n<P>\r\nUp to now \"IF world\" has been used as if there were a single world for each IF work. Actually, there may be many worlds in a given IF work, just as there may be several stories told in a single text. (The \"frame story\" of the 1001 Nights is diegetic, for example, while the stories Scheherazade tells are hypodiegetic [4].) IF worlds, like the stories in a text, may be linked in certain ways. In Steven Meretzky\'s 1985 A Mind Forever Voyaging there are six simulated future worlds in which Perry Simm is the player character; these occur in a framework in which PRISM, a sentient computer, is the player character. The world with PRISM is diegetic, while the worlds with Perry Simm are hypodiegetic. Commands that refer to action is such a world can be called hypodiegetic commands. In A Mind Forever Voyaging, an hypodiegetic world can be reached by putting the player character into Simulation Mode, one of several modes that are available. As Perry Simm, the player character then walks around a simulated version of the city Rockvil. Typing NORTH in this mode provides an hypodiegetic command (it is an instruction for the simulated human being Perry Simm to go north), while RECORD ON is a command of the usual sort (it is an instruction for the computer PRISM, in the frame world, to begin recording what Perry Simm is seeing).\r\n<P>\r\nSuspended presents an interesting case in which the player character is in partial suspended animation in a cylinder, and only a few commands (e.g., WAIT) refer directly to actions of the PC. Most commands are hypodiegetic commands issued to robots, who, although they are described by the generated narratives as being in the same physical space, an underground complex, are really in a different IF world. The robots, unlike the immobile human player character, can be told to go to different parts of the complex, can sense things, and can manipulate the environment to effect repairs. They exist and act in the IF world of this underground complex. The human \"controller,\" fixed in the canister in the middle of a large room in the complex and unable to take any physical action at all, is most clearly seen as being part of a different (but linked) IF world. Rather than seeing the robots (who are under the complete command of the interactor) as non-player characters, it makes sense to see them as player characters in a hypodiegetic world, similar to Perry Simm in one of the simulated futures of Rockvil. That the top-level world can be breached by a robot in the second-level world, who can be commanded to open the cylinder, ripping wires from and killing the player character in the frame world, can be seen as an instance of fatal metalepsis {Genette 1980 pp. 234-237}, a transgression between different levels of story or between story and narration. This fatal variety, specifically as encountered in interactive fiction, has been called dyslepsis {Aarseth 1997 p. 118}; of course a sort of dyslepsis can occur in narrative also, as in Julio Cort  zar\'s short story \"Continuidad de los Parques\" (\"Continuity of Parks.\")\r\n<P>\r\nReference to the nature of interactive fiction as a program is no novelty. When Don Woods first expanded Adventure to create the canonical work of interactive fiction, he added a segment that would be encountered at the end of a successful traversal; in this segment, the \"closed\" cave was fairly explicitly presented as a computer program that was not running. This is an example of one other type of metalepsis. Another clear and memorable instance of metalepsis early on in the history of the form is in Steve Meretzky\'s Planetfall: Floyd (within the IF world) comments amusingly on the use of the SAVE directive, which is extradiegetic and which Floyd should not know about. In Planetfall, the awareness of metalepsis allowed humorous use of it; the unintentional metalepsis shown in the Zork session text is, instead, awkward.\r\n<P>\r\nUnderstanding the basics of diegesis, hypodiegesis, and extradiegesis allows us to make more sense of the seeming polyphony of voices in which statements are made in the computer-generated text of interactive fiction. \"There are at least three identities involved in play: the person typing and reading (\'player\'), the main character within the story (\'protagonist\'), and the voice speaking about what this character sees and feels (\'narrator\')\" {Nelson 2002 p. 368}. Nelson states that this narrator speaks the prologue, but notes that \"in some games it might be said that the parser, who asks questions like \'Which do you mean...?\' and in some games speaks only in square brackets, is a fourth character, quite different from the narrator\" {Nelson 2001 p. 373}. These different speakers in the computer-generated text are what have led others to identify the narrative voice not \"as a singular speaker but, rather, as a composite, mechanical chorus coming from both inside and outside the intrigue envelope\" {Aarseth 1997 p. 120}.\r\n<P>\r\nJust as a work of interactive fiction can have many worlds, it can have many different narrators     which need not all correspond neatly to each of the worlds. For instance, at different times, different narrators might report the events that transpire in a single world. The voice of the parser (and of other parts of the program, such as those responsible for the ability to SAVE and RESTORE a particular situation) is extranarrative, and need not correspond to any of these narrators. Similarly, the voice that reports on hypodiegetic events (those that happen in a world within the main IF world) is hyponarrative. The numerous voices evident in even a simple work of interactive fiction are not a undifferentiated confusion or chorus, but typically correspond to different functions in interactive fiction which can be separated. Even in those cases where different voices are confused (as with the example from Zork given earlier) the particular voices which are being confused, intentionally or unintentionally, can be identified.\r\n<P>\r\nWinning and Losing\r\n<P>\r\nMany IF works have a goal that is explicitly presented or that becomes clear during interaction. Such works often indicate during their final reply whether or not this goal has been achieved. By several definitions, works of this sort, as with any rule-based activity engaged in for an outcome or for symbolic rewards, are games {Aarseth 2001, Zimmerman 2000, Zimmerman 2001}. Reaching a final reply that indicates the achievement of the IF work\'s goal is winning, and a traversal that ends in such a reply is a successful traversal. Similarly, reaching a final reply that indicates failure is losing, which concludes an unsuccessful traversal.\r\n<P>\r\nIt seems the first work of IF to problematize the concept of \"winning\" was Michael Berlyn and Patricia Fogleman\'s 1983 Infidel. The final reply in Infidel, after completing the final task and achieving the highest possible score, includes the text \"You will never get out of this pyramid alive. You earned this treasure. But it cost you your life.\" Despite the attainment of the maximum score, the goal of Infidel was clearly not to perish inside its pyramid, having collected all the treasure. But the goal     to plunder the pyramid and escape     could not be achieved; it was possible to attain the top score and solve all of the puzzles, but only possible to win this sort of phyrric victory. Still, interactors could state that they \"won\" Infidel after getting to this final reply. Later works, including Galatea, Exhibition, and Aisle, offer no optimal final reply; it would be bizarre for an interactor to claim to have won one of these. The 2001 work Schroedinger\'s Cat by James Willson does not even produce a final reply, so it is impossible to traverse at all. However, it can be solved in a certain sense, since it presents a world that the interactor can understand; this notion of solution is discussed later {Puzzles and Their Solution section}.\r\n<P>\r\nIn Michael Gentry\'s 1998 Little Blue Men, in contrast, it is possible to win after entering only a few of the most obvious commands. (Little Blue Men can be won in 10 commands; an interaction that results in a successful traversal might take only two minutes.) The optimal score is achieved in this outcome, and the final reply includes the text \"*** You have learned to love yourself *** // In this game, you have finally managed to love life.\" Little Blue Men is a much more intricate and complex work than such a victory would suggest, however. A different choice of commands brings the player character into an office environment that holds many puzzles and conceals something bizarre and horrifying.\r\n<P>\r\nAn IF work has been won after a successful traversal, when a winning final reply is produced and a winning final situation reached. Since Adventure and Zork there has been a tradition of \"the last lousy point.\" Because of this and for other reasons, many IF works can be won without achieving the full score. Winning, besides not necessarily corresponding to attaining the maximum score, also does not particularly correspond to full exploration. It also may not correspond to the solution of the work.\r\n<P>\r\nAlthough IF works are always called games, and almost all of them are games, their nature as game has hardly been explored at all. A common idea is that the author competes against the player in the \"game\" of interactive fiction, but this makes no sense when considered in the context of other games. The inventor of Monopoly does not compete with the people playing Monopoly; Will Wright does not compete with a person playing The Sims; the inventor of Hackeysack does not compete with a Hackeysack player. Nor is the computer the opponent in interactive fiction, any more than a computer version of solitaire opposes the player. In interactive fiction, the computer serves as a referee rather than an opponent {Solomon 1984 p. 20}. (If the computer provides hints it may be acting in a different role, that of a second.) \"An Adventure game is an example of what a games theorist would call a cooperative game. If there are many players, as is often the case, they function as a team\" {Solomon 1984 p. 21}. The myth that interaction in these sorts of games is solitary and is done by a lone interactor contributes to this misunderstanding of the form.\r\n<P>\r\nFrom the standpoint of game theory, the typical interactive fiction game differs from a game like chess not only because the players in chess oppose one another but because in that game total information about the game state is always available to players. Not only is the state of the game (or the state of the IF world) known only in part in interactive fiction, but the workings of this world (and of the particular interface to it) are also unknown. Thus \"the discovery of the rules, through trial and error, is one of the principal attractions of the game. The mark of a well-designed game of this type is that the rules reveal a consistent style, and are not merely arbitrary\" {Solomon 1984 p. 20}. The nature of IF as game is too complex a topic to explore further in the current discussion, but clearly it is necessary here as well to recognize what type of game it is and what aspects of that sort of game help to make it interesting. It is worth noting that the perspective of game theory does support the figure of the riddle as a way of understanding interactive fiction, although the riddle may not formally be the same type of game. The text of a riddle itself is completely known to a riddlee, but solving a riddle requires that the workings of the riddle\'s world be explored and understood, that its rules be discovered.\r\n<P>\r\nPuzzles and Their Solution\r\n<P>\r\nOne way of understanding the relationship between the literary and the puzzling aspects of interactive fiction is by reference to the riddle, a figure that     unlike \"puzzle,\" \"problem,\" \"game,\" \"world,\" and many other commonly-invoked figures, can actually help to explain how the literary and puzzling aspects of the form work together {Montfort 2003, Montfort 2004}. The riddle is seldom invoked directly as a figure     at best, it is discussed as one type of puzzle that might be presented. But the figure of the riddle is consistent with some discussion of the puzzle in the IF community. Gregory Cox suggested two requirements for a puzzle: \"a puzzle has to have an objective\" and \"a puzzle can\'t be obvious\" {Cox 1999}. This is quite similar to a definition of the riddle that has been advanced: \"Every proper riddle must fulfill two conditions: the first is its social function as a competition between the riddler and riddlees; the second is its literary form, which must be difficult and enigmatic, yet containing the clues necessary to decipher it\" {Pagis 1996 p. 81}. A similar definition of puzzle is a good start, but it leaves several questions open. Is a puzzle posed to the player character or to the interactor? Does a puzzle have to be \"required\" for a successful traversal in order for it to be considered a puzzle?\r\n<P>\r\nThis section uses the earliest version of Adventure now publicly available, the 1976 350-point version, to discuss puzzles in depth. If theorists can agree about how many puzzles Adventure has and what they are     or even if they can disagree and articulate exactly how they disagree and why     this will be a good sign that the concept of a puzzle can be sensibly discussed as it pertains to IF works in general.\r\n<P>\r\nIt seems possible to fruitfully discuss puzzles as formal elements of an IF work. In fact, t makes little sense to seek the puzzle in the mind of the author. What if the author is persuaded that it is a puzzle for the interactor to figure out how to type GO NORTH when the player character is in a room where a doorway is clearly described as being to the north? The author\'s belief does not, by itself, make this a puzzle. Similarly, we should not simply believe an author who denies that a certain intricate and difficult-to-discover series of required actions constitutes a puzzle.\r\n<P>\r\nIt will also not do to rely too much on the interactor\'s state of mind and level of intelligence. Clearly, since puzzles are constructed to challenge people, a definition must refer to the thought process of the interactor in some way. Still, it makes little sense to consider that Graham Nelson\'s 1993 Curses, for instance, actually contains more puzzles when a novice sits down at the computer than it does when an expert begins to interact [5]. Also, puzzles should remain puzzles even if a particular interactor knows how to solve them. However, a puzzle does need to be presented as a challenge and to be non-obvious to the interactor, not necessarily to the player character. This is seen most clearly in part of Jeff O\'Neill\'s 1987 Nord and Bert Couldn\'t Make Head or Tail of It and in this author\'s 2000 Ad Verbum, where the solution of puzzles relies on expressing a command properly rather than actually determining the correct action that the player character should perform. Although the IF world is essential to puzzles, puzzles are ultimately posed to the interactor outside the level of the IF world.\r\n<P>\r\nThere is no necessary relationship between the score and the solution of puzzles. The most obvious way to see this is in a work such as Andrew Plotkin\'s 1995 A Change in the Weather, which has puzzles but no score. In Adventure, score has little to do, directly, with solving puzzles; it is mostly tied to picking up and dropping treasures. Driving away the snake, which clearly seems a puzzle, does not, in itself, earn the interactor any points. Yet Adventure awards 25 points for \"getting well into the cave,\" although nothing special needs to be done to get that far. Crowther\'s original version of Adventure did not keep score {Peterson 1983 p. 188}.\r\n<P>\r\nThere is also no requirement that anything immediate happen in the world when a puzzle is solved: the player character may only later visit another part of the world to see the result of solving a puzzle. Solving puzzles does not always unlock new parts of the IF world, or unfold some larger space; a solution may restrict rather than enlarge a player character\'s, and therefore the interactor\'s, options. As a result of collecting all the treasures in Adventure, for instance, the cave closes and the player character is teleported to a new and much smaller location.\r\n<P>\r\nA puzzle is a challenge in a work of IF that requires a non-obvious set of commands in order to be met. Non-obvious refers to a hypothetical, typical interactor encountering the work for the first time; puzzles do remain puzzles, in this formulation, after an interactor discovers how to solve them. Unlocking the grate with a ring of keys, found in plain sight a few rooms away, is not a puzzle, since it is obvious. Obviously, there may be disagreement about what is \"obvious\" and what is not, but this criterion at least suggests an independent way of determining what is a puzzle and what isn\'t, one that does not refer to the author\'s intentions and the interactor\'s specific knowledge and aspirations. Any typical interactor should be able to determine what is or isn\'t a puzzle simply by studying the IF work in question, without needing to interview the author or take a survey of other interactors. The other factors essential to the determination of \"obviousness\" should be not the mindset of the author or of a particular interactor, but the culture or subculture within which the work was published     along with the conventions of interactive fiction.\r\n<P>\r\nThere is no requirement that a puzzle\'s challenge relate to any other elements of an IF work in order for it be a puzzle. It simply has to be presented as a challenge. While the typical way of doing this is to make the solution to a puzzle a requisite for a successful traversal, puzzles can be presented in some other way. Formally, the solution to a puzzle is the series of commands that meet the challenge of a puzzle. A solution to a work of IF is a series of commands that result in a successful traversal, with puzzles solved along the way. The typical walkthrough, of the sort often found online, records a solution to a work of IF. It is important to note that \"solution\" has not only a formal meaning but also a meaning that refers to an interactor\'s interpretation, operation, and understanding of an interactive fiction work. An interactor who, by interacting with a work, comprehends the entire system of the IF world     why it is arranged as it is and why it functions as it does     has solved the interactive fiction work in this sense.\r\n<P>\r\nThe puzzles in Adventure are:\r\n<P>\r\nDriving the snake away\r\nGetting the gold nugget out\r\nGetting the emerald out\r\nLighting the dark room\r\nKilling the dragon\r\nCreating a bridge\r\nDropping the vase safely\r\nWatering the beanstalk twice\r\nOiling the door\r\nOpening the oyster\r\nReplacing the troll\'s treasure\r\nFeeding the bear to calm it\r\nDeploying the bear against the troll\r\nFinding the way through the Pirate\'s maze\r\nFinding and purchasing lamp batteries in the other maze\r\nBlasting out of the repository\r\nDropping the magazine at Witt\'s End and leaving the area\r\nThe last of these presents what is probably the most questionable case. Puzzles do not have to be required for a successful traversal of a work in order to be puzzles, according to this definition; they do not have to be tied to any benchmark or other plot element. In the case of dropping the magazine at Witt\'s End and leaving the area, this is a puzzle because Adventure clearly presents a challenge to the interactor: to get the last lousy point, independent of successfully traversing and winning Adventure. If the interactor had 350 points beforehand and dropping the magazine gave the interactor 351 points     and there was thus no way to know beforehand that an extra point could be obtained     this could be referred to as an Easter egg but would not be a puzzle. A challenge would not have been presented initially.\r\n<P>\r\nThis last lousy point also demonstrates that solving a puzzle does not have to relate to anything meaningful in the IF world. Since this puzzle does not, it may make for a lousy puzzle, but the meaningless commands to drop the magazine and leave Witt\'s End are nevertheless the solution to an actual puzzle. The typical method of solving this     which involves reverse-engineering the program and actually reading through the resulting assembly language to figure out where the last point is assigned in the code     is certainly challenging for the interactor, despite the lack of any relationship to the IF world.\r\n<P>\r\nFinding the batteries in the other maze is a puzzle since it is presented as a challenge, issued rather directly when the lamp runs low. It is not required for a successful traversal, however. In fact, buying a lamp battery deprives the player character of one treasure and the possibility of gaining the full score.\r\n<P>\r\nCollecting the remaining treasures and depositing them in the building is not a puzzle or set of puzzles, because, although the pirate might steal a treasure to thwart its being moved, in general these actions are no more difficult than picking up other objects and moving them around     they just happen to be scored. A series of actions that is required for a successful traversal but is not a puzzle can be considered a task. In A Mind Forever Voyaging, there are no puzzles presented in the initial Rockvil simulation in Part I, only a list of tasks. The interactor is challenged to carry out these tasks, and it is enjoyable to explore and experience the IF world while doing them, but they do not require the interactor to do anything non-obvious.\r\n<P>\r\nConclusion and Introduction\r\n<P>\r\nThis essay aims to begin some useful discussion of the elements of interactive fiction from a theoretical standpoint. This article explored only a few of the implications of clearly distinguishing the simulated from the non-simulated, the IF world from the text that describes it, and the diegetic from the extradiegetic. Perhaps the few points that have been made are at least adequate to demonstrate that a better perspective on IF can result from making such distinctions.\r\n<P>\r\nThe first test of the more formal concepts defined here will be if they are understood and can be applied unambiguously, in a consistent way, by different theorists. The only way of knowing whether this can be done or not, and what the failings of the concepts presented here are, will be in another theorist taking up these terms in discussion of other specific IF works. Of course, some concepts introduced may also be of little or no use, even if well-defined, or we may not be at a stage in discussion where they are useful.\r\n<P>\r\nWhether or not others choose to adopt the specific terms provided here, it will be valuable to have more discussion of the nature of interactive fiction that\r\n<P>\r\nfocuses on specific works in giving examples of what the elements of the form are;\r\ndistinguishes between elements in terms of their being formal or interpretive; and\r\nmakes strong and meaningful claims that can be evaluated by others and, if useful, built upon by others.\r\nAs should be clear from the title of this section, from the discussion of puzzles, and indeed from the title of this essay, the intention here is to help begin a strong theoretical discussion of interactive fiction rather than to conclude it. There is much that remains in considering the nature of puzzles and how they fit into an IF work overall, relating to its aspects as program, potential narrative, world, and game. Clearly, people in the IF community are beginning to think about theorizing interactive fiction in a stronger way than can be done in casual discussion. There are certain to be benefits for interactive fiction if this more verbose and strict discussion of the nature of the form continues. Approaches from other fields of study (such as narratology, game theory, and game studies) can result in a better understanding of interactive fiction and should also allow the many of us who author IF works to make advances in our art.\r\n<P>\r\n[1] You may cite this article as:\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort, Nick. 2003. \"Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction.\" December 19. First published 8 January 2002. Available online at <http://nickm.com/if/toward.html>. To appear in IF Theory, ed. Emily Short. St. Charles, Illinois: The Interactive Fiction Library. 2004.\r\n<P>\r\nThis is version 3.5, superseding the version 3 of 29 December 2002, which superseded version 2.5 of 27 May 2002, which superseded version 2, posted 9 April 2002, which superseded version 1.5, posted 15 January 2002, which superseded the 8 January 2002 version 1. Version 3.5 has an additional introductory paragraph and incorporates minor edits; it should be the last revision that makes any substantial changes. Any revisions to the ideas expressed here will now be addressed in new articles. Version 3 benefited from the many helpful comments, corrections, and suggestions made by Gerald Prince. Several points were clarified and discussion of the most common sense of \"story\" was added, as was an explanation of how interactive fiction can lack puzzles. Discussion of unfinished works and works without final replies was added, as was a paragraph on the repetition of situations. The article was revised to align the IF concept of character (not \"person\") with the narrative concept of character. Additional description of Exhibition, Suspended, and A Mind Forever Voyaging was added. The discussion of not being able to win Infidel was revised to acknowledge that it can be won in way that is (to some) unsatisfying, and new examples of unwinnable works were added. Puzzle and task were described as the two types of challenges (the former non-obvious, the latter obvious). A distinction between the formal meaning of solution and the meaning in terms of the interactor\'s understanding was made. Finally, the table in the \"Cycles, Exchanges...\" section was added. In version 2.5, \"extradiegetic\" was corrected to \"metadiegetic\" in one case (thanks, Marie-Laure Ryan) and other minor revisions were made throughout; also, the document was converted to XHTML 1.0 and a linked list of the contents was added. In version 2, discussion of different narrative, extranarrative, and metanarrative (now called hyponarrative) voices was added; the short discussion of IF via game theory was added; and revisions were made throughout. In version 1.5, description of the course concept was added; the puzzle discussion was revised; two short excerpts from transcripts were added to illustrate some concepts; and typos were corrected. Thanks to all those who offered comments on version 1, particularly Emily Short and Sean Barrett. I am also indebted to those who replied to my 6 December 2001 draft \"A Typology of Interactive Fiction,\" summarized on rec.arts.int-fiction, both on the newsgroup and in email.\r\n<P>\r\n[2] This essay\'s title is clearly similar to that of other related essays, not only \"Towards a Theory of Interactive Narrative\" but \"Toward a Theory of the Literary Riddle\" by Dan Pagis and \"Towards a Theory of Narrative\" by Seymour Chatman. But this essay is so named simply because it is intended as a step toward a theory of interactive fiction, not specifically in answer to or extension of any of those articles.\r\n<P>\r\n[3] Or to the people involved. It is common for several people to interact with one IF work at the same time, although this reality is seldom mentioned in any discussions of interactive fiction. The issue of multiple interactors, and how they can experience of a single IF session together, is not going to be taken up in any detail this essay, however, which also will not deal with the interesting fact that an interactor could actually be a computer program rather than a person.\r\n<P>\r\n[4] In early versions, \"metadiegesis\" was used instead of \"hypodiegesis\" in keeping with Genette\'s terminology. As was briefly mentioned in the discussion of \"meta-command\" {\"Cycles, Exchanges ...\" section}, this can be confusing. Genette admits that in his usage, \"this term functions in a way opposite to that of its model in logic and linguistics\" {1980 pp. 227-234, p. 228}. Since other narratologists have used \"hypodiegesis\" to refer (less confusingly) to narration at this same level, \"hypodiegesis\" is the term used in the current version of this article.\r\n<P>\r\n[5] Since Adventure was the first work of IF, this case is unusual; people did not know anything about how to interact, and just discovering how to move around and get into the cave was challenging. Even in this case, figuring out how to operate the work of IF in general, and how to move the player character about, is best not considered as a puzzle itself, although it may be essential to the pleasure of (or disappointments with) interaction. A difficulty that can reasonably be considered a puzzle is seen when the general operation of an IF work differs from the standard operation of interactive fiction, and thus presents a special challenge, as in Carl Muckenhoupt\'s 2001 The Gostak.\r\n<P>\r\nAarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997.\r\n<P>\r\nAarseth, Espen. Comparative Media Studies seminar, MIT, Cambridge, 8 February 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nBarrett, Sean. Conversation on ifMUD with Nick Montfort et al., 7 Jan 2002.\r\n<P>\r\nCadre, Adam. \"Re: Default parser responses: how do they affect the gaming / authorship experience?\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID a11jtp$8kk$1@drizzle.com 3 Jan 2002.\r\n<P>\r\nCarbol, Roger. \"Locational Puzzle Theory.\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID 82675075.0110020840.12d1c469@posting.google.com 2 Oct 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nChatman, Seymour. \"Towards a Theory of Narrative.\" New Literary History (6:2) 295-318. Winter 1975.\r\n<P>\r\nCox, Gregory. \"Re: [Theory] When is a puzzle a puzzle?\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID 7i3ogc$kc3$1@news4.svr.pol.co.uk 21 May 1999.\r\n<P>\r\nGenette, G  rard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1980.\r\n<P>\r\nGiner-Sorolla, Roger. \"Puzzles, problem-solving, and IF.\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID Pine.SUN.3.91.960405121744.28920B-100000@xp.psych.nyu.edu 5 April 1996.\r\n<P>\r\nLebling, P. David, Marc S. Blank, and Timothy A. Anderson. \"Zork: A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game.\" IEEE Computer, Vol. 12 #4, pp. 51-59. Apr 1979.\r\n<P>\r\nMathews, Harry and Alastair Brotchie, editors. Oulipo Compendium. London: Atlas Press, 1998.\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort, Nick. \"Cybertext Killed the Hypertext Star.\" ebr (Electronic Book Review) 11. <http://www.electronicbookreview.com/ebr11/11mon/index.html> Winter 2000-2001.\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2003.\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort, Nick. \"Interactive Fiction as \'Story,\' \'Game,\' \'Storygame,\' \'Novel,\' \'World,\' \'Literature,\' \'Puzzle,\' \'Problem,\' \'Riddle,\' and \'Machine.\'\" In First Person: New Media as Story, Game, and Performance. Cambridge: MIT Press. 2004.\r\n<P>\r\nMotte, Warren F., Jr., ed. and trans. Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.\r\n<P>\r\nMurray, Janet. \"The Pedagogy of Cyberfiction: Teaching a Course on Reading and Writing Interactive Narrative.\" In Contextual Media: Multimedia and Interpretation, edited by Edward Barrett and Marie Redmond. pp. 129-162. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.\r\n<P>\r\nMyers, David Samuel. \"PrologueComp.\" <http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Stu/dmyers/PrologueComp.html> June 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nNelson, Graham. \"The Craft of Adventure: Five Articles on the Design of Adventure Games.\" <http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/general-discussion/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt> 19 Jan 1995.\r\n<P>\r\nNelson, Graham. The Inform Designer\'s Manual. 4th edition. (1st print edition.) St. Charles, Illinois: The Interactive Fiction Library. <http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform/DM4.pdf> 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nOlsson, Magnus. \"What is a meta-command?\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID <5g6fqg$5t5@bartlet.df.lth.se> 12 Mar 1997.\r\n<P>\r\nPagis, Dan. \"Toward a Theory of the Literary Riddle\" in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes. Eds. Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman. pp. 81-108. New York: University of Oxford Press, 1996.\r\n<P>\r\nParker, Marnie. \"An Iffy Theory.\" Verson 2.25. <http://members.aol.com/doepage/theory.html> 19 Feb 2000.\r\n<P>\r\nPlotkin, Andrew. \"Interactive Fiction.\" <http://www.eblong.com/zarf/if.html> 25 May 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nPrince, Gerald. \"Aspects of a Grammar of Narrative.\" Poetics Today (1:3) 49-63, 1980.\r\n<P>\r\nPrince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1987.\r\n<P>\r\nRees, Gareth. \"Puzzle classification.\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID 1993May7.172931.23328@infodev.cam.ac.uk 7 May 1993.\r\n<P>\r\nSchmidt, Dan. \"For A Change beta diary.\" <news://rec.arts.int-fiction> Message-ID <wkwvrak0ba.fsf@thecia.net> 22 Nov 1999.\r\n<P>\r\nShort, Emily. \"What\'s IF?\" <http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/whatsif.html> 29 Nov 2001.\r\n<P>\r\nSmith, Sean and Joseph Bates. \"Towards a Theory of Narrative for Interactive Fiction.\" Carnegie Mellon University Research Report CMU-CS-89-121. 20 Feb 1989.\r\n<P>\r\nSolomon, Eric. Games Programming. Cambridge University Press. 1984.\r\n<P>\r\nWeizenbaum, Joseph. \"ELIZA     A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine.\" Communications of the ACM. (9:1) January 1966. pp. 36-45.\r\n<P>\r\nWittig, Rob for IN.S.OMNIA, Invisible Rendezvous: Connection and Collaboration in the New Landscape of Electronic Writing. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press. 1994.\r\n<P>\r\nZimmerman, Eric. \"Aesthetics of Game Design.\" Panel at Computers and Video Games Come of Age, MIT, 11 February 2000.\r\n<P>\r\nZimmerman, Eric. \"Game-Stories: Simulation, Narrative, Addiction.\" Panel at SIGGRAPH 2001, Los Angeles, 17 August 2001.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2006-08-25 07:36:14',1,18,12745),(32,'Experiments of Form',27,'Experiments of Form\r\n<P>\r\n(Numerous ifMUDders made significant contributions to the research and scholarship underlying this article, especially Andrew Plotkin, Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, and Carl Muckenhoupt.)\r\n<P>\r\nThere\'s a risk in trying to define Interactive Fiction by enumerating some set of properties that are true of the things we consider IF: the possibility of including properties that just happen to be true of all known works of IF but are not really necessary for a work to be IF. In fact, over the years, a number of games have broken the \"rules\", violating our expectations of how a work of Interactive Fiction should behave, while leaving us agreeing that those works were still IF. (Other works have done similarly but left us disagreeing.) It seems valuable to take stock of these rules-that-are-not-rules, the expectations that we as readers/players bring to our interactions, if for no other reason than to add to the discussion of just what IF is -- or isn\'t.\r\n<P>\r\nAndrew Plotkin first drew the community\'s attention to the issue with a Usenet post in 1997 titled \"Assumptions in most IF\" featuring a list of such assumptions. Dan Shiovitz\'s reply expanded the list and pointed out it was tempting to intentionally break these rules; in truth, Plotkin was already planning out \"Spider & Web\" (1998), a game which did just that. But even before this public commentary, Infocom had pulled a few tricks, notably the multiple protagonists in \"Suspended\" (Michael Berylyn, 1983) and the breaking of the fourth wall and non-linear narrative in \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\" (Stephen Meretzky & Douglas Adams, 1984).\r\n<P>\r\nStill, it\'s been more than five years since Plotkin\'s post; plenty of time for most of those rules, and many more, to get broken. The below combines Plotkin\'s and Shiovitz\' list with a few possibilities of my own.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The work is \"solvable\" in some sense. (Shiovitz 1997)<br>\r\n-  The work is communicated as a dialogue between player and narrator/protagonist/avatar.<br>\r\n-  The text of the work is written in a language read/spoken by the target audience.<br>\r\n<P>\r\n-  The player\'s commands affect the protagonist. (Plotkin 1997)<br>\r\n-  There is a protagonist. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  There is only one protagonist.<br>\r\n-  The protagonist is a sentient being. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The protagonist is not aware of the player.<br>\r\n-  The protagonist is not aware of being fictional. (Shiovitz)<br>\r\n<P>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript are actually occurring. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript are happening to the protagonist. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are perceptions by the protagonist.<br>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are correct perceptions by the protagonist. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are written by someone who is honest. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript all occur, as a single consecutive sequence of events. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n<P>\r\n-  The player\'s commands do not affect anything except the protagonist\'s actions. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  Everything that the protagonist does comes from the player\'s commands. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The protagonist correctly understands the player\'s commands. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n-  The protagonist has no will that conflicts with the effects of the player\'s commands. (Plotkin)<br>\r\n<P>\r\nSo which of these \"rules\" have been broken, and by which works? (I\'m restricting my attention to works of textual IF, simply to limit the scope of this article.)\r\n<P>\r\nNature and Form of the Work\r\n<P>\r\nThe audience for IF has a number of expectations about the fundamental building blocks of IF and of what it means to sit down an interact with a work of IF: expectations of interactivity, of closure, and of language.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The work is a game.\r\n<P>\r\nI omitted this rule from the initial list above because the modern IF community takes it for granted that this is not inherent to IF. But it\'s worth keeping in mind that in the early days, all works of IF were games, and had anyone tried to define what IF was then, they might well have assumed that IF meant games.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The work is \"solvable\" in some sense.\r\n<P>\r\nLinear works of fiction have an ending; we tend to expect an ending from works of IF as well. But by ending here I don\'t mean simply that the work terminates and no longer accepts input, but that there is some sense of closure for the interactor, some sense that one has gotten the \"complete\" experience intended by the author. (Of course, even in static fiction, this may not be literally true -- there can be obscure references or coded comments that leave the reader\'s knowledge incomplete, or require multiple readings to understand.)\r\n<P>\r\nTraditionally in IF, there has been one \"winning\" ending and (possibly) several \"losing\" endings, the latter typically being notably early in the narrative, leaving plots and subplots dangling and incomplete -- not being \"proper\" endings. Reaching the winning ending constitutes solving the work. Two classes of works remove this sense of solvability; many of the works entered in Marnie Parker\'s IF Art Show offer an environment or object to explore and play with until the interactor tired of playing with it, but no ending or closure or \"solution\". These works are more like toys than games in some sense (for example, as described in Greg Costikyan\'s essay \"I Have No Words and I Must Design\"). Alternatively, there are works like \"Galatea\" (Emily Short, 2000) and \"One Week\" (Papillon, 2001) which reach an ending which is one of many possible endings, but there is no clear sense that any one ending is \"right\" or achieves more \"closure\". In such works, an interactor could attempt to \"vie\r\nw all the text\" or \"reach all the endings\" and consider the work \"solved\" on accomplishing this goal, but it\'s not an explicit goal in the work itself, the way \"*** You have won ***\" traditionally makes clear.\r\n<P>\r\nThere are even games which simply don\'t ever terminate, which have no built-in conclusion at all; but there is some debate whether these works are even IF.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The work is communicated as a dialogue between player and narrator/protagonist/avatar.\r\n<P>\r\nTextual IF is traditionally a dialogue between the player and the computer: the player gives a command to the computer, and the computer prints a response to this command -- the outcome of the command -- and the cycle repeats. This dialogue for any given play session can be recorded in a \"transcript\", which is effectively a piece of static fiction. (Many of the other \"rules\" in this article are defined relative to this transcript.)\r\n<P>\r\nI think that generally any work that didn\'t implement this alternation of command and response would be something we wouldn\'t consider IF (or at least not textual IF). Occasional works do follow the pattern of alternation, but don\'t really produce a transcript; discounting games with graphical elements, the most extreme example is \"My Angel\" (Jon Ingold, 2000) and its \"novel mode\", which captures the interactor\'s input in a separate window and restricts the transcript to text output by the game, allowing multiple commands to be combined within a single paragraph of the \"transcript\", which then more closely resembles a piece of static prose.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The text of the work is written in a language read/spoken by the target audience.\r\n<P>\r\nThis assertion seems rather obvious; a game written in Spanish is for a Spanish-speaking audience; a game written in English is for an English-speaking audience. Perhaps a game written in Latin might be for a Latin-learning audience, but it\'s much the same thing.\r\n<P>\r\nHowever, in the last couple of years, several games have pushed the boundaries of this rule in a few directions. Dan Schmidt\'s \"For a Change\" (2000) introduced a fantasy world populated by unfamiliar objects known by unfamiliar names -- the \'toolman\', \'songlantern\' -- and things which may or may not be familiar, such as the \'fod\'. At the same time, the game gave the sense of being written in an unfamiliar dialect of English, where words were used in odd ways that sound poetic to our ears. In some sense, this is like using a bit of made-up slang to capture the spirit of a foreign environment, but it\'s taken to extremes, especially for the objects that are entire fantastic; in another sense it\'s simply more poetry than prose.\r\n<P>\r\n\"Lighan ses Lion\" (Plotkin, 2000) was a faux transcript of a work of IF which offered an entirely foreign language that just happened to share some word shapes with English. Since \"Lighan\" is not really IF, however, the better example is probably Carl Muckenhoupt\'s \"The Gostak\" (2001), which uses a language lexically identical to English to describe a foreign universe which is only conceptualized through words: the words have no imaginary referents; the gostak distims the doshes, but the author had no deeper understanding of what a gostak is or what the act of distimming might be. This is similar to the fantastic elements of \"For a Change\", but because the game isn\'t grounded in a moderately familiar universe, it feels more like an entirely foreign language.\r\n<P>\r\nProtagonist (PC)\r\n<P>\r\nThe notion of protagonist is basic to storytelling--whether he be Jesus or Macbeth or Hiro Protagonist--but IF takes the identification of the reader with the protagonist further than prose because the player is given control over the protagonist. I\'ll save discussion of the degree of this control for a separate section and here focus on the more essential notions of protagonist; many of the assumptions here are ones that apply to static fiction as well (and have, in fact, been violated numerous times there.)\r\n<P>\r\n-  The player\'s commands affect the protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nIf we define the character controlled by the player\'s commands as the player character (PC), then this assumption is: \"The PC is the protagonist.\" It\'s easy to imagine a game where this isn\'t true: a Sherlock Holmes story where the player controls Watson and yet the story is really about Holmes.\r\n<P>\r\nIn practice, this rule gets broken two different ways. The first way alters the player/PC relationship. The games \"LASH\" (Paul O\'Brian, 2000) and \"Fail-Safe\" (Jon Ingold, 2000) each introduce a fictional boundary between the character-who-the-player-is-supposed-to-be and the character-who-obeys-the-commands. In \"LASH\", the player is imagined to be controlling a robot over a satellite link; in \"Fail-Safe\" the player communicates over the radio with a confused character on a damaged spacecraft. Curiously, the protagonist of \"LASH\" received an XYZZY nomination for Best PC, while the protagonist of \"Fail-Safe\" received a nomination for Best NPC. \"Fail-Safe\" makes a greater effort to separate the player from the protagonist from the start: words sometimes drop out on the radio, the protagonist is confused in ways the player isn\'t, and occasional information not available to the protagonist is given to the player; yet clearly from an implementation standpoint, the protagonist is just a \r\nPC. But in both works the player is still clearly ordering the protagonist around, so neither one deviates too far from the rule \"the player\'s commands affect the protagonist\".\r\n<P>\r\nThe second way is to leave the player/PC relationship intact -- allowing the player full control over a PC in the world -- but to make another NPC the true protagonist, as in the Sherlock Holmes example. In practice, I can only come up with one game that really goes this far: \"Galatea\". Depending on which of the various storylines one pursues, the PC interviewer may be a crucial character in the story (the protagonist) or he may be a mere witness to the events that transpire, in which case Galatea is the protagonist. (The flexibility of IF -- that each interactor can perceive a different story -- potentially complicates the use of traditional terms from narratology, although very few works make such heavy use of non-linearity as \"Galatea\".)\r\n<P>\r\nFor the rest of this article, I\'ll assume \'the player character\' and \'the protagonist\' mean the same thing.\r\n<P>\r\n-  There is a protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nIt is difficult to imagine a work of IF without a protagonist, since it is difficult to imagine a work of IF where the player has no opportunity to control someone or something, and we would tend to identify that someone or something as the protagonist. If someone wrote a piece in which we controlled the various doors, air conditioners, and lights of a house, we might tend to identify the house as a character -- a \"living\" haunted house.\r\n<P>\r\nIn Adam Cadre\'s notes on the making of \"Lock & Key\" (2002, found by winning the game itself), he describes the protagonist-less game he imagined on the way to what he wrote: \"So what if [...] the player instead manipulates the street environment, opening and closing windows, placing and removing fences, that sort of thing?\" Since he ended up with a game with a normal player character, we can\'t be sure of how we\'d have taken the original idea -- whether we\'d have considered it IF. (Consider the computer game \"The Sims\" by Maxis for the closest analog I can think of; perhaps \"Sim City\" is a better example. However, the latter casts you in the role of a governor, and this whole genre of games is often referred to as \"god games\", suggesting a tendency to personify the role.)\r\n<P>\r\n-  The protagonist is a sentient being.\r\n<P>\r\nThis rule has not, to my knowledge, been broken. It seems awkward to admit a protagonist who accepts commands -- who as a result takes varying actions, as if exhibiting free will -- without that being being sentient. (One possible approach would be imagine that the interactor is more of a \"game master\" who controls the ebb and flow of the universe without being personified; but that case would be the breaking of the previous rule instead of this one.)\r\n<P>\r\nThe other problem -- besides the possibility of free will -- is the notion of potraying the world from the point of view of the controlled, non-sentient object. Thomas Nagel\'s essay \"What Is It Like To Be a Bat?\" argues that, fundamentally, attributing that there is \"something it is like to be\" an object is the same as attributing consciousness to it. It\'s difficult to communicate the experience of being something without communicating what that being experiences--and if the being has no perceptions and no inner life, it has no experience. This can be gotten around by shifting to an external point of view, but I can find no game has tried the combination of non-protagaonist-POV and non-sentient protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nThe two examples I can find are \"Pumping!\" (Stephen Granade, 1998) and part of \"Acid Whiplash\" (Cody Sandifier & Ryan Stevens, 1998). In the former, you play a beating heart, and each turn choose to beat or not; I find it impossible to read as anything other than that I play as a strangely sentient heart. Although I can understand that the literal telegrams from the brain are actually figurative, the continuous use of \"You\", my freedom to choose, and some other perceptual things that a heart has no right perceiving cause me to not believe that I am playing a normal heart with a poetic attempt at \"what it is like to be a heart\"; that might be the author\'s intent, though, and might be how others would interpret it. In \"Acid Whiplash\", there is a short scene in which you play a car dashboard, during which you can\'t do anything. (Except a number of default Inform verbs, but it\'s easy to imagine an implementation that did this correctly.) However, again, some of the writing ascribes pe\r\nrceptions and attitudes that it might make sense that you, as a human-being-being-a-dashboard, might have but are not ones that a dashboard would have -- so it\'s difficult not to ascribe sentience again.\r\n<P>\r\n-  There is only one protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the good old days of IF, there was exactly one PC, the protagonist, who we could closely identify with. Infocom branched off from this relatively quickly, most notably with \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\", which gave the player a sequence of PCs, a different one for each section of the game, sometimes even revisting the same time and place. Numerous games have explored variations on this idea, such as \"Common Ground\" (Stephen Granade, 1999), \"Being Andrew Plotkin\" (J. Robinson Wheeler, 2000), and \"No Time To Squeal\" (Robb Sherwin & Mike Sousa, 2001).\r\n<P>\r\n\"Suspended\" posited a human protagonist trapped in a capsule, controlling five robots. Perhaps we might argue that the human is the PC, but the robots are the protagonists. Had the device of the human protagonist been omitted, we might view this as five PCs and five protagonists--or even a protagonist-less game, especially if we imagined the game to have fifty robots instead of five. My inclination, however, is that we would always have imagined that in the fictional universe of the gameworld there must have been some mentality--e.g. an AI supercomputer--giving these instructions to the robots so that they would cooperate appropriately; otherwise, they would be \"cooperating\" spontaneously without communicating with each other or some third party, which would seem odd fictionally. This is similar to the issues with the previous assumption.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The protagonist is not aware of the player.\r\n<P>\r\nTraditionally, IF tries to identify the player with the player character, to make one just an avatar or puppet of the other, but to make them the same. A very few games take exception to this, and allow the PC to directly address the audience, Ferris-Bueller-style. \"Rameses\" (Stephen Bond, 2000) takes a didactic tone at times:\r\n<P>\r\n   \"Come on now lads, wake yourselves up, come on now,\"\r\n   he says in a thick country accent. He doesn\'t usually have\r\n   a thick country accent. He\'s just making fun of Declan the\r\n   Seminarian. You\'ll meet Declan later. \r\n<P>\r\nA more extreme scenario is for the PC to be aware that the player is *controlling* the PC\'s actions. This is the central conceit of \"Piece of Mind\" (Giles Boutell, 1996):\r\n<P>\r\n   My GOD! I can move again - I just got up!!! All you have to do\r\n   is tell me, and it happens.  That is sooo freaky. I guess I\'m in\r\n   your hands now - your wish is my command and all that jazz.\r\n<P>\r\nThe only other example I\'m aware of is Adam Cadre\'s \"Shrapnel\" (2000), which offers a brief moment of similar awareness in the middle of a cutscene: \"Anyone else want to order me around?\"\r\n<P>\r\n-  The protagonist is not aware of being fictional.\r\n<P>\r\nEven more extreme than the protagonist being aware that the player is there and controlling him or her is the awareness that the protagonist is part of a game--that the protagonist does not really exist, except fictionally. I am not aware of any games that have made this thoroughly postmodern move, although \"A New Day\" (Jonathan Fry, 1997) attempts something similar: the NPC Winston is the putative PC of an unfinished work of IF, and is well aware of the fact that he inhabits a work of IF. It\'s unclear what exactly is going on with the PC in \"Piece of Mind\" above; although he shows awareness that the work he\'s dropped into is fictional, it would appear to be a different work entitled \"Piece of Mind\" than the one the player is actually playing; the PC\'s \"Piece of Mind\" is entirely a sub-game of the real one, lacking (at a minimum) the introduction which establishes the PC as an entity outside of the internal \"Piece of Mind\" game.\r\n<P>\r\nDescription of Events (Output)\r\n<P>\r\nAs the work progresses, descriptions of objects and actions and events are delivered to the interactor. We tend to make assumptions about these descriptions. In a work of static fiction, we can have an \"unreliable narrator\", but it\'s possible to break the nature of the lack of reliability down in much more detail: a lying narrator, a deceived narrator, etc.\r\n<P>\r\nFor the sake of this article, I\'ll describe each work that breaks the rules with the most specific rule that it breaks.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript are actually occurring.\r\n<P>\r\nOur normal expectation is that the work is a fiction, but in the fictional world, the protagonist is actually experiencing the events. Due to the possibility of the use of the past or present tense, or of flashback, we at least expect that *at some point* the events actually occurred or are occurring or will occur. So I\'m interpreting breaking this rule as incorporating events that are wholy fictional *in the world of the work*--the emphasis here is on \"actually\" not \"occurring\".\r\n<P>\r\nThe most common variation on this is the dream sequence, especially a dream sequence that the PC doesn\'t realize is a dream, and so the player may not either. This has been done many times, notably in the opening sequence of Infocom\'s \"Sorcerer\" (Steve Meretzky, 1984).\r\n<P>\r\nLess frequently, the *whole* interactive sequence is revealed to be fictional within the universe. \"Losing Your Grip\" (Stephen Granade, 1998) stops short of this, spending most of its time in dream sequences but acknowleding them as such in the shorter real-world sequences between them. In \"Triune\" (Papillion, 2001) the protagonist escapes to an imaginary world of her own making; although the entire interactive sequence is fictional in the same way a dream is fictional, it is bookended by non-interactive real-world sequences.\r\n<P>\r\nRather than dream-like experiences, though, it\'s also possible for the apparent events to themselves be narrative fiction in the fictional world. This is the final twist revelation in \"Tale of the Kissing Bandit\" (J. Robinson Wheeler, 2001). The prologue of \"Heroes\" (Sean Barrett, 2001) warns that, of the five stories about to be \"told\", only one is true.\r\n<P>\r\nThere are a few rare cases where it is difficult to be sure what the mapping of the events are to reality. The second half of \"No Time To Squeal\" offers a \"dark Alice in Wonderland\" storyline that is somehow metaphorically related to the first storyline, but it is unclear what one should think the events themselves map to in the \"real world\" of that first half.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript are happening to the protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nThe previous rule called into question whether the events were entirely fictional. I\'m not positive what Plotkin intended to call into question with this assumption--that perhaps the events are happening to someone else? There are rare examples of this; some games cut away from the action to show a \"cut scene\" of events elsewhere; were they interactive, this would be an issue of the PC not being the protagonist, but since they\'re non-interactive, they are perhaps best considered as breaking this rule. The demo version of \"And the Waves Choke the Wind\" (Gunther Schmidl, 2000) offers non-protagonist cut-scenes still told in the second-person; more traditionally, \"Augmented Fourth\" (Brian Uri, 2000) cuts away to show the activities of the antagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nOne variation that perhaps falls under this rule is when true events are being recounted by the protagonist after the fact. This is one place where \"Spider & Web\" twists our expectations: most of the first two-thirds of the game are spent with the protagonist not traversing an enemy base, but instead reconstructing his past actions while traversing the enemy base. Admittedly, \"Spider & Web\" takes this even further, discussed later.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are perceptions by the protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nIf we take the protagonist to be the PC, the character we are controlling, this rule seems entirely intuitive; it would be difficult to control the PC without seeing what the PC sees.\r\n<P>\r\nA few games have managed to find alternative approaches. In the introductory sequence to \"Beetmonger\'s Journal\" (Scott Starkey, 2001), the player controls the archeologist protagonist, but the story is told from the first-person POV of the sidekick, who always stays in the room with the protagonist, which is surprisingly effective. A different approach is taken in \"Captain Chaos\" (Shay Caron, 1999), told in third-person POV as if from a camera in the room with the titular protagonist; the game opens with Chaos asleep, and the player is free to examine the room and the objects in it, but cannot move nor manipulate objects. It is difficult to judge the success of \"Captain Chaos\" because the implementation is sufficiently incomplete that the effect isn\'t maintained consistently.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are correct perceptions by the protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nSeveral games have explored the possibility that the protagonist is incorrectly perceiving the world. The most obvious of these is \"Bliss\" (Cameron Wilkin, 1999), in which the protagonist believes he is killing orcs as he escapes from a prison in a cliche fantasy universe, while in fact he is performing similar actions in a much more conventional world that he misperceives. More complex is \"Shade\" (Andrew Plotkin, 2000), in which both the world and the protagonist\'s actions are, presumably, misperceived. More subtle case is when the protagonist misperceives only a small component of reality, as with the PC in \"My Angel\" (Jon Ingold, 2000) and his relationship with the main NPC.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The descriptions in the transcript are written by someone who is honest.\r\n<P>\r\nRather than the the protagonist being deceived or deceiving himself, it\'s always possible that the protagonist knows what\'s going on, but is deceiving the audience. The only memorable example of this is \"Spider & Web\", where the protagonist\'s audience isn\'t merely the player, but rather the interrogator for whom he is reconstructing the break-in. The game attempts to hint to the player that the deception is occurring, and the for the last third of the game the player is forced to figure out what really happened.\r\n<P>\r\nThe protagonist isn\'t the only one who can lie; in one memorable sequence in \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\", the narrator lies about the interesting features of a particular room. Here it\'s an explicit fourth-wall-breakage played for laughs; since it is more traditional to equate the viewpoint of the narrator with that of the protagonist, it would be difficult to do this in most works.\r\n<P>\r\n(Of course, the descriptions are also written by the *author* of the work of IF, so as written, one could claim that descriptions that have been phrased by the author so as to deceive the player, as in Adam Cadre\'s \"9:05\" (1999), break this rule; but then again, writing fiction at all is to write down things which aren\'t really true, so this isn\'t a very productive line of discussion.)\r\n<P>\r\n-  The events described in the transcript all occur, as a single consecutive sequence of events.\r\n<P>\r\nThe tradition in the earliest works of IF were to drop you in the shoes of someone, turn you loose on a world, let you do stuff, and then bring things to a close. As IF authorship increased in sophistication, this changed. First, cut-scenes might bridge interactive sequences with non-interactive sequences, although still staying sequential in time. Then such sequences might simply skip sections of time that weren\'t important to the story. Non-interactive and interactive flashbacks disrupted the flow of time from strictly linear.\r\n<P>\r\nTime-travel games disrupt time flow more extremely, but normally strictly follow the perceived time of the time-travelling protagonist. For true narrative non-linearity, we again turn to \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\"; at the same time that the player switched points of view--switched PCs--a new time would be chosen, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. Sometimes the time sequences overlapped, allowing playing the same sequence from the same point of view. Again, this was used for comic effect; the same technique was used for dramatic effect in \"Photopia\" (Adam Cadre, 1998).\r\n<P>\r\nA number of works go to a much greater extreme, focusing on a single period of time and revisiting it repeatedly. \"Vicious Cycles\" (Simon Mark, 2001) uses a time-travel machine to explain this; \"Common Ground\" revisits the exact same sequence of time and roughly the same events three times from three different points of view. Both of these have analogs in the world of static fiction (such as \"Groundhog Day\" and \"Rashoman\"), so perhaps the more dramatic examples are those that allow and require the interactor to revisit a sequence repeatedly without the revisiting being part of the *story*, as in the \"one-turn\" works \"Aisle\" (Sam Barlow, 1999) and \"Rematch\" (Andrew Pontious, 2000).\r\n<P>\r\nCommands (Input):\r\n<P>\r\nTypically, in IF, the interactor enters commands which are enacted in a simulated world by the PC. Ignoring possible distinctions between \"protagonist\" and \"PC\", there\'s still a wealth of possible ways to disrupt that sense of control, and these are unique to IF compared to non-interactive storytelling media.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The player\'s commands do not affect anything except the protagonist\'s actions. (Plotkin)\r\n<P>\r\nOne possibly disturbing effect would be for commands to have an impact in the world without involving the PC. If there\'s no player character at all -- if this is just how commands always work -- it\'s not disturbing, but in the presence of communication between the player and the PC, we expect that communication to be privileged, to be outside the fiction: part of the user interface.\r\n<P>\r\nA few games have, in fact, allowed NPCs access, in the cases where the player is communicating with the NPC. While it makes sense that \'SAY \"HELLO GENE\" TO BOB\' results in Bob hearing the word \"Gene\", it\'s a little surprising when \'BOB, HELLO\' is heard by Bob as including \'Bob\', as it seems to imply that *every* time the PC speaks to Bob, he repeats the name. Even more surprising is when Bob \"hears\" \'Bob\' in \'ASK BOB ABOUT FRANCINE\' . Games such as \'Erehwon\' (Richard Litherland, 1999) and \'The HeBGB Horror\' (Eric Mayer, 1999) have used variations on this device. In none of these cases do I think the author intended it to be disturbing; instead there is just confusion (or perhaps disagreement) in how the player\'s commands map to the fictional world and the protagonist\'s actions.\r\n<P>\r\nClearly intentional is the effect in \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\" (yes, again!): the *player* takes the fall for setting off an interstellar war due to a typoed command that has nothing to do with any action of the player character. More strangely, in \"Ad Verbum\" (Nick Montfort, 2000), the text of descriptions of rooms change in response to the interactor\'s choice of wording even though the state of the world doesn\'t change: if the input abbreviates compass directions as single letters, so will the output.\r\n<P>\r\n-  Everything that the protagonist does comes from the player\'s commands.\r\n<P>\r\nMany works break this rule in cut-scenes; in fact, by definition, not giving the player a chance to type something and having the protagonist act creates a cut-scene, in some sense. But such scenes tend to follow from the preceding actions, and so in some sense \"come from the player\'s commands\".\r\n<P>\r\nIn general though there\'s something of an unwritten rule not to do this, since it disrupts the immersion, the sense that the player *is* the protagonist. A few works have addressed this in a rather surprising fashion: rather than allowing the protagonist to take action independent of the commands typed by the player, the works force the player to \"type\" the appropriate command. \"Voices\" (Aris Katsaris, 2001) forces the innocuous command WAKE after a character transition; \"Pytho\'s Mask\" (Emily Short, 2001) allows you to make a climactic choice, then makes it appear that you might have further options, but instead forces the very last command. Even more dramatically, \"Shrapnel\" goes postmodern, dropping the player to an apparent metagame prompt at which the metacommand RESTART is forced--but rather than restarting the work it resets the protagonist\'s experiences within the work while maintaining state from previous actions.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The protagonist has no will that conflicts with the effects of the player\'s commands. (Plotkin)\r\n<P>\r\nThe idea of this rule is that the protagonist is the player\'s puppet. The player and the protagonist are unified to a single being; what the protagonist sees and knows, the interactor does too; and what the interactor attempts, so will the protagonist.\r\n<P>\r\nThe reality is subtle. If I order the protagonist to go north, in most works, the protagonist will not walk north into a wall; instead, the protagonist will inform me that there\'s a wall in the way. Of course, this is an action the protagonist couldn\'t possibly complete anyway, so it\'s perhaps not really a conflict, but the same thing often occurs if there is instead a *cliff* to the north: the protagonist will refuse. I think the notion tends to be not so much that the protagonist has an independent will for self-preservation as that the interactor\'s view of the world is very removed, and less immediate, and this is more that the protagonist is guessing \"that\'s not what the interactor really wants\".\r\n<P>\r\nHowever, one of the trends in IF has been towards PCs with a more explicit personality which the interactor is forced to play along with. In such cases, the PC will often assert a will--namely a will to refuse to do things which are \"out of character\". In some cases, this is really just the author saving work--by having the PC refuse to take certain actions, the author is spared the burden of implementing the actions and possibly storyline branches induced by them.\r\n<P>\r\nMuch more explicit is \"Rameses\", in which the PC is someone who is so passive, so unwilling to get involved, that the interactor is constantly teased with opportunities to try to do something, but the protagonist, while willing to entertain the possibility of doing such things, is not in fact willing to do them at all.\r\n<P>\r\n-  The protagonist correctly understands the player\'s commands. (Plotkin)\r\n<P>\r\nNot only do we expect the narrator of IF to give us useful, reasonably accurate information so that we have some opportunity to usefully interact with the work, but we also expect that the PC we\'re controlling to understand what we\'re ordering.\r\n<P>\r\nThus it seems like it would be hardly surprising to find some work that went out of its way to break the fourth wall and intentionally misunderstand the player, but it\'s actually difficult to find any clear cut examples of this. The best I can find is the \"SCORE\" command in \"Leather Goddesses of Phobos\" (Steve Meretzky, 1986) and \"I-0\" (Adam Cadre, 1997), but in the context of those games the \"misinterpretation\" is not too surprising.\r\n<P>\r\nExperiments of Form\r\n<P>\r\nWhen we sit down to interact with a work of IF, we come with many preconceptions and expectations about what the experience will be like. Violating those expectations might make a work not feel like IF, but at the same time it can pull us in or push us away.\r\n<P>\r\nThere are many possible ways to surprise the interactor: the author might appear as a character in the work or the plot might take an unexpected turn. These surprises are part of the *content* of the work, though, not the form. Surprising content would never make us doubt that a work was IF, so long as we consider IF a medium (determined by form) rather than a genre (determined by content).\r\n<P>\r\nIn a non-interactive medium, questions like whether there is a protagonist and whether the narrator is unreliable are perhaps more properly questions of content. But once interactivity is involved, the question of which character the interactor controls -- if any -- and the nature of how information is provided to the interactor become part of the form of the work, since they heavily influence how the interaction works.\r\n<P>\r\nThis article has identified a number of \"rules\" which are potentially part of the form of IF; most of them, though, have counter-examples, works that are still widely considered IF. For the few rules without counter-examples, it is unclear whether there could be an IF work that breaks them, or whether the rule is inherent to the nature of what we consider IF. Only time, attempts to define IF formally, and works that break these rules (and others) will tell.\r\n<P>\r\nGet crackin\'.\r\n<P>',1,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2006-08-25 08:03:09',1,18,6349),(33,'Object Relations',40,'NB: THE FOLLOWING has been hand-corrected from RTF format and may contain some\r\nerrors; it is provided for the first perusal of the editors only.  I will convert\r\nthe original file properly later.\r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nObject Relations\r\n<P>\r\nThe archetypal dull object is a small pebble. It has properties, true: it is\r\nportable, inedible, visible, can be thrown, is without odour, colour or taste,\r\nlacks consciousness, is not flammable, has no interior, is opaque, can be put in\r\npockets. But these are exactly the characteristics which we discard from our\r\nimpressions as being unremarkable.  They take a good deal more simulation for\r\ninteractive fiction than one might expect, and indeed if a pebble failed of any\r\nof them, it would become interesting for that reason, but this a long-solved\r\nproblem. The corresponding problem of simulating people, using any machinery\r\nother than people (i.e., actors), is woefully different, and at times appears\r\nhopeless. Numerous designers of interactive fiction eschew characters altogether,\r\nor have them sleeping, in ghostly form, busy potting daisies or in some other way\r\nevading their reasonable obligations to observe and react. This is a shame. The\r\npresent chapter is, however, not a contribution to that debate. Instead of\r\nlamenting that interactive fiction is hobbled by a lack of characters, one might\r\ncount one\'s blessings by observing the richly nuanced possibilities of objects as\r\nused in conventional fiction. Objects are by no means too crude to carry a\r\nnarrative of human situations. The difference between object-rich interactive\r\nfiction and people-rich uninteractive fiction is not a dichotomy on the scale of,\r\nsay, conversing with a small pebble versus conversing with Socrates. Leaving\r\naside the physical behaviour of objects, since those are easily understood (a\r\nchair supports the character sitting on it, but this is not very remarkable from\r\na literary point of view), we consider three largely distinct ways in which\r\nfictional objects function in story-telling: first evocatively, in representing\r\ncharacter and feeling; second as objects of desire, arousing those feelings in\r\nreader and characters alike; and thirdly as a kind of carrier, a physical signal\r\nwhich intercedes between characters negotiating their feelings. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nEvocative Objects\r\n <p>\r\n \r\nFew would deny that other people are the sweetness of life. The evocative use in\r\nnarrative of objects rather than characters at first seems a saccharine, a sugar\r\nsubstitute. Literary criticism has a variety of terms for the way particular\r\nobjects come to represent, or stand in place of, an inchoate mass of feelings and\r\nsocial structures: for instance, metonymy (\"The bench rebuked Mr Dershovitz\" =\r\nthe Judge sitting at the bench did) and its close cousin, synecdoche (\"She loved\r\nthat driving seat\" = she enjoyed using the whole car). Sometimes these devices\r\nare elegant plays on association, fraying away into hackneyed figures of speech;\r\nsometimes they are a verbal shorthand for rafts of understanding whose\r\nelaboration would be unnecessary, tiresome and perhaps also difficult. (\"Downing\r\nStreet today denied any rift between the Health Secretary and the Chancellor.\")\r\nWhat makes metonymy more than a linguistic convenience, where figurative objects\r\nsubstitute for verbal explication, is that real objects also play a role in real\r\nsocial patterns. Jewellery serves us in many ways, but a diamond engagement ring\r\nis almost wholly metonymic. If I were to burn the degree certificate which hangs\r\non my dentist\'s wall (purely hypothetically speaking), he would neither forget\r\nhis trade nor lose his right to practice it, yet the actual certificate means\r\nsomething to him. The Royal Navy, though sympathetic, will not replace my\r\ngrandfather\'s recently stolen war medals, because the doctrine is that there can\r\nonly be one metal cross. A spare would be a fake. Essentially these are tokens to\r\nmake tangible something which seems terribly large to our lives (a\r\nmarriage-to-be, a seven-years\'-apprenticeship, a dreadful time on the Murmansk\r\nconvoys), yet which has no substance. Much of the sense of unfairness in grieving\r\ncomes from the appalling way that a sudden absence seems to affect nothing else:\r\nnot the trees in the garden, not the books on their shelves, not the crockery to\r\nbe washed up. We know that the world has been transformed, and yet the world does\r\nnot. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nThe title of this chapter is also the title of three from Julian Barnes\'s novel \r\n\"Metroland\" (1980), the sentimental education of an English schoolboy. Each of\r\nthree phases is concluded by \"Object Relations\", a long room description\r\nitemising his habitual things. At the end of adolescence: \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nA crocheted mat; two hairbrushes so stuffed with hair that I have abandoned them\r\nand taken to a comb; clean socks and white shirt for the morning; a blue plastic\r\nknight, made up from a model kit given me by Nigel one Christmas, and left\r\nhalf-painted... My watch, which I despise because it doesn\'t have a second hand.\r\nA Fablon-covered book. \r\n<P>\r\nThe scheme is explained in one of Barnes\'s trademark deft repetitions: \"Objects\r\nredolent of all I felt and hoped for; yet objects which I myself had only\r\nhalf-willed, only half-planned. Some I chose, some were chosen for me, others I\r\nconsented to. Is that so strange? What else are you at that age but a creature\r\npart willing, part consenting, part being chosen?\" But the narrator is\r\nincreasingly conscious of these chosen things, which continue to lay him open.\r\nFive years later here is what he leaves behind at the end of a summer in Paris\r\nsupposedly spent researching theatrical history: \r\n<P>\r\nOn the desk, a line-up of bottles of spirits, one for each calvados I\'d consumed.\r\nBeside it, a wastepaper basket which I had, with deliberate negligence, failed to\r\nempty; though I hadn\'t actually planted evidence, I was certainly conscious of\r\nwhat was in it. A copy of \"Hara-Kiri\" (\"journal b \'90te et m \'8echant\") and one\r\nof \"Les Nouvelles Litteraires\"; a theatre programme which happened to be a\r\nduplicate; various rough drafts of stories and poems; a few drawings (the best\r\nrejects); a couple of letters from my parents; some tangerine peel; and a note\r\nfrom Annick, left one morning when she had gone off early.  \r\n<P>\r\n<P>\r\nNine years later still, his objects have shrugged off their accusing looks, their\r\npeacock-display, and are trusted guides: \r\n <p>\r\nObjects contain absent people. A poster, flat and pinned, of the chateau of\r\nCombourg (where Chateaubriand grew up) narrates a holiday four years ago. A\r\nphalanx of a dozen glasses on a shelf implies ten friends. A feeding-bottle,\r\nstored high on a dresser, predicts a second baby. On the floor next to the\r\ndresser is a plastic travel-bag with a bright sticker we bought to amuse Amy:\r\n\"Lions of Longleat\", it says, with a picture of a lion in the middle. \r\n<P>\r\nThese room descriptions are subtler than they look, that is, are not simply\r\nopportunities for Barnes\'s writerly pleasure in capturing domestic items by a\r\nfresh phrase. The travel-bag with its sticker, for instance, is what has become\r\nof the narrator\'s old suitcase, with his imagined baggage labels from foreign\r\nparts: already it is now his daughter who will travel, no longer himself. Objects\r\n\"contain absent people\", they narrate, they imply, they predict. \r\n \r\nSo suggestive are juxtapositions of items, like still lives, that even when not\r\nopenly chosen or random they may still be thought to contain, narrate, imply and\r\npredict, as in dictionaries for the interpretation of dreams. The surrealist\r\nmovement certainly thought so. Rene Char\'s prose poem \r\n\"Artine\" (1930, trans. William Rees): \"\"In the bed prepared for me... there was\r\nno prison door, there was the taste of bitterness, a glazier\'s diamond, a hair, a\r\nday, a broken chair, a silkworm, the stolen object, an overcoat chain, a tame\r\ngreen fly, a branch of coral, a cobbler\'s nail, an omnibus wheel\"\" (the list is\r\nitalicised in Char\'s original). Of course this was nothing new in art. The\r\ntheological symbolism of objects in the Old Masters is a field of study in\r\nitself. A few years back, I asked an expert why the artist had placed an\r\noctagonal glass of violets on the floor in a painting of the circumcision of\r\nChrist. \"Well,\" she said, \"some people think it signifies the virginity of Mary,\r\nbut I think he was just showing off. Most of the painters in Venice at the time\r\ncouldn\'t really do transparent glass.\" Objects should indeed give us pleasure,\r\nbesides any meaning they stand for. Sometimes that pleasure becomes urgent. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nObjects of Desire \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nObjects can be more than substitutes for absent friends: they can be friends in\r\ntheir own right. It is satisfying to lay a two-foot-high brick wall, or to rake\r\nover ashes in the morning. We do not like to part with trusted bicycles, with\r\nwhom we have shared many miles, until they begin to betray us by constant and\r\nwilful breakdown. A screwdriver set changes from a nagging reproach to an obscure\r\nsource of congratulation when it is used for about the fourth or fifth different\r\nhousehold job. \"Hooray!\" as Helen Fielding\'s heroine Bridget Jones might write in\r\nher diary: \"Am successful intellectual/handywoman hybrid.\" Beyond our own nests,\r\nand the intimacy that attaches to anything in them, we find intriguing whatever\r\nhas had a history of human contact, because it is old, or hand-made. If we viewed\r\nfrankly bad furniture and cookware in functional terms, there would be no\r\nantiques dealers. A coin minted in 1921 has a story the more interesting because\r\nit cannot be known. Better yet is the tale of something which struggles to come\r\ndown to us, the lost treasure: \r\n <p>\r\n \r\n Until!  -- finally, and at long last  -- mangled and tattered like a dog that\r\nhas fought its way home, there falls across the threshold of the Italian\r\nRenaissance the sole surviving witness [...] the Verona Codex of Catullus; which\r\nwas almost immediately lost again, but not before it was copied with one last\r\nopportunity for error. And there you have the foundation for the poems of\r\nCatullus, as they went to the printer for the first time, in Venice 400 years\r\nago. \r\n<P>\r\nSo goes an outburst in a 19th-century scene from Tom Stoppard\'s play, \r\n\"The Invention of Love\" (1997). Legend has it that the Verona codex, the last\r\ncopy anywhere of Catullus, was found bunging up a wine-butt in the cellars of a\r\nmonastery. There are reasons to doubt this, but the legend is itself revealing,\r\nas was the recent keenness of newspapers to celebrate the \"discovery\" of a \"lost\"\r\nchildren\'s story by Sylvia Plath which, it transpired, had not only been\r\npublished before and by Plath herself, but had even been erroneously\r\n\"rediscovered\" before. That we love such tales enough to over-egg them is the\r\nmore curious since they are not, in fact, especially rare. Menander, once thought\r\na second Homer, much imitated, copied by innumerable scribes, quoted elliptically\r\neven in the New Testament (I Cor. 15:33), was wiped out altogether by the\r\nChristian dark age (not counting some aphorisms and somewhat free Latin\r\ntranslations). His fragmentary survival today hangs chiefly on two pieces of\r\nrubbish: a wrapper lining a jar buried in a Cairo lawyer\'s house, excavated in\r\n1905; and the papier m \'89ch \'8e used by municipal workers in 3rd-century BC\r\nAlexandria to remummify a number of dilapidated bodies, unseen by human eye until\r\nit was unpeeled at the Sorbonne between 1906 and 1965. It is all the tale of\r\nPerdita, the daughter washed ashore as a baby after a shipwreck, to be raised by\r\nshepherds, with nothing but a keepsake in her tiny hand. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nSuch exquisite objects of desire are central to genre fiction. In the \"literary\r\nentertainment\", for want of a less patronising term, the treasure may indeed be a\r\nmanuscript: in Eco\'s \"The Name of the Rose\", a lost book by Aristotle; in A. S.\r\nByatt\'s \"Possession\", a secret exchange of love letters between Victorian poets;\r\nin Henry James\'s \"The Aspern Papers\", the Aspern papers. Or we may find ourselves\r\nin the cold war, with the microfilm of \"atomic secrets\" hidden in a Russian doll;\r\nor in the English 1930s thriller, where the Foreign Secretary will visit our hero\r\nin his flat at St James\'s after midnight, to confide that it is no exaggeration\r\nto say that the fate of nations depends on this innocent document. In one long\r\npaper chase we pursue letters patent of a claim to the Ruritanian throne; a\r\nprivate annexe to a treaty; a nameless protocol; a formula predicting the stock\r\nmarket, called only The Product; a millionaire recluse\'s lost final will. The\r\nmatter is an urgent one. Paper, that may crackle with life, may also crackle in\r\nthe flames. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nThe token changes hands, perhaps frequently, or is at least pregnant with the\r\nrisk of loss, while the present holder is in no doubt that, merely by virtue of\r\nholding it, he is the central figure in the narrative of the world. A comedy\r\ninversion (and a defining quality of farces) is to find the object not vital to\r\nhang on to, but vital to get rid of. In the Fawlty Towers episode \"The Kipper and\r\nthe Corpse\" (1979), both objects recur no matter what Basil Fawlty tries, the\r\nfugue-like reappearance of the kipper  -- which one might think easier to dispose\r\nof than the dead hotel guest  -- being a masterstroke. The kipper, long past its\r\nbest, is cooked for the breakfast in bed of a guest who has, however, died in the\r\nnight. Fawlty, the hotelier, wrongly assumes that the kipper was responsible for\r\nthe guest\'s demise, and panics. The doctor is coming. Fawlty has only seconds to\r\nhide the evidence. He tries to open a window, but it\'s jammed. He stuffs the\r\nkipper under his cardigan, but the head begins to protrude just as... and so on.\r\nLater, the kipper is thrown into the kitchen doorway, out of shot, to get rid of\r\nit once and for all; where, however, somebody carrying the corpse trips over it.\r\nThis Marx-Brothers-like business is funny partly because the kipper is\r\nincongruous, but mostly because Fawlty is berserkly determined that it must not\r\nbe seen, a distraction from the actual problem that the corpse must not be seen.\r\nAlso, of course, because it ought to be easy to get rid of but will not go away.\r\nAs curious as it seems, Fawlty\'s kipper is in some structural sense the\r\nequivalent of Wagner\'s ring. One cannot quite imagine Fawlty\'s operatic death,\r\nbellowing a final warning to \"Beware the Kipper!\" as the curtain falls, and yet\r\nit is still his nemesis. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nSo narrow a focus, and such certainty of purpose (as compared with the aimless\r\nambiguities of real life) are characteristic of genre fiction, as also, by its\r\npresent means of construction at least, characteristic of interactive fiction.\r\nThere is no crime against mimesis in designing an interactive fiction whose quest\r\nis essentially for an object rather than, say, a shift in human relationships,\r\nfor traditional fiction is replete with such tales. Mimesis is threatened only\r\nwhen the object sought fails to convince the reader that it is precious. It must\r\nmove us as the plight of a sympathetic character would move us: it must be a\r\ncharacter in all but physical form. \r\n \r\n \r\n<P>\r\nInterceding Objects \r\n \r\n <p>\r\nHaving considered objects as evocation and as desire, scenery and treasure, we\r\nturn to objects as tools: not as physical tools, like crowbars or biplanes, but\r\nas the means by which fictional characters adjust and express their feelings\r\nabout each other. \r\n \r\n <p>\r\nIn the stagey third act of Alfred Hitchcock\'s movie \"North By Northwest\" (1959),\r\nRoger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is hiding on the upstairs landing of James\r\nMason\'s criminal hideout. Frantic to attract Eva Marie Saint\'s attention, he dare\r\nnot risk being heard or seen by any of her confederates. Eva is a double agent\r\nwho has infiltrated the gang but, unknown to her, she has been found out. So\r\nGrant must somehow warn her that the gang plan to kill her. His solution is to\r\nthrow a matchbook, bearing the monogram R.O.T., onto the carpet below, at Eva\'s\r\nfeet. It concentrates our anxiety because it is so tiny on that wide screen,\r\nbecause he has only one try, because Mason has guns, Martin Landau and a sinister\r\nhousekeeper while Grant is armed only with a small square of cardboard. Who will\r\nsee it first? Even if Eva does, will her reaction betray her? \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nGrant\'s solution is one for which the audience has been prepared. We saw the\r\nmatchbook earlier, in what was itself a deftly metonymic device. Roger has R.O.T.\r\nmatchbooks printed: what shall we infer of Roger? That he is successful, not a\r\nyoung man, smokes too much, advertises, is wry about his own shortcomings (\"rot\")\r\nbut stubborn too, doesn\'t spend too much time at home (being doubtless divorced\r\nby two or three exasperated wives already), and is suave as all heck regardless.\r\nRoger is, in short, played by Cary Grant. The matchbook serves still a third\r\nfunction in a movie \"about\" transposed identities: of the many markers of\r\nidentity in the movie, from red railroad-company caps to dry-cleaning tickets and\r\nhotel reservations, this label alone, small and foolish, tells the truth. Barring\r\nsome peripheral characters early on, only Grant is *not* a secret agent. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nThe message carries; Mason and entourage leave for a getaway plane; Grant rushes\r\ndownstairs, meaning to follow them out and somehow rescue Eva. Unexpectedly a\r\nsecond familiar object detains him: Eva\'s revolver. In its earlier scene, Eva had\r\nproved her villainous credentials by shooting Grant dead, a phoney incident\r\nstaged for Mason\'s benefit. Now Grant, thinking the downstairs lounge is clear,\r\nfinds the housekeeper pointing that same revolver dead at him. Cut to outside\r\nwhere, a little while on, we are startled to see that Grant has now escaped. How\r\ndid he do it? In a classic aside, which except for one frantic exchange early on\r\nis his only dialogue in the whole 14-minute sequence, Grant tells Eva: \"The\r\nhousekeeper had me pinned down for five minutes before I realised it was that\r\nsame silly gun of yours.\" Like Grant, we the audience were clearly shown, and\r\nthen reminded, and still forgot, that the revolver was a fake. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nWhat was Ernest Lehman, the screenwriter, up to? His difficulty was to resolve\r\nthe movie\'s mysteries without allowing it to end, Hitchcock being set on an\r\nall-action finale at Mount Rushmore. Grant, Eva and Mason must somehow all meet,\r\nclarify their true motives and identities once and for all, yet resolve nothing.\r\nLehman accomplished this with devices not unlike those which sterner critics of\r\ninteractive fiction would disapprove. Lehman keeps Grant one location behind\r\nMason  -- climbing the house wall when Eva is upstairs; upstairs when the gang\r\nare downstairs; downstairs when they are out on the driveway; out on the driveway\r\nwhen they are at the plane waiting to take off. Lehman ensures that Grant cannot\r\nprovoke a confrontation by having him outnumbered and unarmed. He slows Grant\r\ndown with a two-stage puzzle based on objects, each used once already.\r\nInteraction is diverted from people to things, from speech to gesture. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nThomas Hardy likewise avoided a happy ending to Tess by having a letter, pushed\r\nshyly under a door, disappear beneath a carpet, never to be read; he disposed of\r\nMichael Henchard\'s last act of love, a gift of a canary, by having its cage\r\ndraped closed so that it starved before anyone found it; he demolished a solid\r\nfarmer\'s composure by sending him a flirtatious but unmeant Valentine from\r\nBathsheba Everdene. All these objects are carriers, just as the matchbook was\r\nCary Grant\'s honest endeavour and the phoney revolver Eva\'s inner self: a good\r\ngirl, only pretending to be a murderess. As with most good romances, it is hard\r\nto pin down exactly where in \"North By Northwest\" the lovers settle on each\r\nother, but if one had to pick a single scene this might be it. \r\n \r\n \r\n<P>\r\nThe Inventory of an Adventure \r\n<P>\r\nSherlock Holmes comprehends people, when he does, through objects, the tools and\r\nclues which follow him as a comet is made visible by its tail. As the \"Adventure\r\nof the Blue Carbuncle\" (1892) opens, Watson, who \"knows my methods\", reconstructs\r\nthe recent past with one glance at the objects surrounding Holmes\'s sofa:\r\nnewspapers \"evidently newly studied\", lens and forceps so posed that they\r\n\"suggested\" a forensic examination. A mislaid hat, owner unknown, is then\r\nexamined for some 1019 words, one-seventh of the whole, while Holmes performs his\r\nstandard trick. Watson: \"But his wife  -- you said that she had ceased to love\r\nhim.\" Holmes: \"This hat has not been brushed for weeks.\" \r\n <p>\r\n  \r\nThis \"Adventure\", slight but charming, has a festive motif, over a dozen\r\ncharacters, picturesque locations; yet its objects have the greater tenacity, as\r\nwe see through the eyes of its first reader. Sidney Paget, illustrator for \r\n\"The Strand\" magazine, and unsung creator of much of the Holmes iconography,\r\ndepicted above all faces and postures: a criminal stoop, a saturnine smile. His\r\ninteriors are vague pools of light with chairs only as needed, and he dispenses\r\naltogether with the Yuletide scene in the consulting rooms, the roaring fire, the\r\nwindows \"thick with the ice crystals\". The inventory for the story (from which\r\nthe reader who knows Holmes\'s methods may like to deduce the plot) is, in order\r\nof appearance: \r\n \r\n<P>\r\na sofa; Holmes\'s purple dressing-gown; pipe-rack; crumpled morning papers; a\r\nhard-felt hat with \"H.B.\" inside; lens; forceps; *a white goose with a barred\r\ntail; *a card reading \"For Mrs. Henry Baker\"; a brilliantly scintillating blue\r\nstone, rather smaller than a bean in size, found in the goose\'s crop; *a small\r\nmorocco casket; Holmes\'s strong-box; a Scotch bonnet; another goose, identical to\r\nthe first; two glasses of beer; a small thin volume and a great greasy-backed\r\none; a hanging lamp; a sovereign (coin); a four-wheeler cab; basket chair;\r\nHolmes\'s slippers; medicinal brandy; *a villain\'s pipe; *twenty-five further\r\ngeese; a bell for summoning Mrs Hudson, Holmes\'s cook. \r\n<P>\r\nThose items marked with an asterisk appear only in dialogue reporting past events\r\nat which Holmes was not present, and are as such unavailable to Paget (notably 26\r\nof the 27 geese). This leaves 21 possibles, of which Paget\'s six illustrations\r\ninclude exactly two-thirds, omitting only newspapers, strong-box, bonnet, coin,\r\nbeer, cab and bell. The coin and bell are too small, the strong-box, bonnet, beer\r\nand cab would all require a seventh illustration showing a fleeting moment in the\r\ntale, so that only the newspapers are voluntarily omitted: and that because,\r\npresumably, the opening scene is already so cluttered. \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nWe might, to be sure, inventory the same story in a number of other ways. As\r\nclass stratification  -- our middle-class professional men jostle with a\r\nCountess, a jailbird gone straight, an intellectual on his uppers, a barrow boy,\r\nfour servants at varying degrees of respectability; as chronology  -- events are\r\narrayed along five segments of time between 22 and 27 December; as economic\r\nsurvey  -- transactions range from a few pence, via one sovereign, to  L1000; as\r\na geography of barriers in Victorian London. In \"Eccentric Spaces\", his classic\r\nstudy of landscape in the imagination, Robert Harbison remarks of the great\r\ndetective that \"In the distressingly simplest terms, this is the crux of social\r\nlife: getting into other people\'s homes, to which he has found an odd but\r\ngratifying solution\". \r\n <p>\r\n \r\nAnd yet these readings seem peripheral, like the shadowy walls which Paget\r\ndeclined to draw, compared to the objects. Objects serving a metonymic function\r\nare the best clues to the habits of the people inhabiting this story, especially\r\nin clothing, from the purple dressing gown to the hat. At the centre in every way\r\nis an object of desire: the eponymous Blue Carbuncle, sportive (carbuncles are\r\nordinarily red), exotic (from \"the banks of the Amoy River in southern China\"),\r\nprecious (valued by Holmes at  L20,000), sinister (\"Of course it is a nucleus and\r\nfocus of crime. Every good stone is\"), exclusive (the Countess of Morcar reserves\r\nit to herself), sensational (advertisements of a reward for its return have\r\nfilled newspapers for a week), hidden (it is always inside something else, never\r\ndisplayed). This being a comic tale, the stone needs no tracking down and is\r\nalways being inadvertently given away. Holmes finds it in his supper goose, a\r\nparody of the customary coin placed in the Christmas pudding for the children to\r\nfind. He will return it to the Countess as soon as he has deduced how it reached\r\nhim, by running back through previous owners. As for objects interceding between\r\ncharacters, the goose not once but twice appears as a peace offering between\r\ncouples: Mr and Mrs Henry Baker, whose estrangement is such that she no longer\r\ndusts his hat; and at last Holmes and Watson, at a delicate moment since Watson\'s\r\nrecent marriage has obliged them to divide their households. No longer sharing\r\nlodgings, they can at least share beers and a late supper: and there is never any\r\ndoubt that the bird, all the while being plucked and roasted below stairs, will\r\nin the final paragraph \"fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose\". \r\n \r\n \r\n<P>\r\nGraham Nelson <br>\r\nSt Anne\'s College  <br>\r\nUniversity of Oxford <br>',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:28:33',1,10,4205),(34,'Rhetoric of the IF Language itself',3,'',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','0000-00-00 00:00:00',0,17,0),(35,'Repeating Text in IF',42,'Repetition of Text in Interactive Fiction<br>\r\nby Jason Dyer\r\n<P>\r\nThe next day... Poot approached Cat. \"hello,\" Cat said to Poot. \"hello,\" Poot \r\nsaid to Cat. \"hi,\" Cat said to Poot. \"howdy,\" Poot said to Cat. \"hello,\" Cat \r\nsaid to Poot. \"hi,\" Poot said to Cat. \"hi,\" Cat said to Poot. \"hey there,\" \r\nPoot said to Cat. \"hi there,\" Cat said to Poot. \"howdy,\" Poot said to Cat. \r\n\"hi,\" Cat said to Poot. \"hello,\" Poot said to Cat.<br>\r\n    - Laura Mixon, \"Shattertown Sky\"\r\n<P>\r\n    Repetition of text is a problem unique to interactive fiction.  In a \r\nconventional novel, the author chooses the flow of text, but in interactive \r\nfiction the same text is often seen many times due to a save/restore cycle, \r\ndialogue reptition, default parsing, repeated viewings of room descriptions, \r\nor simulationist generation of text.  Here I briefly cover all five, but \r\nfirst a common solution must be addressed:\r\n<P>\r\nThe addition of aleatory elements<p>\r\n    \r\n    Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!<br>\r\n    Are you enjoying yourself?<br>\r\n    Very good. Now you can go to the second grade.<br>\r\n    Do you expect me to applaud?<br>\r\n        - Marc Blank and David Lebling, \"Zork I\" (1980)\r\n<P>\r\n    \"Aleatory text\" simply means setting some random factor so that a piece \r\nof text may be printed differently at different times. The quotes above \r\ndemonstrate one of the first uses of this: are all responses to the verb \r\nJUMP.  It shows up more commonly in parts of works that are considered \r\nfrivolous rather than vital: the JUMP example above, or the seven responses \r\nto XYZZY in Jacob Weinstein\'s \"Toonesia\" (1995).\r\n    \"Aleatory structure\" refers to adding randomness to other aspects of the \r\ngame: for example, the appearance of the dwarf in Crowther and Woods\'s \r\n\"Adventure\" (1977), the thief in \"Zork I\", or the spinning room in \"Zork II\" \r\n(leaving it led to a random direction until the spinning effect was shut \r\ndown).  Since a different situation is presented, quite naturally the text \r\nhas changed, but also the actions necessary to deal with the work itself.\r\n<P>\r\nThe Save/Restore Cycle\r\n<P>\r\nA CHANGE IN THE WEATHER is a cruel game, by the Zarfian Interactive Fiction \r\nRating System. Any choice you make may be a wrong choice, and you may not \r\ndiscover it was wrong until later; and not choosing is always a choice. \r\nTiming may be critical. Save often and keep your old saved games.<br>\r\n        - Andrew Plotkin, ABOUT text from \"A Change in the Weather\" (1995)\r\n<P>\r\n    Timing-critical games such as mysteries and the work quoted above give \r\nthe reader the same text many times not through the regular story flow, but \r\nin continuous saving and restoring.  When a section has been run through many \r\ntimes the actual text becomes mentally omitted and the story becomes reduced \r\nto structure: how do I get past this obstacle, or exactly what time do I hide \r\nto see this suspect?\r\n<p>\r\n    This is a case where adding aleatory text can do more harm than good.  \r\nWhen a player has entered \"structural playing mode\" a change of text with \r\nidentical actions would be disconcerning - did I do something different this \r\ntime? - when there was no real change at all.\r\n<p>\r\n    Aleatory structure here is a much more ambiguous matter, dependent on the \r\nsituation.  If a save/restore cycle is forced because, say, one is having \r\ndifficulty fighting the thief in \"Zork I\" and needs to try a couple times, \r\nbut meets the thief in different locations, the underlying logic behind the \r\nplayer\'s actions still remains.  However, something that represents a \r\nfundamental change in timing - say, moving an important object such that the \r\nplayer has five turns to complete a puzzle rather than the six on last play - \r\nwould be unfair.\r\n<P>\r\nDialogue Repetition\r\n<P>\r\n    >ask bill about thom<br>\r\nBill says, \"I, uh, I\'m really not sure how much longer I can take his \r\nattitude. He\'s been really, ah, annoying lately.\"\r\n<P>\r\n    >ask bill about thom<br>\r\n    Bill says, \"I don\'t, um, really know anything else about it.\"\r\n<P>\r\n    >ask bill about thom<br>\r\n    Bill says, \"I don\'t, um, really know anything else about it.\"<br>\r\n        - Stephen Granade, \"Undertow\" (1995)\r\n<P>\r\n    One of the classic worries of authors of interactive fiction is the \r\nexposure of their NPCs as automons rather than mimetic beings by simply \r\nrepeating the same question over and over.  The above quote demonstrates one \r\nof the solutions, adding a flag to account for a repeated question and giving \r\na different response.  But a repetition of the repetition still gives an \r\nautomated feel - most appropriately the person being questioned would start \r\ngetting annoyed and stop responding, or slap the PC, or wonder out loud if \r\nthe PC has been having too much caffeine.\r\n<p>\r\n    Adam Cadre\'s \"Varicella\" (1999) sometimes has a different approach when \r\nthe flag is set: replying \"You sense little profit in repeating that \r\nquestion.\" But it also has natural responses like:\r\n<P>\r\n\"What can you tell me about the circumstances of your husband\'s demise?\" you\r\nask.\r\n<P>\r\n\"No, no, I don\'t want to think about it anymore, please,\" the Queen says.\r\n<P>\r\nor attempts to rephrase the question:\r\n<P>\r\n    \"Is there anything else you care to say about the King?\" you ask.\r\n<P>\r\n    How deep a concern should this be in reality? Most players realize the \r\nwriter has limits and will only commit such actions intentionally when bored \r\nor stuck with the regular storyline.  Integrating important information into \r\nfurther responses would come across as clever to the reader who notices, but \r\nalso suffer the same problem as puzzles which require examining an object \r\nmultiple times - the medium is expected to respond with an identical answer \r\nso the player doesn\'t know it is accounted for.\r\n<p>\r\n    Also, restricting the question to one display can cause problems in a \r\nlong work if the player is not taking notes.  They may remember their NPC \r\ncompanion had some vital bit of knowledge but become frustrated when they \r\ncan\'t bring it up again because of a \"little profit\" or \"I don\'t know \r\nanything more\" response.  In this case a \"decay\" flag might solve both \r\nproblems - that is, you can\'t ask the same question many times in a short \r\nperiod, but if you ask again later the player gets the information (and \r\npossibly berated by adding a \"you forgot already?\" comment).\r\n<p>\r\n    Aleatory additions to dialogue can end up causing more repetition rather \r\nthan less.  Consider the books in Nate Cull\'s Nevermore (not characters, but \r\nthey demonstrate the same problem).  When a book is read a random segement is \r\ngiven, and to get all the parts of information repeated readings are \r\nrequired.  But due to the nature of random numbers (in the roll of a die a \r\n`1\' may not come up in thirty tries by sheer luck) far more readings than \r\nnecessary are needed just to get all the information, which must then be \r\nrecompiled together.  So in the end the same text will be in practice seen \r\nmany times through the attempt to add variety.  In the same way multiple \r\nresponses to an NPC query (especially if important information is conveyed) \r\nwill force the player to type ASK CHARACTER ABOUT THING far more times than \r\nnecessary.\r\n<P>\r\nDefault message parsing\r\n<P>\r\n    Violence isn\'t the answer to this one.<br>\r\n    - Graham Nelson, Response to ATTACK in the Inform parser library\r\n<P>\r\n    It is literally impossible for a writer to anticipate every reponse a \r\nplayer might put in, so at some the player will invariably receive many \r\ndefault messages in the course of a story, many of them the same.  This is \r\nclearly not a problem with messages that are clearly non-diagetic like \r\n\"That\'s not a verb I recognize.\"  Problems surface when the messages become \r\nfar less neutral, like the (in)famous Inform example quoted above.  What if \r\nthe player isn\'t solving a puzzle? What if the player is solving a puzzle and \r\na violent approach would be a perfectly logical solution but the author never \r\nanticipated it?\r\n<p>\r\n    The most easily apparent workaround would be to make every parser message \r\nneutral, such as \"That\'s impossible.\"  However, a great deal of the character \r\nof a work can be defined by the default messages, such as the Zork series \r\nresponse when eating a rock: \"I don\'t think that the rock would agree with \r\nyou.\"  \r\n<p>\r\n    The problems surface when the messages are situational, that is, the \r\nmessage works well in some situations but not in others.  (And unfortunately \r\ndefined by both the player mindset and the actions in game, so customization \r\ncan\'t simply this that into account.  For example, a player may try hitting a \r\ndoor because they are frustrated in general, or they may try hitting the door \r\nto genuinely try to solve a puzzle.)  So, customizations should take into \r\naccount the overall tone of the work - or the section of the work currently \r\nbeing read - but not attempt to guess the player\'s motivations.\r\n<p>\r\n    Aleatory additions to default messages are for the most part acceptable \r\nsince if the player attempts to see them all it is out of a sense of play \r\nrather than importance to the story.  The only danger here is if neutral \r\nmessages are mixed with flippant messages.  Players who see a \"you can\'t do \r\nthat\" message in attempting BURN on one obejct and a long joke about \r\nflammability attempting the same on another may assume the long joke \r\nindicated they were on the right track and act accordingly.\r\n<P>\r\nRoom descriptions\r\n<P>\r\n    A winding passage disappears to the south.<br>\r\n    A gently sloping trail winds south.<br>\r\n    A doorway to the south winds into a chamber.<br>\r\n    - Spectral Associates, \"Madness and the Minotaur\" (1981)\r\n<P>\r\n    The lines just given are all responses to successive LOOK commands in the \r\nsame room.  That is, the writers almost completely randomized the display of \r\nexits in room descriptions.  The result is a confusing, surreal mess where \r\nthe player ends up ignoring the exit descriptions entirely and losing a sense \r\nof environment.\r\n<p>\r\n    Most authors are not nearly as worried about repetition of room \r\ndescription text.  Pieces may change depending on the change of environment, \r\nbut an element of a room will not be described in three different ways.  This \r\nis partly due to the use of the BRIEF command which allows the player annoyed \r\nby such things to revert to room titles after seeing a full room description, \r\nand partly due to the same structural reduction that happens in a \r\nSAVE/RESTORE cycle - the player will only re-read text when necessary as a \r\nreminder.\r\n<p>\r\n    Repetition becomes a problem in the same manner as parser messages: when \r\ngiven inappropriate to a situation.  Graham Nelson quotes Johnathan Mestel\'s \r\n\"Xenophobia\" (1989):\r\n<P>\r\nOn the wall by the bed is a slightly curved, full-length mirror. You reflect \r\nupon this for a while.\r\n<P>\r\nand mentions the text works on repeated viewings, while \"Astonished to see a \r\nmirror, you leap back\" would not. (Nelson 396)  Both are cases of describing \r\naction in the description: reacting for the player, rather than letting the \r\nplayer react.  The revised version is obviously incorrect, since one would \r\nnot be surprised the fifth time, but why is the first correct? Nelson writes \r\nthat the subtle humor works here, but to this author\'s taste even a good joke \r\nrepeated five times works too much - best would be the technique of using an \r\nextended description for the first (and possibly second) viewing and then cut \r\nback to a simpler form.<br>\r\n    An example of this technique is used in room descriptions which gives \r\nbackground detail, as in Emily Short\'s \"Savoir-Faire\" (2002):\r\n<P>\r\n    The top of a broad curving stair: east is the long salon that goes the \r\nlength of\r\n    the house, downstairs are the foyer and the grand receiving rooms. (You \r\nand\r\n    Marie used to sit up here when the Count had guests, watching them arrive\r\n    downstairs in their magnificent clothing, until you got old enough to be\r\n    introduced yourselves.)\r\n<P>\r\nQuite clearly the parenthetical statement need not be repeated, so in later \r\niterations of the same text it becomes merely:\r\n<P>\r\n    The top of a broad curving stair: east is the long salon that goes the \r\nlength of\r\n    the house, downstairs are the foyer and the grand receiving rooms.\r\n<P>\r\nThe danger in cutting text from description is that important clues that were \r\nmissed the first time through may be removed. Consider this from Stephen \r\nGranade\'s \"Losing Your Grip\" (1998):\r\n<P>\r\nThe building looms to the west, shadowing the path which leads north and \r\nsouth.\r\n    Something on the building catches your eye.\r\n<P>\r\nThe last line (which mentions something vital to the main story) is removed \r\non successive visits to the room so if the player missed it the first time \r\nthey would have a difficult time making progress.  While background material \r\nand jokes can be forgotten it should always be possible for the player to see \r\nimportant objects.\r\n<P>\r\nSimulationist text\r\n<P>\r\nThe new element, called a \"bitsy,\" promises to revolutionize the software \r\nindustry by making it possible to put vast amounts of information onto floppy \r\ndisks.  In the present case, Cognetics has put 3,545 intersections, 94 subway \r\nstations, and 200 landmarks onto two disks.\r\n<P>\r\n    - Mock-up newspaper inside box cover for Thomas Disch\'s \"Amnesia\" (1986)\r\n<P>\r\n    Simulationist repitition often occurs in works where the author wants to \r\nsimulate a realistic number of locations without writing the text for each.  \r\nAs the blurb above demonstrates, \"Amnesia\" attempts to simulate the entire \r\ncity of Manhattan.  As one might expect there isn\'t a great deal of variety \r\nfrom intersection to intersection.  \r\n<p>\r\n    This is handled - at the uninteresting intersections, at least - by \r\ndispensing with a room description altogether.  All that changes is the \r\nintersection name on the status line.  This doesn\'t dispense with repetition \r\nentirely, considering for example the 94 subway stations.  Also, absence of \r\ntext is a repetition of sorts, with the city\'s lack of description making \r\nevery location feel the same.  These consdierations can be boiled down to an \r\ninterface problem; if the city was presented as an above view grid, like in \r\nsome computer RPGs, the empty intersections would become connective tissue \r\nbetween important locations rather than empty waste.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:32:22',1,9,2311),(36,'IF as RPG-like Item',43,'Role-playing in Interactive Fiction\r\nby Magnus Olsson (mol@pobox.com)\r\nversion 1.0 - approx. 3000 words\r\n<P>\r\nEver since the beginning of the genre, it has been a convention in\r\ntext adventure games to address the player in the second person,\r\npresent tense:\r\n<P>\r\n\"You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.\r\naround you is a forest.  A small stream flows out of the building and\r\ndown a gully.\" [adv350]\r\n<P>\r\nAt the time _Advent_ was written, this may have been a natural\r\nchoice: this was long before the advent of graphical user interfaces,\r\nand many programs, especially games, used a \"conversational\"\r\ninterface that addressed the user in a similar way (for example,\r\nseveral of the games in [Ahl], which predate _Advent_ by several\r\nyears, use such an interface).\r\n<P>\r\nHowever, when adventure games are viewed as a branch of literature (or\r\npotential literature), as _interactive fiction_, the convention seems\r\nrather odd. The text in all except the most rudimentary adventure\r\ngames is not just part of a computer interface, but contains actual\r\nnarrative, sometimes continuous \"cut scenes\" several pages long, and\r\nusually conforming to the second-person, present-tense convention. But\r\nwhile present-tense narrative is common in \"static\" fiction, the use\r\nof the second person certainly isn\'t -- in fact, most style guides and\r\nwriting manuals discourage second-person narrative as unnatural and\r\nlikely to alienate the reader.\r\n<P>\r\nWhy is the textual narrative of interactive fiction (at least\r\nin the sense of text adventure games) different from that of static\r\nfiction in this aspect, while it is so similar in many other ways? Is\r\nthe use of the second person just a convention, an historic accident,\r\nthat has survived due to the power of example and the intertia of the\r\nIF community? Or is there some more fundamental reason for this?\r\n<P>\r\nOne answer -- at least a partial answer -- to this question is given by\r\nthe following observation: while second-person, present-tense\r\nnarrative may not be the natural choice for telling a story, it feels\r\nquite natural in role-playing situations. In fact, the interaction\r\nbetween _Advent_ and its player is quite similar to that between\r\nplayer and game master (GM) in a role-playing game such as _Dungeons\r\nand Dragons_ (_D&D_ [ref]) -- more about that below. This\r\ninterpretation is supported by the fact that one of _Advent\'s_\r\nauthors, Will Crowther, cites _D&D_ as a source of inspiration for\r\n_Advent_ [interview].\r\n<P>\r\n### footnote\r\nIt should be noted that this form of interactive role-playing is not\r\nlimited to RPGs, and predates them by many years, occuring in many\r\ncases where one person is asked to put himself in somebody else\'s\r\nshoes, for example in examination situations:\r\n<P>\r\n\"\'You are close-hauled on the port tack, Mr. Hornblower, beating up\r\nchannel with a nor-easterly wind blowin hard, with Dover bearing\r\nnorth two miles. Is that clear?\'\r\n\'Yes, sir.\'\r\n\'Now the wind veers four points and takes you flat aback. What do you\r\ndo, sir? What do you do?\'\" [Forester, C.S., _Mr. Midshipman Hornblower]\r\n<P>\r\nThis is of course a fictional account, not an actual transcript of an\r\n18th-century Royal Navy examination, but it predates RPGs with 00\r\ndecades, and the interaction between examiners and examinee quite\r\nnaturally takes a form very similar to the interaction between\r\n_Advent_ and its player.\r\n### end footnote\r\n<P>\r\nOf course, even if we accept that the convention of second-person,\r\npresent-tense narrative originates in role-playing, there may not be\r\nany deeper significance to it than the fact that Crowther modeled the\r\ninteraction on _D&D_; perhaps other IF authors simply followed his\r\nexample, establishing a convention which is simply followed by\r\ntradition. However, there may also be deeper connections: perhaps\r\nmost IF uses conventions derived from role-playing because\r\nrole-playing aspects are somehow essential for the genre.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the following, we will work from this assumption, exploring some\r\naspects of role-playing in IF.\r\n<P>\r\n***\r\n<P>\r\nSome notes on terminology\r\n<P>\r\nAbove, we used the term \"text adventure game\" to describe games such as \r\n_Advent_. This term is often considered too narrow to discuss works that \r\nmay not be very game-like at all,\r\n<P>\r\n### Footnote:\r\nThis depends, of course, on the definition of \"game\" (a point to which\r\nwe will return later). It is a fact, however, that non-gamers tend to\r\ndismiss games as of no literary value. \"How can it be interative\r\n_fiction_ if it\'s just a game?\"\r\n### End footnote\r\n<P>\r\nand whose subject may not be very \"adventurous\". We may also want to\r\ninclude works that are generally not considered to be adventure games\r\n(such as \"Choose your own adventure\" books (CYOAs) or computer\r\nrole-playing games (CRPGs) in our discussion.\r\n<P>\r\nOn the other hand, the term \"Interactive fiction\" is too general for\r\nthe purposes of this essay, including any kind of fiction where the\r\nreader can in some way influence the content. It also apparently\r\nmeaning quite different things to different people, as witness the\r\nsometimes quite heated discussions on rec.arts.int-fiction about which\r\ntopics are appropiate for the newsgroup.\r\n<P>\r\nWe will therefore propose a new term, \"First-person Interactive\r\nFiction\", or FIF for short. The term does not refer to the fact that\r\nthe narrative are written in the first person -- as mentioned above, the\r\nsecond person is most common -- but that, as in \"first-person shooter\"\r\ngames, the player sees the story world through the eyes of a\r\ncharacter in the story, and controls the actions of that character.\r\n<P>\r\nThe category of FIF includes almost all text adventure games, as well\r\nas other IF which uses a similar interface (but where the \"game\" label\r\nis not considered appropriate), as well as CYOAs, works that mix text\r\nadventure interface with arcade-game elements (such as _TextFire Golf_\r\n[ref]) and, possibly, some computer RPGs (CRPGs). It excludes\r\ngraphical adventure games, as well as \"Z-machine abuses\" such as zlife\r\n[ref].\r\n<P>\r\nAs a convention, the terms \"game\" and \"player\" will be used for works of\r\nFIF and their audience, even when gamelike elements such as score and\r\npuzzles are absent or toned-down. The term \"static fiction\" is used for \r\nfictional texts that are not interactive, i.e. novels, short stories\r\netc.\r\n<P>\r\nThe term role-playing game (RPG) will be used primarily to denote\r\naround-the-table role-playing games such as D&D, as opposed to\r\nCRPGs or live RPGs.\r\n<P>\r\n***\r\n<P>\r\nThe narrator as gamemaster -- interaction in FIF\r\n<P>\r\n### This section undergoing revision\r\n<P>\r\n***\r\n<P>\r\nRole-playing in FIF\r\n<P>\r\nSo far, we have seen that the interaction in FIF is modeled on, or at\r\nleast similar to, that in an RPG. This raises the question if this\r\nsimilarity is more than skin deep: is the player of an adventure game\r\nactually role-playing? \r\n<P>\r\nFor some works of FIF, the answer seems to be an obvious yes: in these\r\ngames, there is a very well-defined player character (PC) and all the\r\nplayer\'s actions are required to conform to this character\'s\r\npersonality; the player is required not only to solve puzzles (unless,\r\nof course, the game is of the \"puzzleless\" variety), but to solve them\r\nin the manner the PC would solve them.\r\n<P>\r\nIn most FIF, however, the situation is not so clear-cut.  While most\r\nmodern works tend to define the PC\'s personality in some way, they are\r\ngenerally not very strict about forcing the player\'s action to conform\r\nto that personality. And in many cases, most notably early adventure\r\ngames such as _Advent_ and _Zork_ [ref], leave the PC as a total\r\nblank, the notorious \"nameless adventurer\".\r\n<P>\r\nBut even in these cases, the player is playing a role. Even if the\r\ngame does not explicitly tell the player to assume a different\r\npersonality, it puts her in a different situation, with different\r\nabilities and responsibilities than in real life. In the Lieutenant\'s\r\nexamination, Mr. Hornblower is not role-playing a different person,\r\nbut himself in command of a ship in a certain situation. Similarly,\r\nthe CS freshman playing a game of _Zork_ may think of the PC as\r\nherself -- but it is probably a rather different \"self\" than her\r\neveryday personality, capable of taking on murderous trolls and\r\ncyclopes in hand-to-hand combat, picking up everything that is not\r\nnailed down with no qualms about other\'s property, and -- not least -\r\nbeing physically able of tirelessly carrying all this loot around in\r\na huge cave.\r\n<P>\r\nA work of FIF creates a model world and asks the player to put herself\r\nin the place of a character in that world. In well-written FIF, the\r\nplayer is not just controlling the player character (as in many other\r\ntypes of games), and not just identifying with her (as in static\r\nfiction), she is playing the role of that character; within the game,\r\nshe _is_ that character.\r\n<P>\r\nThis means that FIF has at least the potential to grip the reader in\r\na way that static fiction has not: the readers of a novel, or the\r\naudience of a play, may have witnessed a tragic hero make a disastrous\r\ndecision, seen a knight vanquish a dragon, or watched a detective\r\nsolve a crime; the player of a piece of FIF has actually made the fateful\r\ndecision, defeated the dragon, or arrested the murderer herself. This\r\nhas been called \"catharsis by complicity\"; in a sense, the author\r\nmakes the player his accomplice in making the protagonist\'s choices. \r\n<P>\r\nA powerful example is the initial scene in _Photopia_ [ref], where the\r\nimpact of the inevitable catastrophe is made so much stronger but the\r\nplayer\'s futile attempts to avert it.\r\n<P>\r\n***\r\n<P>\r\nCharacterization and role-playing \r\n<P>\r\nThe role-playing in FIF is unusual in one aspect: usually, the role\r\nis defined in advance, and one tries to play the role accordingly. In\r\nFIF, however, the role is usually defined only partially, if at all,\r\nat the start of the game, and one learns about the role while playing\r\n- as in static fiction, the protagonist is characterized by his\r\nactions, by what he says and thinks, by his interactions with other\r\npeople. In static fiction, the reader is basically a spectator,\r\nhowever much she identifies with the protagonist, and even if the\r\nstory is written from the protagonist\'s point of view. In FIF,\r\nhowever, the reader is actually playing the part of the protagonist\r\nand is not just a witness to the categorizing events or actions; they\r\nhappen to _her_. The role-playing aspect means that FIF has the\r\npotential to make identification with the protagonist a deeper, more\r\nactive process than in static fiction; the player not only has to\r\nfeel _with_ the protagonist, but _as_ him.\r\n<P>\r\nProvided, of course, that it is done well. Any characterization\r\nintroduced after the very start of the game has a risk of colliding\r\nwith the player\'s perception of the role she is playing. Players\r\ndislike being told what they (or their character) feel or think -\r\nespecially when it doesn\'t match their perception of the character -\r\nideally, the player should be _made_ to feel or think a certain way;\r\nthe interactive equivalent of \"show, don\'t tell\". Forcing or\r\nprohibiting a certain action has a risk of making the player feel\r\nrailroaded, and in extreme cases reduces the interactivity to the\r\npoint that the player could just as well just be pressing PageDown\r\nto scroll through a static text.\r\n<P>\r\nWhen they work, however, these techniques are very effective. The\r\nplayer can be made to feel the same way as the character by letting\r\nthe text describe the character\'s perceptions. (An interesting\r\nexample is _Heroes_ [ref], where each of the multiple PCs sees the\r\nworld in different ways, notices different things, and has different\r\nmethods of problem solving.)\r\n<P>\r\nRestricting the actions available will not be a problem if the player\r\nalready feels that the restriction is natural for the character. And\r\nthe player will not have to be forced to perform a certain action if\r\nshe feels that this action is the only natural thing to do for the\r\ncharacter. (As an example, Adam Cadre\'s _Varicella_ [ref] makes a good\r\njob of turning even normally peaceful players into scheming,\r\nMachiavellian murderers, and the fact that many actions are blocked by\r\nthe PC\'s sense of aesthetics -- \"That would be unseemly\" -- feel\r\nentirely in character.)\r\n<P>\r\nThe player doesn\'t necessarily have to be made to _want_ to do a\r\nforced action, or to not want to do a forbidden one. In _Rameses_\r\n[ref], the neurotic protagonist\'s hang-ups prevent him from doing the\r\nthings both he and the player would want to do; but these hang-ups\r\nare entirely in character, and the resulting frustration of the player\r\neffectively conveys the protagonist\'s sense of frustration.\r\n<P>\r\nIt should be noted that the above applies not only those works of FIF\r\nthat have well-characterized PCs, but also -- although to a lesser\r\nextent -- to those which leave the PC a blank, or put all the\r\ncharacter definition in an infodump at the beginning. All FIF puts\r\nsome limitations on what the PC can do, for example blocking actions\r\nas out of character -- \"Violence is not the answer\". In fact, it can\r\nbe harder to restrict actions in such FIF: if the protagonist is not\r\ndefined, why suddenly forbid the player to do something by referring\r\nto the PC\'s ethics?\r\n<P>\r\nOne can of course ask the question whether a piece of FIF should try\r\nto force the player to play in character, according to the author\'s\r\nconception of the PC. Perhaps the player would prefer to role-play\r\na different character? In a sense, a game that makes no attempt at\r\ncharacterization of the PC could give the player such freedom -\r\nassuming that the player really had freedom of choice; trying to play\r\n_Zork_ as a pacifist who refuses to kill would not be very rewarding,\r\nsince the player would never progress beyond the troll room. As\r\nmentioned before, there is also the problem of writing a good story\r\nwhere the protagonist has no personality.\r\n<P>\r\nAn interesting possibility would be to allow the player some freedom\r\nin role-playing the PC, and use the player\'s choices to define the\r\ncharacter in the story. If the player lets the PC act heroically at\r\none occasion, the PC will not only be treated as a hero by NPCs, but\r\nthe game will expect the player to play the role in a heroic style in\r\nthe future as well -- non-heroic actions will be disallowed, for\r\ninstance. To some extent, this can be done by allowing the storyline\r\nto branch, depending on key actions, but as the number of branching\r\npoints increases the complexity of the game will grow exponentially.\r\n<P>\r\nAdam Cadre\'s _I-0_ [ref] does a similar thing on a smaller scale:\r\nthe game allows the player to role-play the PC, Tracy Valencia, in\r\ndifferent ways, corresponding to alternative solutions to\r\ncharacter-interaction puzzles, but the choices influence only a\r\nsub-plot in the game, not the entire story; it is possible to be\r\ninconsequent and display different personalities in different\r\nsituations. Which, after all, is perhaps more realistic than\r\nconsistency. \r\n<P>\r\n****\r\n<P>\r\nRole-playing as the essence of FIF\r\n<P>\r\nGiven that it is the role-playing aspect of FIF that allows both\r\ncatharsis through complicity and characterization through\r\nrole-playing, it seems as it is essential to FIF, both as an art form\r\nand as a game\r\n<P>\r\n### Footnote: \r\nPerhaps this is a fundamental reason for why certain types of \r\npuzzles -- such as the _Towers of Hanoi_ and chess problems -- are\r\ngenerally considered to fit badly in adventure games: they bypass the\r\nsimulation, and appear aimed at the player rather than at the player\r\ncharacter. When solving the babelfish puzzle in _HHGTG_ [ref], I am\r\nrole-playing Arthur Dent solving the puzzle, because all the puzzle\r\nelements work through the simulation, not around it. On the other\r\nhand, unless it is very well integrated in the game, a chess problem,\r\ncryptogram, or weighing puzzle will force me to cease roleplaying, and\r\nspend some time on the puzzle rather than on the adventure game.  It\r\nnot merely breaks mimesis (\"Why on earth do I have to solve a chess\r\nproblem to open the safe?\") but it breaks immersion in a much more\r\nfundamental way.\r\n### End footnote\r\n<P>\r\nand it is this that sets FIF apart from other forms of interactive\r\nfiction. (It is of course possible to create interactive\r\nfiction without role-playing elements.  For example, one could write\r\na story about a seafaring explorer in the age of sail, where the\r\nreader controls the weather, and the story changes depending on how\r\nthe winds carry the explorer across the map; such a story would be\r\nfiction, and it would be interactive, but it would not be\r\nrole-playing.)\r\n<P>\r\nTogether with the discussion of game-player interaction above, this\r\nindicates that regarding IIF, and perhaps IF in general, as a\r\ngeneralization of static literature is missing important aspects of\r\nthe medium. Prose is an important part of IIF; it is used to convey\r\ninformation, moods, emotions. Character development, dramaturgy,\r\nplot, structure can be analyzed and developed using techniques from\r\nstatic fiction, as well as from drama and film. But concentrating on\r\nthe text, regarding a work of IIF as a story generator, carries the\r\nrisk of ignoring the dynamics of interaction between the player, the\r\nmodel world and the player character; aspects that are perhaps better\r\ndescribed in terms of gaming. \r\n<P>\r\nA problem is, of course, the associations of games with frivolity, and\r\nwith competition; \"this is just a game, how could it be art?\"  Perhaps\r\na new terminology of serious, non-competitive \"games\" is needed. Or\r\nperhaps what is needed is an acceptance among non-gamers that the\r\nconcept of game is wider than generally thought; that games can in\r\nfact be serious, non-competitive and aim at catharsis rather than a\r\nplace on the high-score list. This author\'s personal view is that the\r\nevolution of modern IIF shows precisely this: rather than IIF moving\r\naway from its origin in adventure games towards art, it is the games\r\nthat have become an art form.\r\n<P>\r\n## End article',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:33:26',1,19,2971),(37,'The Influence of Genre on Puzzle Formulation',44,'GENRE AND PUZZLE FORMULATION\r\n============================\r\n<P>\r\n[Draft -- Neil Yorke-Smith]\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nINTRODUCTION\r\n<P>\r\nConsider: Why have more works of interactive fiction -- markedly more --\r\nbeen set in a fantasy or science fiction milieu than any other?  Why does\r\nthe central puzzle of \"Spider and Web\" (Plotkin, 1998) succeed when it\r\nwould fall flat in \"Winter Wonderland\" (Knauth, 1999)?  What differences\r\nare found between IF works of, for instance, historical romance and\r\nLovecraftian horror?  In short, what is the influence of genre and what is\r\nits effect on the formulation of puzzles?\r\n<P>\r\nAny typology of puzzles in IF, however careful the theoretical foundations,\r\nremains no more than a dry classification if we neglect the interactive\r\nelement of the medium.  Montfort\'s definition of a puzzle as \"a challenge\r\n[...] that requires a non-obvious set of commands in order to be met\"\r\n(Theory, \'Puzzles and Their Solution\') is designed to be independent of\r\nauthor and interactor: we \"should be able to determine what is and is not a\r\npuzzle simply by studying the IF work in question\".  This granted, it is\r\nthe experience of meeting the challenge -- though it may differ from one to\r\nthe next -- that is significant to the interactor.  The experience with the\r\nEnigma machine in Nelson\'s \"Jigsaw\" (1995) and with the navigational\r\ncomputer in Lebling\'s \"Starcross\" (Infocom, 1982) make the two quite\r\ndifferent, despite the many similarities shared by the two machines in an\r\nabstract typology of puzzles.\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort argues that viewing IF works as riddles can bring together the\r\nliterary and puzzling aspects.  If the formulation of the puzzles, and the\r\ninteractor\'s experience of them, is central on the one hand, then the\r\nnature and style of the narrative is central on the other.  By Montfort\'s\r\ndefinition, the simulated world -- described in the literary aspect and the\r\nsetting of the puzzling aspect -- is essential to interactive fiction; we\r\nsuggest that the milieu of that world has bearing on the construction of\r\nthe riddle.  So we come to the question of genre and its influence on\r\npuzzle formulation.\r\n<P>\r\nThe Enigma machine in \"Jigsaw\" is a fine example.  Unmotivated, the machine\r\nis a formidable, tedious challenge which caused some to wish for respite\r\n(Thornton).  However, in the setting of World War II and motivated by the\r\nlarger plot, on the retracing of historical necessity, \"I found myself\r\nthinking, `If Turing and Newman could do it, then surely I [...] can do it\r\ntoo!\'\" (Rees, Jigsaw).  Whereas the puzzle is natural, if difficult, in the\r\nsetting, a Nazi encryption machine would sit unhappily in a fantasy work.\r\n(Which is not to say incongruous and unmotivated, even tedious puzzle\r\nelements are unknown in IF fantasy works: take the anachronistic battery\r\ndispenser in \"Adventure\" (Crowther, c.1975; Crowther and Woods, 1976).)\r\n<P>\r\nTo address our central question, we first examine genre and puzzles in IF\r\nseparately.  Second, we ask what genres are conducive to the puzzling\r\naspect of IF and what effect the milieu can have on the success of a work\r\noverall.  Third, we conclude with a case study and some wider reflections.\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nGENRE IN INTERACTIVE FICTION\r\n<P>\r\nCasual use of \'genre\' in relation to IF is schizophrenic: the word is used\r\nto refer to the medium of IF as a whole, as well as to \"a particular kind\r\nor style of art or literature\" (Oxford English Dictionary).  Even in\r\nNelson\'s \"The Craft of Adventure\", an early and thoughtful exposition of\r\ncraft, we find \"the genre [i.e. interactive fiction] is still going strong\"\r\n(par.1) and \"the best of even the tiniest games [...] make up a variety of\r\ngenres [i.e. kinds of literature]\" (par.4).  Rightly, we suggest, \"IF is a\r\nmedium, and not a genre\"; just as \"[n]ew genres come and go all the time,\r\nin other media\", so \"[t]here are different genres of IF -- detective IF,\r\nsci-fi IF, etc.\" (Weinstein).\r\n<P>\r\n\'TableSaw\', writing critically on raif, observes:\r\n<P>\r\n    Classification of works is very important [for] it gives potential\r\n    viewers a chance to identify similar works by identifying key traits\r\n    that are similar to them.  In addition it can help authors by providing\r\n    a framework within to place their story.  It can provide an assumed\r\n    context to provide implicit information to a reader.  And it provides a\r\n    basis for comparing works. [...] [C]lassifications must come from\r\n    careful examination and dialogue about works already made, rather than\r\n    either trying to create categories and then fit pieces into them.\r\n<P>\r\nIn short, classification is to be descriptive not prescriptive.  As such,\r\nany classification of IF works will be subjective to some degree -- what\r\ngenre is \"Jigsaw\": historical? time-travel fantasy? romance? -- just as no\r\nhistory of the Roman Empire is entirely complete or objective.  Literature\r\nlike history, moreover, has many characteristics by which to classify.  The\r\nencyclopaedic \"Baf\'s Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive\"\r\n(Muckenhoupt) indexes works a dozen ways, including by attribute (\'third\r\nperson voice\', for instance), while a call to classify a set of\r\nhighly-rated works by the editor of the fanzine SPAG (O\'Brian,\r\nClassification) yielded ten disparate responses, including the abrupt\r\n\"They\'re all games!\" (Schmidl).\r\n<P>\r\nUnanimity, all would agree, is unattainable.  But just as Gibbon\'s \"Decline\r\nand Fall of the Roman Empire\" has become the history to measure against, so\r\nMuckenhoupt\'s \"Baf\'s Guide\" is the canonical reference to freely-available\r\nIF.  Muckenhoupt classifies works into 21 genres, from \'Adaption\' to\r\n\'Western\', via \'Horror\' and \'Seasonal\'.  The graph in Figure 1 shows\r\nthat fantasy, RPG and science fiction dominate the field of IF works.\r\nOf the rivals to Muckenhoupt, we note the genre classification in the\r\n\"Z-Files Catalogue\" (Baum), the selection by populariser Britton, and a\r\nlist by Short based on attributes (Literacy).  For commercial works, while\r\nnot a classification, \"Adventureland\" (Persson and Meier) is impressively\r\ncomplete.\r\n<P>\r\n [Figure 1 about here]\r\n<P>\r\nSeveral reasons have been advanced to explain the dominance of fantasy and\r\nscience fiction among IF works.  Historically, not least, \"Adventure\"\r\n(1976) and \"Zork\" (Anderson, Blank, Daniels and Lebling, 1979) had fantasy\r\nsettings, which many early works thought nothing of borrowing, along\r\nwith much else.  Of the 35 works published by Infocom (which we take as\r\n\"Zork I\" (Blank and Lebling, 1980) to \"Arthur\" (Bates, 1989)), 17 might be\r\nclassified in the science fiction or fantasy genres.\r\n<P>\r\nSpeculative fiction -- fantasy and science fiction -- as a rule appeals to\r\nthose who take interest in IF, it has been argued; they enjoy \"similar\r\ntarget audiences\" (Plotkin, qtd. in deMause; see also Giner-Sorolla).  So\r\nIF author Cull:\r\n<P>\r\n    IF attracts a more technologically minded kind of author.  You don\'t\r\n    even think about writing stories that interact, that are very\r\n    mechanical, unless you\'re in love with the machine. [...] And because\r\n    it\'s a very young, offbeat, cultish medium, you\'re likely to get\r\n    creatively minded people -- people who look at the world and see not\r\n    what is, but what might be.  The sort of people who like speculative\r\n    fiction.\r\n<P>\r\nA third reason for the prevalence of fantasy and science fiction is the\r\nunreality of the genres; the magic, if we will.  Again, in part, this\r\nfacilitates the suspension of disbelief that makes IF an escape from the\r\nreal world, for both author and interactor: \"Much of real life is not fun,\r\nand much of what makes a game fun is highly unrealistic\" (Baggett,\r\nSetting).  But Silcox, noting that hackneyed fantasy settings can be as\r\nhum-drum as a simulation of a modern apartment, argues for works that\r\nengender \"de-familiarization\", so that real life might be seen afresh.  He\r\ncites Sunset over Savannah (Cockrum, 1998), \"which simulates with amazing\r\npsychological accuracy and a surprisingly high level of suspense the\r\nthoughts of a fairly average middle-aged man [...] trying to decide whether\r\nor not to quit his job\".\r\n<P>\r\nThe magic goes further, though, for it allows the author to impose his own\r\nlogic on the simulated world.  The prologue in \"Trinity\" (Moriarty,\r\nInfocom, 1986) is set in the very real Kensington Gardens, London [1]; the\r\nmiddle-game spans various surreal worlds.  In the latter we can hardly say,\r\n\"but that\'s not how life works!\" when the rules are made by him and told to\r\nus.  Perhaps too the magic lends itself to narratives more suited to the\r\nstrengths of IF, a point we must return to later.\r\n<P>\r\nFifthly, speculative fiction can result in works \"easier for amateurs [...]\r\nto write (not write _well_, just to write), and since most IF writers are\r\namateurs not [as Moriarty] professionals, we pick the easy choice\" (Cull).\r\nNewell, similarly, advocates that since the fantasy genre requires less\r\nresearch than some others, it is more conducive to the amateur not willing\r\nto go to the lengths Moriarty did for the end-game of \"Trinity\" (Rigby), or\r\nthat Nelson, though an amateur, did for \"Jigsaw\" (\"On Jigsaw and \'I\'\",\r\npar.5; DM4 365).\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nPUZZLES AND CHALLENGES\r\n<P>\r\nTheorists debate what defines interactive fiction as a medium and\r\ndistinguishes it from other forms of cybertext such as (electronic) CYOA\r\n(Aarseth; Lenssen; Montfort, Theory; Short, IF); with authors and\r\nfans alike they discuss what are the strengths and short-comings of the\r\nmedium.  Recurrent in the debate is the role of puzzles.  While the degree\r\nwill vary, there must arguably be *some* interaction in an IF work to\r\ndistinguish it from mere blocks of text separated by a \"MORE\" prompt; and\r\nhere puzzles have a leading role: \"Without puzzles, or problems, or\r\nmechanisms to allow the player to receive the text a little at a time [...]\r\nthere is no interaction\" (Nelson, DM4 382).\r\n<P>\r\nHere are authors Andrew Plotkin and Lucian Smith: \"A puzzle is a mechanism\r\nfor focusing the player\'s attention\"; \"[O]ne of the main purposes of a\r\npuzzle is to involve the player in the story more\" (both qtd. in deMause),\r\nand here is theorist Jerz: \"A puzzle in IF is, in one sense, a management\r\ntool to separate \'movements\' in the overall plot\" (Puzzles).  Thus, in\r\naddition to Montfort\'s definition as challenge met by non-obvious set of\r\ncommands, we have puzzles as source of interaction and as means of narrative\r\nadvancement.\r\n<P>\r\nThese additional perspectives suit our present purpose.  We are not seeking\r\nto answer the difficult question of what, formally, is a puzzle, any more\r\nthan we seek to give a taxonomy.  Montfort states \"[t]here is no\r\nrequirement that a puzzle\'s challenge relate to any other elements of an IF\r\nwork in order for it be a puzzle\", but equally in our discussion we will\r\nwant to consider interaction that by Montfort does not constitute a puzzle.\r\nIndeed, a work can be puzzleless -- all the challenges are met by obvious\r\nsets of commands -- but still, we suggest, the work must have challenges to\r\nbe considered IF.  The demarcation line and works along the border, such as\r\nFinley\'s \"Life on Beal Street\" (1999) will be debated as the frontiers of\r\nthe Roman Empire were contested.\r\n<P>\r\nA poor puzzle is regarded as one whose solution is non-obvious to the\r\nextent that a telepathic connection to the author is required to meet the\r\nchallenge (deMause).  In contrast,\r\n<P>\r\n    A good puzzle, in my mind, is no puzzle. [...] [T]he puzzles should be\r\n    transparent.  Getting onto the benchtop in \"A Bear\'s Night Out\" [(Dyte,\r\n    1997)] is a good example of this; getting back into your house in \"A\r\n    Good Breakfast\" [(Adair, 1997)] is not.  Puzzles shouldn\'t be\r\n    \'puzzles\', but rather situations that must be resolved to further your\r\n    goals.  (Greenwood)\r\n<P>\r\nNotable is that the puzzles in Dyte\'s work, which won a XYZZY Award for\r\nBest Setting, are based on the limitations of a teddy bear, for the large\r\npart, whereas Adair\'s work has \"artificial puzzles [...] thrown in for\r\ntheir own sake\" (Stevens, Breakfast).\r\n<P>\r\nLucian Smith defines a puzzle as \'satisfying\' if it gives the interactor\r\npleasure when solved, and as \'pertinent\' if it relates to the plot as a\r\nwhole (qtd. in deMause).  Greenwood\'s point is that better puzzles will be\r\nboth satisfying and pertinent: the challenge makes sense in the narrative,\r\nthe solution advances the plot (Nelson, DM4 394), and the whole is part of\r\nthe atmosphere of the work (Jerz, Puzzles).  Did Dyte succeed here and\r\nAdair not because of the settings they chose?\r\n<P>\r\nGiner-Sorolla\'s influential essay \"Crimes Against Mimesis\" argues for\r\npuzzles that maintain, enhance even, mimesis.  Pertinent puzzles are more\r\nsatisfying, he contends, and he is supported in this by seasoned IF authors\r\nreflecting on the craft: \"[A puzzle] should be logical, according to the\r\nlogic of the game\'s universe\" (Meretzky, qtd. in Hochberg); \"[T]he puzzles\r\nshould arise integrally from the milieu of the game\" (Rees, Design).  For\r\nexample, the best puzzles in \"Scapeghost\" (?Mike, Pete and Nick Austin,\r\nLevel 9, 1989) arise from the difficulty the PC, a murdered police officer\r\nreturning as a ghost, has in interacting with the material world.\r\n<P>\r\nGiven, then, that a work \"should have a coherent fictional world and its\r\npuzzles should be seamlessly joined to the textual fabric, appearing to\r\noccur naturally\" (Nelson, DM4 365), might we call such puzzles \'organic\'?\r\nIf so, are genres more conducive to organic puzzles better suited to\r\ninteractive fiction?  To this question we now turn.\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nORGANIC PUZZLES\r\n<P>\r\nPlotkin\'s celebrated \"Spider and Web\" is a tale of espionage.  The\r\nturning point for the interactor is a moment of intuition: in\r\nreconstructing past events under interrogation, the PC has woven a\r\nfabrication.  His unreliable narration deceives the interrogator.  The\r\npuzzle lies in the interactor perceiving the truth (hinted subtly\r\nthroughout) and, at the critical moment, using this knowledge to escape; it\r\nis both satisfying and pertinent (Chung).  Plotkin won the XYZZY Award for\r\nBest Puzzle, among others.  Besides his evident mastery of the craft, he\r\ndemonstrated a puzzle organic to its setting; it hardly would have worked\r\nin a children\'s fairy story.\r\n<P>\r\nThe experience of interacting with an IF work is that we \"get to *meet*\r\nthe people and *live* the events\", we feel \"*responsible* for [the PC\'s]\r\nactions\" (Baggett, Simulations).  If, as we suggest, this interactivity\r\nis achieved through the puzzles (in the broad sense), then, other things\r\nbeing equal, those genres amenable to better puzzles may be expected to be\r\nmore successful: as narratives more immersive, as crosswords more\r\nsatisfying.  This is not to say any genre cannot be the setting for a\r\nsuccessful IF work, merely that some may be more amenable than others.\r\nIF centred on psychological drama, for example, is decidedly difficult to\r\nwrite well, but Bond\'s \"Rameses\" (2000) uses non-interactivity to its\r\nadvantage.\r\n<P>\r\nAmenability to puzzles is aided, firstly, by genres whose organic puzzles\r\nrender naturally in the IF world.  Hence, one reason for the popularity of\r\nspeculative fiction, in addition to those we saw earlier, is that these are\r\n\"genres of exploration and action,\" to which \"the modelled world of IF\r\nlends itself very nicely\" (Short, Private).  Jerz\'s essay on exposition in\r\nIF argues for \'live, don\'t tell\': \"The IF player is supposed to live the\r\nstory [...] Exposition that relies this heavily on narration -- on\r\n\'telling\' -- is awkward in IF\" (Exposition).\r\n<P>\r\nTake the romance genre, territory well-explored in static fiction, where\r\nthe PC\'s feelings are central to the narrative.  Much easier it is to walk\r\nthrough a landscape as it is explored than communicate the emotion of the\r\nPC.  Only one Infocom work, \"Plundered Hearts\" (Briggs, 1987), is a\r\nromance, and much of the romantic interest, though well-written, is told in\r\ncutscenes, not shown, and still less lived.  Later attempts in the genre\r\nhave emphasised the narrative, with varying success: Huang\'s \"Muse\" (1998),\r\nFischer\'s \"Masquerade\" (2000), Ingold\'s \"My Angel\" (2000).  Besides\r\nIngold\'s, the other works all feature developed PCs in a historical\r\nsetting; Ingold\'s is notable for its \'novel mode\'.  The crossword struggles\r\nin the romance [2].\r\n<P>\r\nIn view of Jerz\'s essay, his own \"Fine Tuned\" (2001) becomes most \r\ninteresting.  Although subtitled \"An Auto-mated Romance\", the work is more\r\na comedy:\r\n<P>\r\n    [Jerz] dares -- and manages to pull off -- a number of pieces of\r\n    *participatory* comedy, which is much harder to pull off than just\r\n    writing a bunch of funny lines that always show up. [...] *I* had to\r\n    make the joke happen, or rather, the author had to set things up such\r\n    that I *would*  (Cadre)\r\n<P>\r\nHere is \'live, don\'t tell\' in practice.  And as Baggett emphasises \r\n(Simulations), it is powerful.  Brian Moriarty on \"Trinity\":\r\n<P>\r\n    You could just feel the weight of history on you. [...] I just wanted\r\n    people to feel that weight on them when playing the game. [...] It\'s\r\n    nice to know that interactive fiction could do that, make you feel\r\n    uncomfortable about killing things.  (qtd. in Rigby; see also Buckles\r\n    127-29)\r\n<P>\r\nSecondly, in some genres -- mystery and adventure especially -- the organic\r\npuzzles are readily \'found\'.  Cadre defines a \"found puzzle\" as one that\r\n\"derive[s] from the story\" (qtd. in deMause), while Plotkin gives his first\r\nrule of puzzles as, \"The world you\'ve created creates the puzzles\" (Happy).\r\nIn static fiction, works in these genres \"from Poe\'s \'The Gold Bug\' on, can\r\ncapably integrate set-piece puzzles into the overall mimetic goals of the\r\nstory\" (Giner-Sorolla, par.3).  It is not overly surprising, therefore,\r\nthat the mystery was the first genre beyond speculative fiction explored by\r\nInfocom, beginning with \"Deadline\" (Blank, 1982).  Blank later wrote,\r\n\"[M]ost people, when they read mysteries, are constantly trying to think\r\nahead, what happened. [...]  So, it seemed to lend itself perfectly.\"\r\n(qtd. in Greenlee).\r\n<P>\r\nWriting in the New York Times Book Review, and clearly enthusiastic about\r\n\"Deadline\", Rothstein links the success of Infocom\'s early work to their\r\nchoice of genres, \"the worlds of popular fiction -- the detective story,\r\nscience fiction, adventure and fantasy.  These genres define worlds with\r\ntheir own logic; they pose lucid questions and possess clear narrative\r\neasily adaptable to a computer\".  Less is this so for the romance, we might\r\nadd.  Dyer reports \"Infocom people [...] joke[d] about the idea of a\r\nromance series; somehow the moves don\'t seem appropriate to a computer\r\nkeyboard\"; Briggs\'s \"Plundered Hearts\", the sole Infocom work authored by\r\na woman, was the exception to prove them wrong.\r\n<P>\r\nThirdly, amenability to organic puzzles can be aided when the interactor\r\nand characters in the work share parallels in their knowledge acquisition;\r\nMyers cites Callaci\'s \"Dangerous Curves\" (2000) as an example.  The most\r\nextreme situation, the cliche\'d IF amnesia opening, is \"nearly identical to\r\nthe premise upon which so many detective stories and film noirs open\"\r\n(Arnold, reviewing \"Gumshoe\" (Oliphant, 1996), in which we have both).  If\r\nthis, together with the found puzzles, makes the mystery suited to IF in\r\nprinciple, then the difficulty lies in the execution.  \"Deadline\" has its\r\nshare of bugs (Aarseth 115-27; Cree) and Infocom\'s subsequent \"Suspect\"\r\n(Lebling, 1984) was harrowing to test (Lebling).  \"[T]he mystery genre\r\ndemands extremely rigorous testing\" (Rees, Undertow).\r\n<P>\r\nAll three points come together in the horror genre, such as in Finley\'s\r\ndark \"Babel\" (1997), a deeply suspense-filled work.  Although, like\r\nromances, there is emotion to convey, it can be done through living and\r\nshowing: foreboding in the world, terror from shadows glimpsed; organic\r\npuzzles (\"how do I escape the cellar?\") can arise from story and world; and\r\nthe PC\'s realisation of the nature of things can mirror the interactor\'s\r\nown.  But horror, more so than speculative fiction, relies on proper\r\npacing, which by nature is harder to ensure in the IF medium.  Perhaps this\r\noffers an explanation for the reliance in IF horror on building suspense\r\nthrough the modelled world.  Lovecraftian \"Anchorhead\" (Gentry, 1998)\r\nexcels here; like \"Babel\", its puzzles are organic and woven into the plot.\r\nAuthor Gentry analyses the genre in detail in \"IF and the Horror\r\nGenre\" (IFTB).\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nHUMOUR\r\n<P>\r\nRothstein goes on to note that Infocom \"tempers [their works] with\r\nirreverent wit\".  The tradition of humour in IF, like the commercial boom\r\nin the medium in the early \'80s, extended beyond Infocom (though the witty\r\nnarrator responses in \"Zork\" and descendents was unconsciously most\r\nlater echoed in Nelson\'s Inform library).  Besides speculative fiction and\r\nalongside \'Adaptation\', \'Humour\' is the next largest category on \"Baf\'s\r\nGuide\".  The works can be divided into three groups: satire and parody,\r\nsuch as the many Zork pastiches; jokes, for instance \"Pick Up the Phone\r\nBooth and Aisle\" (Bauge et. al., 2001); and mainstream comedy.  Like\r\n\"Fine-Tuned\", the latter will come under some other genre as well:\r\nInfocom\'s two most famous, \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy\" (Adams\r\nand Meretzky, 1984) and \"Leather Goddesses of Phobos\" (Meretzky, 1986), are\r\nscience fiction and spoof 1930s space opera respectively.\r\n<P>\r\nAs in worlds where he can dictate the logic, so the author has increased\r\nfreedom if he is allowed to exaggerate and parody -- even break mimeses.\r\nHe enjoys the \"bulletproof bracelets of satire and ridicule\" (O\'Brian,\r\nFrenetic).  This said, humour for its own sake is a fine thing, of course.\r\nMoriarty\'s \"Wishbringer\" (Infocom, 1985), for example, tempers horror with\r\ncomedy to yield a well-judged work.\r\n<P>\r\nHumour, moreover, can soften the edge of puzzles that block the\r\ninteractor\'s progress through a work: \"If a game is funny even while I\'m\r\nbanging my head against the wall, I\'ll keep playing.  If not, I\'m probably\r\ngone\" (Cadre, qtd. in deMause; see also Coleman).  A case in point is\r\n\"Fish!\" (Molloy et. al., Magnetic Scrolls, 1988), a parody of a British\r\nsecret agent; \"Fish!\" is a delight to interact with, despite fiendish\r\npuzzles.  Nelson observes that it is no coincidence that sarcastic narrator\r\nresponses \"are often jibes at the player\'s progress\" (DM4 373).  Sufficient\r\nwit can even -- almost -- compensate for a poor implementation, as in the\r\nnotorious early revisions of \"Fine-Tuned\".\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nADAPTATIONS AND LITERARY WORKS\r\n<P>\r\n>From the earliest days of interactive fiction, other works -- in static\r\nfiction, in film and (in due course) in IF -- have given inspiration.  The\r\n\"Dungeons and Dragons\" role-playing game influenced Crowther (Peterson\r\n187-88), while Woods recalls in an interview, \"I had read Tolkien, but I\r\ndidn\'t consciously use it as a model for anything\" [3].  Tolkien\'s powerful\r\nmyth undoubtedly inspired much early IF, directly as well as indirectly.\r\nNelson records that the first IF book adaptation as \"Lord\" (Paavola, c.1980)\r\n(DM4 347); Melbourne House produced faithful adaptations of both \"The Hobbit\"\r\nand \"The Lord of the Rings\".\r\n<P>\r\nScience fiction too was at once a source, and in due course book\r\nadaptations were undertaken (Dewey; Nelson DM4 351; Randall), the most\r\nfamous and assuredly most successful being \"The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the\r\nGalaxy\".  Interestingly, here is Adams\'s co-author Meretzky:\r\n<P>\r\n    My criteria [for a successful adaptation] would be things where the\r\n    book(s) or movie(s) creates a rich universe with lots of possibilities\r\n    for stories that aren\'t necessarily the one told in the original book\r\n    or movie.  For example, I think that\'s why Hitchhiker\'s was such a\r\n    successful game, and why it got better further in the game, when we\r\n    diverged more from the scenes of the original story line.\r\n<P>\r\nWhile some professional writers like Adams have dabbled in IF (DM4 352-5),\r\nstraight book adaptations are difficult.  Besides the issues of copyright and\r\nlinearity, a novel is too long (DM4 366-7; Randall 186).  Instead,\r\nborrowing the world, as Meretzky suggests, has been more fruitful: Nelson,\r\nfor example, acknowledges (367) his close and literary adaption of\r\nShakespeare\'s \"The Tempest\" (1997) is inferior to \"Avon\" (Partington,\r\nTopologika, 1982), a \"confection\" that takes puzzles from many of\r\nShakespeare\'s plays.  Similarly, works that have set their story in the\r\nworld of Sherlock Holmes or Alice in Wonderland have faired better than\r\nthose that have sought to adapt the story outright.\r\n<P>\r\nCult fiction accounts for a good chunk of the \'Adaptation\' category on\r\n\"Baf\'s Guide\".  Tolkien adaptations and the ilk aside, Stevens regards\r\nliterary adaptation as an underpopulated IF genre (Nevermore).  If setting\r\nand possibilities rather than plot are sought, then poetry can be as\r\nsuitable as novel or film: Cull freely took inspiration from Poe\'s \"The\r\nRaven\" for \"Nevermore\" (2000).  Even nursery rhymes can be adapted, as\r\nCallaci demonstrated with \"Mother Loose\" (1998); and arcade games too: \"IF\r\nArcade\" (Cadre et. al., 2001).\r\n<P>\r\nLiterature comes to IF by a second, more original means.  Published author\r\nMichael Berlyn brought a literary edge to the medium (with others, be it\r\nsaid) when he joined Infocom, not just in his works -- \"Infidel\" (Berlyn\r\nand Fogleman, Infocom, 1983): \"consciously literary ends\", \"clearly a\r\nplotted novel\" (Nelson DM4 355) -- but in opening the way for moral and\r\nrhetorical questions and studied allusion and allegory.  Hence the weighty\r\nthemes and chosen quotations in \"Trinity\", and the evocative symbolism of\r\n\"So Far\" (Plotkin, 1996); Randall considers literary IF works and concludes\r\nthat \"interactive fiction allows the reader to partake, first-hand, of a\r\nnew literary world, and the unfolding of that world is continuous, even if\r\nthe plot is not\" (190).\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nDIMINISHING GENRE\r\n<P>\r\nSimmering beneath our discussion, like rumours of Nero fiddling, is a\r\nquestion distilled by Nelson: \"Today\'s designers are not always so definite\r\nin keying a game to an established genre of fiction [as those prior to the\r\nIF renaissance]\" (DM4 354); the trend is \"of shorter stories moving away\r\nfrom genres\" (342).  True enough, early authors, particularly Scott Adams,\r\ndeliberately explored well-defined genres, whereas later IF authors -- with\r\nestablished confidence in the medium -- inclined towards stronger\r\nnarratives, able to stand without supporting themselves with an explicit\r\ngenre (\"Photopia\", Cadre, 1998), and towards exploring the boundaries and\r\nexpectations of the medium (\"Spider and Web\").  Both are trends of\r\nmaturity.\r\n<P>\r\nNevertheless, Nelson continues, \"the first decisions remain to choose the\r\nstyle, the mood, [...] and above all the fictional world of which the story\r\nitself will remain only a part\" (DM4 354).  Therefore, just as we have\r\nconsidered a broader definition of puzzle than Montfort\'s, we do well to\r\ninclude setting and milieu in our broader discussion of genre.  Not all\r\nworks of static fiction fall into a tidy \"genre fiction\" category; nor will\r\nall works of interactive fiction.  Douglas and Hargadon suggest the\r\nattractions of genre and \'non-genre\' fiction divide between \"immersion\" (in\r\na familiar world) and \"engagement\" (with literary works); whether\r\nconsciously adopting a genre or not, interactive fiction can span both.\r\nFurther, classification into genres has value even for literary works with\r\nsubtle milieus, as we see in static fiction with cases like Stephenson\'s\r\n\"Cryptonomicon\" [4].\r\n<P>\r\nTake Plotkin\'s \"Hunter, in Darkness\" (1998), which won XYZZY Awards for\r\nBest Setting and Best Individual Puzzle.  It appears to be a hackneyed cave\r\ncrawl, complete with maze -- a genre exhausted ten years prior.  But \"the\r\ncave is as much your adversary [as the prey]\" (in the tradition of\r\nCrowther, using the environment as an organic puzzle), the maze requires no\r\nmapping (a good thing, since it is infinite), and \"the plot branches and\r\nrejoins so seamlessly that you\'re unlikely to notice that there are\r\nmultiple ways through the game\" (Stevens, Hunter).  In conclusion, Plotkin\r\nsubverts the genre assumptions and exploits the medium, and so \"breathes\r\nnew life into a very tired genre, no small feat\".\r\n<P>\r\nMichael Kinyon, a seasoned interactor with IF, picks up this theme,\r\npreferring works that make a \"genuine attempt to push the limits of a genre\r\nfor aesthetic effect\" (qtd. in Forman).  Likewise, Stevens identifies the\r\ngenre \"bait-and-switch\", encountered for instance in \"Trinity\" and \"Once\r\nand Future\" (G. Kevin Wilson, Cascade Mountain Publishing, 1998)\r\n(Break-In).  The genre twist is a descendent perhaps of the\r\nreality-to-fantasy transition of \"Adventure\" (1976) and \"Zork\" and many\r\nworks since, including \"Curses!\" (Nelson, 1994) and \"The Mulldoon Legacy\"\r\n(Ingold, 1999).\r\n<P>\r\nSome genres have been overdone, to be sure: the cave crawl, stock fantasy,\r\ncollegiate and apartment settings (the latter two often in order to render\r\nthe author\'s environment in the modelled world; the result often drives\r\nhome Baggett\'s point that much of real life is not fun).  But other genres,\r\nsome strongly suited to IF according to our discussion so far, have been\r\nneglected: historical and pseudo-historical settings, those from specific\r\ncultural traditions, literary adaptations, the thriller and the western,\r\ncyberpunk and super-hero milieus.\r\n<P>\r\nThe last, the super-hero, comic-book genre, is a good example.  The author\r\ncan yield to the urge to make the PC an action hero; the super-hero powers\r\nand escapades give rise readily to organic puzzles; the comic-book\r\ncircumstances provide authorial freedom; the potential for comedy (or\r\nsatire) is inherent.  Here, concurring, is O\'Brian, who would go on to\r\nwrite \"Earth and Sky\" (2001): \"if it\'s a great power fantasy to watch some\r\ncomicbook character shoot fire out of his hands, how much greater to\r\nactually play the character that does it!\" (Frenetic).  Genre, in the broad\r\nsense, has as big an impact on IF as it ever has done.\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nCASE STUDY: BABEL\r\n<P>\r\nIan Finley entered \"Babel\" into the Third Interactive Fiction Competition.\r\nThe year, 1997, saw some excellent works (first place was Smith\'s \"The\r\nEdifice\").  Finley\'s tale of experimentation gone awry in an Antarctic \r\nresearch lab combines science fiction and horror; and it was\r\nplaced highly, and deservedly so.\r\n<P>\r\n...\r\n<P>\r\n\r\nCONCLUSION\r\n<P>\r\nWhen crafting interactive fiction, the genre is crucial.  It influences how\r\namenable the narrative will be to the medium, how easily organic puzzles\r\nwill arise, and how much freedom the author will enjoy.  \"If the chosen\r\ngenre [and milieu] isn\'t fresh and relatively new, then the game had better\r\nbe very good.  It\'s a fateful decision: the only irreversible one\" (Nelson,\r\nCraft par.4).  We have examined some outstanding examples across different\r\ngenres, seeing commonality in puzzles integrated into both setting and\r\nplot.\r\n<P>\r\nSome genres are more popular than others.  We have looked at why fantasy\r\nand science fiction are so frequent choices and highlighted other genres\r\ncrying out for more attention.  As it has matured, IF has given rise to\r\ngenres distinctively its own (`TableSaw` identifies \"Zarfian\" works); some,\r\nlike word-play -- \"Nord and Bert Couldn\'t Make Head or Tail of It\" (Jeff\r\nO\'Neill, Infocom, 1987), \"Ad Verbum\" (Montfort, 2000) -- would struggle in\r\nanother medium.  Indeed, the genre is still going strong.\r\n<P>\r\n\r\n<P>\r\nFOOTNOTES\r\n<P>\r\n[1] The present author sits writing not five minutes distant from the\r\npark.  He can vouch for the strict absence of magic, despite the statue of\r\nPeter Pan.\r\n<P>\r\n[2] Not entirely, of course: there is the extended duet in \"Jigsaw\" (where,\r\ninterestingly, the PC and NPC \'Black\' are carefully gender-neutral); and\r\nShort\'s \"Pytho\'s Mask\" (2001) -- her entry in her own SmoochieComp --\r\nwas nominated for Best Individual Puzzle.\r\n<P>\r\n[3] He continued, \"Even the description of the volcano, which some writers\r\nhave claimed was modelled after Mount Doom, was written with no particular\r\nvision in mind\".\r\n<P>\r\n[4] It follows that we contend against Montfort when he writes\r\n\"[classification] does have just about nothing to do with the craft of IF\"\r\n(Classification): the evidence presented in this essay suggests just the\r\nopposite.\r\n<P>\r\n\r\n<P>\r\nWORKS CITED\r\n<P>\r\nAarseth, Espen.  Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature.  Baltimore,\r\nMaryland: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997.\r\n<P>\r\nArnold, Julian.  \"Gumshoe (review)\".  SPAG 9 (1996). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG9>.\r\n<P>\r\nBaggett, David.  \"Re: Simulations (was Re: Choosing your IF setting /\r\ngenre).  27 May 1994.  rec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID:\r\n2s5is7INN5k9@life.ai.mit.edu>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Re: Choosing your IF setting / genre\".  30 May 1994.\r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: 2sbdakINNbh1@life.ai.mit.edu>.\r\n<P>\r\nBaum, Michael.  The Z-Files Catalogue.  22 Jul 1999.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.la.utexas.edu/~pdl/zmach/ZCatalogNF.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\nBritton, Suzanne.  The Best of Interactive Fiction.  2002.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.igs.net/~tril/if/best/index.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nBuckles, Mary Ann.  \"Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame\r\n\'Adventure\'\".  Ph.D. Thesis.  U. Cal at San Diego, 1985.\r\n<P>\r\nCadre, Adam.  \"Adam\'s Comp01 reviews\".  15 Nov 2001.\r\nrec.games.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: 9t26oa$hqg$1@drizzle.com>.\r\n<P>\r\nChung, Adrian.  \"Spider and Web (Specifics)\".  SPAG 22 (2000).  2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG22>. \r\n<P>\r\nColeman, Douglas W.  \"Language Learning Through Computer Adventure Games\"\r\nSimulation & Gaming 21 (1990): 433, 8p.\r\n<P>\r\nCree, Graham.  The Upgraded, Consolidated, Infocom Bugs List.  Undated.\r\nXYZZYnews.  2 May 2002 <http://www.xyzzynews.com/infocombugs.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nCull, Nate.  Interview.  SPAG 13 (1998).  2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG13>.\r\n<P>\r\ndeMause, Neil.  \"IF Roundtable: The Art of the Puzzle\".  XYZZYnews 14\r\n(1998): 12-28.  Available online <http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.14g.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nDouglas, Y. and A.B. Hargadon.  \"The Pleasure Principle: Immersion,\r\nEngagement, and Flow\".  ACM Hypertext 2000 Conference\r\nProceedings: San Antonio, TX (2000).\r\n<P>\r\nDyer, Richard.  \"Masters of the Game\".  The Boston Globe Magazine 6 May\r\n1984.  Available online <http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/globe84.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nForman, C.E.  \"Interview with a Player Extraordinaire\".  XYZZYnews 13\r\n(1997): 5-10.  Available online <http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.13d.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nGentry, Michael.  \"IF and the Horror Genre\".  IFTB.\r\n<P>\r\nGreenlee, Steven.  \"Where Are They Now?\".  Computer Game Review Apr\r\n1996: 82-88.  Available online\r\n<http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/where.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nGreenwood, Bruce.  \"Re: What is a good puzzle?\".  22 Aug 1998.  \r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: 35deb4be.2762660@news.ozemail.com.au>.\r\n<P>\r\nHochberg, Burt.  \"They Take The High-Tech Road to Adventure\".  GAMES\r\nMagazine, Aug/Sep 1987.  Available online\r\n<http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/games87.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nJerz, Dennis G.  Interactive Fiction -- Puzzles.  2 May 2000.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/Puzzles.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  Exposition in Interactive Fiction.  15 Jul 2001.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.uwec.edu/jerzdg/orr/articles/IF/online/exposition.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\nLebling, Dave.  \"They\'re Never Satisfied\".  The New Zork Times 3.4 (1984):\r\n2.  Available online\r\n<http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/NZT/Nztfal84.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nLenssen, Phillip.  \"CYOA\".  IFTB\r\n<P>\r\nMeretzky, Steve.  Interview.  May 2001.  Happy Adventuring.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.avventuretestuali.com/Interviste/Original/steve_meretzky.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\nMontfort, Nick.  \"Re: A classification exercise\".  17 Mar 2000.\r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: ?>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction\".  IFTB\r\n<P>\r\nMuckenhoupt, Carl.  Baf\'s Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive.\r\n2 May 2002.  2 May 2002 <http://www.wurb.com/if/>.\r\n<P>\r\nNelson, Graham.  \"On Jigsaw and \'I\'\".  XYZZYnews 6 (1995): 5-10. \r\nAvailable online <http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.6e.html>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"The Craft of Adventure: Five Articles on the Design of\r\nAdventure Games\", 2nd ed.  19 Jan 1995.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  The Inform Designer\'s Manual, 4th ed. (release 4/2).  St.\r\nCharles, Illinois: The Interactive Fiction Library, 2001.  Available\r\nonline <www.inform-fiction.org/manual/DM4.pdf>.\r\n<P>\r\nNewell, Bob.  \"Re: Choosing your IF setting / genre\".  20 May 1994.\r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID:\r\n9405192133592.bnewell.DLITE@delphi.com>.\r\n<P>\r\nO\'Brian, Paul.  \"The Frenetic Five vs. Sturm Und Drang (review)\".  SPAG 13\r\n(1998).  2 May 2002 <http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG13>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"A classification exercise\".  16 Mar 2000.  rec.arts.int-fiction.\r\n<Message-ID: ?>.\r\n<P>\r\nPersson, Hans and Stefan Meier.  Adventureland.  Dec 2001.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/>.\r\n<P>\r\nPeterson, Dale.  Genesis II: Creation and Recreation with Computers.\r\nReston, Va: Prentice Hall, 1983.\r\n<P>\r\nPlotkin, Andrew.  Interview.  Aug 2001.  Happy Adventuring.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.avventuretestuali.com/Interviste/Original/andrew_plotkin.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\nRandall, Neill.  \"Determining Literariness in Interactive Fiction\".\r\nComputers and the Humanities 22.3 (1988): 183-191.\r\n<P>\r\nRees, Gareth.  \"Distinguishing Between Game Design and Analysis\".\r\nXYZZYnews 6 (1995): 22-26. Available online\r\n<http://www.xyzzynews.com/xyzzy.6g.html>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Undertow (review)\".  SPAG 8 (1996). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG8>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Jigsaw (review)\".  SPAG 9 (1996). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG9>.\r\n<P>\r\nRigby, Paul.  \"From Here to Trinity...and Back Again\".  Adventure Probe,\r\n5.5 (1991): 15-19.  Available online\r\n<http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/moriarty.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nRothstein, Edward.  \"Reading and Writing: Participatory Novels\".  The New\r\nYork Times BOOK REVIEW 8 May 1983.  Available online\r\n<http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Articles/nyt83.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nSchmidl, Gunther.  \"Re: A classification exercise\".  16 Mar 2000.\r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: ?>.\r\n<P>\r\nShort, Emily.  IF Literacy: Recommended Playing List.  22 Dec 2001.  2 May\r\n2002 <http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/literacy.htm>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Re: Abstract for IF theory book\".  Email to the author.  30 Jan 2002.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"What\'s IF?\".  29 Nov 2001.  2 May\r\n2002 <http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/whatsif.html>.\r\n<P>\r\nStevens, Duncan.  \"A Good Breakfast (review)\".  3 Jul 2000.  Baf\'s Guide.  \r\n2 May 2002 <http://www.wurb.com/if/game/329>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Break-In (review)\".  SPAG 21 (2000). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG21>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Hunter, in Darkness (review)\".  17 Jul 2000.  Baf\'s Guide.  \r\n2 May 2002 <http://www.wurb.com/if/game/483>.\r\n<P>\r\n---.  \"Nevermore (review)\".  SPAG 23 (2000). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG23>.\r\n<P>\r\n`TableSaw`.  \"Re: classification again (was Meta-Puzzle)\".  18 Mar 2000.\r\nrec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID: 8aulmj$e84$1@nnrp1.deja.com>.\r\n<P>\r\nThornton, Adam J.  \"Jigsaw (review)\".  SPAG 8 (1996). 2 May 2002\r\n<http://sparkynet.com/spag/backissues/SPAG8>.\r\n<P>\r\nWeinstein, Jacob Solomon.  \"Re: Is IF art? (was Re: Gareth\'s competition\r\ncomments)\". 18 Oct 1995. rec.arts.int-fiction.  <Message-ID:\r\n463d09$8ms@castor.usc.edu>.\r\n<P>\r\nWoods, Don.  Interview.  Jun 2001.  Happy Adventuring.  2 May 2002\r\n<http://www.avventuretestuali.com/Interviste/Original/don_woods.htm>.',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:35:22',1,8,5637),(38,'IF as Propaganda',31,'I. Introduction\r\n<P>\r\nIt has been argued that, in theory, interactive fiction should be able to do anything that static fiction can do, as static fiction amounts to interactive fiction that consists of one move (>READ STORY) and more interaction should enrich the storytelling experience, not limit it.  The merits of that proposition can be debated, but there\'s certainly substantial truth in it, and it follows that most of the techniques and subjects that can be usefully employed or explored in the realm of static fiction should be adaptable to interactive fiction.\r\n<P>\r\nOne area of static fiction for which there are, thus far, few or no analogues in IF is argument or propaganda (the latter generally construed as a pushier and less nuanced form of the former but not a different animal as such).  Examples of the form in static fiction include Orwell\'s 1984, Solzhenitsyn\'s Cancer Ward, or Rand\'s Atlas Shrugged.  Most static fiction that makes an argument doesn\'t function solely in that capacity, of course, but in each of the above examples a position of some complexity is staked out.  Can IF do the same?  Theoretically, there\'s no inherent reason why not, but the potential IF propagandist should be aware of potential limitations on the form, many of which apply to static fiction as well.  Fiction as argument lends itself better to certain types of arguments than to others, and recognizing what kinds of arguments are best made through fiction, whether static or interactive, will likely make both for a more effective argument and for better IF. At the same time, however, the nature of IF allows for storytelling that in some ways is well suited to argument, as the player is capable of directing the story in multiple directions, and the author accordingly has the power to characterize those directions as more or less positive, depending on how they fit into the argument.  The trick, of course, is to not only communicate what the author thinks, but to communicate it in a way that tends to persuade.\r\n<P>\r\nIn the first section, I discuss common types of argument, and the structure of each such type.  The second section discuss specific examples of IF that has attempted certain forms of argument, and the third section examines some considerations and potential pitfalls in attempting to persuade through IF.\r\n<P>\r\nII. Categories\r\n<P>\r\nArgument in fiction may be generally stated as that which attempts to persuade the reader of the truth (or falsity) of some proposition external to the work itself; that Dickens convinces me in Tale of Two Cities that Sydney Carton is at bottom a good man does not make that novel an argument for that principle.  The French Revolution, however, does (did) exist outside the novel, and to the extent that Dickens attempts to convince the reader of something about the French Revolution, the book functions as an argument.  In that case, the argument, depending on one\'s view of the novel, might be that the Revolution began as a middle-class uprising and was coopted by radicals, or it might be that political revolutions tend to victimize those who have supported them most loyally, or it might be something else entirely.\r\n<P>\r\nOne common type of argument is policy-based: this or that program or policy should be adopted or eliminated because it will achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.  In fiction, this might be done by simply dramatizing the effects of the policy or system in question, whether good or bad, and dystopias-1984 among them-are one of the best-known forms (though some dystopias are better than others about explaining what it was that set off the downward spiral and how the causal chain worked).  Dystopia has been attempted in IF, but not often; Infocom\'s A Mind Forever Voyaging is probably the best-known example.  A similar type of argument in a different time frame is the historical argument: effect A was the result of cause B, not cause C, which led to effect D but not to E or F.  Again, fiction tends to do this by dramatizing the causes and effects in question: Tale of Two Cities is arguably a case in point, as are the Shaara novels depicting the American Civil War.  IF, to my knowledge, has not attempted an argument of this nature, though some aspects of Jigsaw-in which the player labors to prevent history from being altered-come close, in that they implicitly posit that history as we now know it depended on a certain event. (In that most of the events are obvious historical turning points, it\'s not a particularly daring argument, and even when they\'re not the game doesn\'t really spell out an argument about why those events changed the course of history.)\r\n<P>\r\nPhilosophical arguments, by contrast, tend to depend less on factual results and more on the inherent merits of a principle or idea: generally, the point in a philosophical argument is that some principle is sufficiently important that it trumps other admittedly important principles.  To some extent, Daniel Ravipinto\'s Tapestry was an argument of this type: the game gave you three options that could plausibly be connected to emphasis on different principles, let you choose one of them, and dramatized why the author thought that two of the choices were suboptimal.  Stephen Granade\'s Losing Your Grip similarly made a pitch for a certain principle, albeit in a rather indirect way.  Religious arguments can take either form: they can argue for a factual proposition that underlies a certain religious belief (the existence of God, say, or the truth of a certain historical narrative central to a given religion), or they can argue for a value proposition (that the existence of evil is consistent or inconsistent with the notion of a just God).\r\n<P>\r\nWhat is the importance of this distinction? Simply that fiction is generally better suited for arguments that advocate general value propositions than arguments from factual evidence, as fiction, almost by definition, is directed toward single instances rather than comprehensive treatments.  If your policy argument is that a welfare system is good because it helps more people than it harms, it\'s simply too easy to paint a portrait of people being helped by such a system, and the reader is liable to think that the game hasn\'t proved a thing.  If your historical argument is that the Treaty of Versailles led directly to World War II, it\'s too easy to paint fictional scenes illustrating the progression (angry destitute German workers voting for the Nazis, etc.).  An argument that a welfare system is good because a society\'s profoundest moral obligation is to its poor, however, could well be done through fiction in general and through IF in particular; portraying the importance of such a system in a particular instance can illustrate society\'s obligation, and the author need not demonstrate that the scene portrayed is perfectly typical.\r\n<P>\r\nIII. Examples\r\n<P>\r\nCertain types of arguments are often made primarily through one mode or the other, but not invariably so, and Tapestry is a prime example. There, the game gives you the chance to relive certain key moments in your life, and poses the question: is it better to (1) undo your choices, (2) make the same choices and accept culpability for the harm done, or (3) make the same choices and (essentially) reject the urge to feel guilty.  As mentioned, there are philosophies, or at least ideas, that can be roughly equated with each of those approaches: the first is vaguely humanist, the second is stoic, the third could be described as a notion of self-actualization (one that appears to value highly the making of choices and sticking by them). (Tapestry confuses things considerably by associating the first path with Lucifer and the second two with the Fates of Greek mythology-somewhat sensibly in the case of the second path, not so sensibly for the first and third.)\r\n<P>\r\nThe game favors the third option rather emphatically, but it does so by piling bad consequences on the first two options, which amounts to stacking the deck. If the player takes the first path, he or she doesn\'t actually do much good for anyone by changing the choices at issue, it turns out; lots of bad stuff happens anyway, it just happens to be slightly different bad stuff. The author is free to make that argument in the context of the game, but it has nothing to do with a value proposition that goes beyond the game; to the extent that the game can be taken as an assertion that any such attempts to undo the consequences of one\'s actions are ultimately futile (even in a non-supernatural context), it\'s a highly questionable assertion.  It would, in other words, be easy enough to set up a factual scenario where revising your choices led to unambiguously better results; with hindsight, in fact, that would appear to be the more natural conclusion.\r\n<P>\r\nThe favoring of the third over the second path is slightly less fact-dependent, as the game makes the case that the way the protagonist handles his choices is more important than the choices themselves-but the deck is still stacked to some extent, as the choices amount to handling those choices either really poorly or reasonably well.  That is, there\'s an argument to be made against simply rejecting guilt outright, which seems to be the course the author favors; the protagonist might instead decide to accept guilt and view it as a necessary consequence of making mistakes, a reminder that helps him avoid the mistakes in future.  Guilt might drive him to be a better person, make better decisions.  Here, though, the alternative to rejecting guilt is being completely racked with guilt to the point where self-hatred consumes your life, which doesn\'t make for a particularly nuanced argument.\r\n<P>\r\nAll of this doesn\'t make Tapestry a bad game as such-it functions reasonably well as an exploration of moral decisionmaking.  Forcing the player to make the PC\'s choices is sometimes genuinely wrenching.  But it does not work as an argument, even on the game\'s own contrived terms: it\'s hard to imagine anyone being convinced by Tapestry that, even if one had the chance to change things, it\'s better to leave key life decisions the way they were, let alone (if this is a fair real-life analogue) refusing to undo a decision that appears to have turned out badly.  The major premise of that argument, that things will turn out badly anyway, is simply an assumption-unfalsifiable, under the circumstances, but pretty strongly counterintuitive.  The game\'s other argument, about guilt, is no more persuasive: while it turns on a value proposition rather than on a factual assumption, it oversimplifies that proposition to the point of meaninglessness.\r\n<P>\r\nEqually ineffective, though for different reasons, is the argument in A Mind Forever Voyaging, where the protagonist is a computer asked to explore the future.  A prominent politician has proposed a Plan to cure the nation\'s social ills, and a researcher has managed to simulate the future as it would be under the Plan and commissioned you to go explore the simulation.  It turns out, of course, that everything goes to hell under the Plan, and so I suppose you could say that the game serves as an argument against the substance of the Plan (which amounts to a somewhat more draconian version of law-and-order proposals popular with conservative American politicians), though I hasten to add that this argument probably wasn\'t primary among the game\'s intentions.  To the extent that it does so serve, though, it\'s a thoroughly ineffective argument, as the game makes no attempt to convince the player that the simulation is accurate; insofar as the player is later asked to act on what he or she has experienced, the game more or less asks the player to take it on faith that the simulation is being fair.  (I half-expected a twist at some point whereby it would be revealed that Plan opponents had stacked the deck.)  Moreover, obviously, it\'s impossible to argue cause-and-effect on this scale; there\'s no good way of making the case that the law-and-order plan led to the social implosion that the game describes.  The argument therefore hinges primarily on the game hurling certain facts at the player-the simulation is accurate, the policies in question are the primary cause of a certain result-which raises the question, for a skeptical player, about whether those facts tell the whole story.  (In a science fiction story, naturally, they don\'t.)\r\n<P>\r\nCould the argument about law-and-order policies have been made more effectively as IF? Not in ways that resemble AMFV, probably, but there are other ways.  A depiction of a newly built prison, for instance, where first-time offenders are indoctrinated into a criminal culture during their unjustly long sentences-or a portrayal of the deterioration of the first-time offender\'s family during that same prison term.  An account of the trial of one such offender, as represented by an incompetent and overworked public defender.  A story in which the offender is along for a ride with his bad-influence buddies and ends up taking the rap along with them.  Most of these stories take a representative case rather than attempting to make a case about all of society, as in A Mind Forever Voyaging, and in these examples the facts are sufficiently commonplace-I doubt anyone would argue that those things don\'t happen with some regularity-that no one would argue that the plot was concocted solely to serve the argument.  The point is to make an argument about generally accepted or commonplace facts without having to prove exactly how common they are; if your argument turns on the (unprovable) notion that a certain percentage of imprisoned first-time offenders emerge from prison as hardened criminals, it\'s unlikely to work as IF.  If, however, it arises more from the value judgment that rehabilitative efforts are a better investment of society\'s resources than more prisons (as illustrated by, say, a parallel story about an offender in a less punitive state), then it might have a shot.\r\n<P>\r\nCould this work for religious arguments as well? Religion is something of a special case, as the scope of the argument tends to be immense; if the game sets out to argue that a certain religion\'s view of the world is true (and, by implication, that the views of other religions, to the extent they are inconsistent, are false), and it attempts to make its case by portraying the world, it has an awful lot of ground to cover.  Charges of deck-stacking in these cases are virtually inevitable, and Jarod\'s Journey, a piece of Christian IF entered into the 2000 competition (which announced its intentions up front, stating that the game \"will hopefully get you and Jarod closer to God\") was criticized for precisely those reasons (and many others as well).  To be fair, Jarod\'s Journey\'s take on Christianity was so simplistic that it barely qualified as an argument: the player was given a few options to take, and was periodically told whether the author approved of the player\'s choices.  To the extent that the result was supposed to persuade the player of the merits of Christianity (by modeling a Christian\'s decisionmaking), while it was spectacularly ineffective, it did attempt to make a case for a proposition; the problem was that the proposition (the truth of Christianity) was too vast to argue coherently.\r\n<P>\r\nHow could it have been done?  Perhaps, rather than presenting the entire worldview as a fait accompli, by taking certain aspects of the Christian understanding of the world (or those of another religion) and embedding them in a fictional setting, as the Chronicles of Narnia did.  I.e, the major figures and events in the religion\'s central story might have analogues in the fictional world, and the player could be encouraged to view those characters and events in the same way as adherents of the real-life religion do. (I\'m told that one of the few works of IF to deal with religious themes, The Legend Lives!, did something similar, though I have not played that game.)  The result is likely to be a fairly watered-down argument, however; a reader can perfectly be well enjoy or be moved by Narnia (or, I suspect, The Legend Lives!) without becoming any more convinced that certain religious beliefs are true, or even (in theory) realizing that the author had any particular beliefs.  Transposing religious beliefs into fiction does avoid the problem of requiring the player to accept propositions external to the game, though, and as such it may be the safest approach.\r\n<P>\r\nA more fruitful approach to religious argument in IF might be to confine the argument to propositions internal to the faith, in which case, of course, the external propositions could be assumed to be true.  Such a game might, for instance, question the extent to which a certain practice really comports with doctrine by forcing the player to justify his or her actions to a skeptical NPC.  Alternatively, the game, by portraying a God who decrees certain practices or wills a certain state of affairs as inconsistent with how God is generally pictured within that faith (damning unbaptized infants, say, and coming across as less than loving), might make the point that the practice or state of affairs is in tension with the larger picture.  In either case, the focus is on a value proposition and its consistency with a larger system of beliefs, not on proving facts.\r\n<P>\r\nIV. Other Considerations\r\n<P>\r\nI have suggested that an author seeking to persuade through IF should attempt to make his case by pushing certain value propositions rather than making a factual case. The problems with the latter are, I think clear, but the question remains: would the former approach lead to effective arguments? Maybe, maybe not; a lot of what I have outlined above seems at first glance like the stuff of sentimental TV movies or wartime propaganda films, and no little skill on an author\'s part is needed to avoid that feel.  The difficulty, to a great extent, in making an argument that turns on a value proposition is that, to make it stick with a general audience, the author tends to want to sell the value in question too strongly.  Ergo, the kid who gets thrown in jail because of an incompetent public defender wouldn\'t just be a kid, he\'d be an honor student who\'s captain of the baseball team and tutors younger kids-but you see what I mean.  The other facts are essentially a distraction from the value proposition in question, which is that the poor quality of legal representation for the indigent makes attempts to reduce crime by stiffening sentences unfair and unjust.  The purer form of the argument would be to make the same case for a troublemaker kid who has no obvious future and who isn\'t particularly sympathetic, to show that people deserve adequate representations even when their stories don\'t tug at the heartstrings-but the trick there is to actually get the argument to come across without obvious editorializing about the importance of assuring the availability of free legal services.\r\n<P>\r\nI\'m confident that this can be done, but, in light of the paucity of IF argument of any sort, I\'m hard-pressed to point to actual examples.  One well-done game with an argument of sorts at its core is, as mentioned, Losing Your Grip, where the protagonist (at least, as I see it-the author has avoided endorsing any particular interpretation, but this one seems reasonable to me) is engaged in a lengthy process of cleaning his own mental and emotional house and makes some surprising discoveries (surprising even to himself).  Namely, he discovers that problems that he had long blamed on others are to a large extent his own fault, and that the image he had constructed of his father wasn\'t entirely fair or true to reality.  (Part of what makes this interesting is that the housecleaning wasn\'t wholly intentional-it was the result of an experimental drug treatment that was supposed to help the protagonist stop smoking.)  The father does not, however, come across as particularly sympathetic, and the reconciliation (to the extent it happens) is hardly driven by a recognition that he is a misunderstood saint; the protagonist\'s image of him may have been distorted, but he\'s still fairly unpleasant.  Nevertheless, the game manages to make a case for the propositions that trying to mend a broken relationship is worth the trouble and turmoil, and that letting go of old wrongs is better than holding on to them.  Not wildly controversial propositions (when divorced from the specifics of the game), but not entirely truisms either.\r\n<P>\r\nHow does it do that?  Partly by depicting the alternative as destructive to all parties, but also by explicitly depicting the father separately from the distorted image of him that the protagonist had been carrying around (an image which the game portrays as a character in its own right).  The villain of the piece becomes the image, rather than the actual person, and once the image is vanquished, it\'s suggested that the protagonist can see things as they are and rationally decide to patch things up.  The decision to reconcile with the protagonist\'s father does not, however, turn on a sympathetic depiction of him; the only such depiction that the game offers, as far as I can tell, comes after the decision is made, which makes reaching out to him somewhat akin to a leap of faith. (Part of what makes Losing Your Grip clever is that the distance between player and protagonist-since the player can reasonably be seen as an aspect of the protagonist that is brought out by the drug treatment-effectively permits the player to make the argument to the protagonist, by making certain choices within the game about how to view the protagonist\'s father.)  The game continues whether or not the player achieves those insights, however, and since it isn\'t obvious that the choice was even offered, it\'s easy to miss the argument.  But the choices are there, and the different outcomes at the end-violence and pain on the one hand, an extra scene offering additional insight on the other-suggest that the author did not view all of the choices as equally desirable.  And since the argument does not depend fundamentally on the facts underlying the protagonist\'s relationship with his father, it would be unfair to say that the game loads the dice in its portrayal of a particular situation.\r\n<P>\r\nV. Conclusion \r\n<P>\r\nArguments can, of course, take a variety of forms, and the case made in Losing Your Grip is fairly abstruse-enough so the aspiring IF propagandist may not find it a useful model.  In addition, again, the case made there is unlikely to be profoundly controversial.  But that game does show how a skillful author can use the techniques of IF to persuade, for example by letting the player see the world differently from the PC and having the player correct the PC\'s delusions-and the limited nature of the argument underscores the limitations of any fictional form, including IF, for persuasion. \r\n<P>',0,'2005-01-24 03:31:35','2005-01-24 04:36:18',1,19,3893),(39,'Beta-testing',38,'',0,'2005-01-24 17:43:50','0000-00-00 00:00:00',0,16,0),(40,'History of Level 9 Computing',12,'',0,'2005-01-24 18:18:50','0000-00-00 00:00:00',0,4,0),(41,'10-Year Retrospective',31,'So SPAG\'s been around for ten years now, and what\'s happened in the IF\r\nworld in the ten years of SPAG\'s existence? Oh, not much. Consider:\r\n<P>\r\n1) THE RISE OF FREEWARE IF. Ten years ago, much of what was produced in\r\nthe IF community was some variety of commercial effort -- often\r\nshareware or crippleware. Legend was on its last legs (Gateway 2:\r\nHomeworld was released in 1993), the Adventions games saw their last\r\ncommercial installment with 1993\'s Unnkulia Zero, and amateur efforts\r\nlike MacWesleyan (1995), Save Princeton (1994), Perdition\'s Flames\r\n(1993), and Enhanced (1994), were all shareware. Much of what was made\r\navailable for free was the leavings of the annual Softworks AGT\r\ncompetition, about which, honorable exceptions like Cosmoserve (1992)\r\nand Shades of Gray (1994) aside, the less said the better. The 1993\r\nfreeware release of Curses heralded a trend of high-quality freeware\r\ngames (The Legend Lives! in 1994, Christminster and Jigsaw in 1995,\r\netc.) that left shareware largely a memory in a few years.\r\n<P>\r\nYou can argue, of course, that the move away from commercial IF has been\r\nless than salutary for authors, who have lost a chance at even the\r\nmeager compensation available from shareware registrations -- but the\r\nfreeware revolution has likely broadened the IF audience (in that new\r\nplayers are arguably more willing to try a free game with no pressure to\r\nregister) and diversified the IF available (since the decline of\r\ncommercial avenues for IF left fewer constraints on authors\'\r\ncreativity).\r\n<P>\r\n2) BREVITY, THE SOUL OF IF. Relatively short IF games were all but\r\nunknown ten years ago; Unnkulia One-Half was written in 1993 as a teaser\r\nfor Unnkulia Zero, and medium-length fare like Busted! was rare (and\r\nonly half-serious.) The advent of the annual competition in 1995, with\r\nits \"One Rule\" that entries must be finishable in under two hours,\r\nheralded a movement toward shorter games, and popular games like John\'s\r\nFire Witch (1995) both followed and pushed the trend -- fast enough that\r\nlonger IF is now largely unknown, with maybe a release or two each year.\r\n(Three of the past four Best Game winners have been competition\r\nentries.)\r\n<P>\r\nAs above, this is both good and bad. New writers can break into the\r\nIF-writing biz more easily if the median length of an IF release is\r\nrelatively compact; if all new games were expected to be Curses-length,\r\nthere would likely be many fewer IF authors. At the same time, however,\r\nthe trend toward shorter games has lessened players\' patience for highly\r\ndifficult, epic-length IF on the scale of Jigsaw; it\'s hard to\r\nreaccustom oneself to devoting months to a single game when the more\r\ncommon IF experience takes only an evening (and when there are hundreds\r\nmore worthy efforts in the archive). The diminished appetite for long\r\ngames has in turn made authors reluctant to devote the considerable\r\nenergies required, and the spiral proceeds from there. How significant a\r\nloss this is for the IF world is a matter of taste and opinion, of\r\ncourse, but it\'s certainly a striking trend.\r\n<P>\r\nA somewhat unfortunate example of this was G. Kevin Wilson\'s Once and\r\nFuture, a sprawling Arthurian epic written over the course of five years\r\nand released commercially in 1998. While reviews were generally\r\npositive, interest (at least, as measured by sales) was tepid -- in\r\npart, it seemed, because epic-length IF had fallen out of style to some\r\nextent over the course of the game\'s creation, and the ample supply of\r\nshort, high-quality freeware games narrowed the game\'s appeal somewhat. \r\n<P>\r\n3) THE NARRATIVE CATCHES UP WITH THE CROSSWORD. Through most of its\r\nhistory, IF has consisted largely of puzzles wrapped in an ostensible\r\nplot premise -- sometimes with obvious set-piece puzzles (see Zork\r\nZero), and usually with the seams only slightly better hidden.\r\nAberrations like Trinity and A Mind Forever Voyaging aside, most IF had\r\nso little plot that it was all but inevitable that puzzles would\r\npredominate and largely displace what passed for a story. Many of the\r\ngames produced in the freeware IF revolution featured stronger stories,\r\nhowever (perhaps because, in shorter IF, it\'s easier to sustain a\r\nnarrative arc), spawning a trend toward smoother integration of plot and\r\npuzzle (in other words, fewer locked doors that have to be unlocked\r\nbecause no IF player can leave a door unlocked in good conscience, etc.,\r\nand more puzzles that the PC might actually want to solve). Notable\r\nharbingers of this trend were Christminster (1995), The One That Got\r\nAway (1995), Delusions (1996), and Kissing the Buddha\'s Feet (1996); by\r\nthe 1997 competition, the plots of the top-ranked games (The Edifice,\r\nBabel, and Glowgrass) had become highly focused, and the puzzles to be\r\nsolved would have made little to no sense in any other context.\r\nIncreasingly, a plot that both makes sense and drives the bulk of a\r\ngame\'s action has become an expected IF feature, and well-regarded games\r\nintegrate their plot and puzzles seamlessly. (Try to imagine the puzzles\r\nin the last three competition winners -- Slouching Toward Bedlam;\r\nAnother Earth, Another Sky; and All Roads -- transposed into any other\r\ngame.)\r\n<P>\r\nThis is a welcome development in a lot of respects, but in one in\r\nparticular: it suggests that the IF medium can be valuable for\r\nexpressing ideas and telling a story in new ways, not simply for the\r\ncrafting of puzzles (which was, largely, its original purpose). Some\r\nhave argued that the ability to not only put the player in the shoes of\r\nthe protagonist (as static fiction does with first-person narration) but\r\nactually direct the protagonist\'s actions heightens a sense of\r\ncomplicity in the plot as it unfolds and offer an opportunity to make a\r\nstatement that simply could not be made as effectively in static\r\nfiction. Similarly, the experience of interacting with characters and\r\nexperiencing a setting gives IF a potential emotional impact not\r\navailable in static fiction -- and the best writers have found ways to\r\nmake such an impact, notably Adam Cadre in Photopia (1998) and Andrew\r\nPlotkin in Shade (2000).\r\n<P>\r\nMuch ink has been spilled on the subject of the decline of puzzlefests,\r\nof course, a large portion of it by yours truly, but the nature of the\r\nshift has sometimes been oversimplified. Even now, relatively few IF\r\ngames eschew puzzles altogether (and even those that do must contend\r\nwith players\' puzzle-solving expectations; thus, the branching plots of\r\nGalatea (2000) were taken by many as an invitation to find each and\r\nevery narrative possibility), and even now there are well-regarded games\r\nthat could reasonably be viewed as puzzles with some ostensible story\r\n(Lock and Key). The few genuinely puzzleless games that have been\r\nproduced (many in the annual Art Show, a few -- Exhibition (1999), Best\r\nof Three (2001) -- in the competition) have garnered respect but have\r\nhardly set off a stampede. More common are games that use a few puzzles\r\nfor pacing (Photopia, All Roads, My Angel), but focus their efforts on\r\nplot and character development rather than complex puzzles.\r\n<P>\r\nIt\'s hard to argue, moreover, that puzzle development is a lost art, as\r\nthe last few years of IF development have seen some of the best puzzles\r\never devised. The language puzzle in The Edifice (1997), the entirety of\r\nRematch (2000), and a certain puzzle in Spider and Web (1998) all\r\nrequire persistence, ingenuity, and a bit of lateral thinking. Nor are\r\nfull-blown puzzlefests entirely things of the past: recent years have\r\ngiven us the gargantuan Mulldoon Legacy (1999), Not Just an Ordinary\r\nBallerina (1999), and First Things First (2002), each crammed with\r\ncreative puzzles. The demise of the puzzle, in short, has been greatly\r\nexaggerated.\r\n<P>\r\n4) NPC INTERACTION: MORE, BETTER. Part of the rise in the storytelling\r\nelement of IF has been increased attention to NPC development: while\r\nmany NPCs in the early days of IF simply served as puzzle props\r\n(recognize what the NPC wants, give it to him/her, obtain\r\nknowledge/object to solve another puzzle -- or disable/distract NPC\r\nguarding exit/treasure), the latter-day IF revolution has increasingly\r\noffered more complex characters with whom the PC can interact more\r\nextensively. Some of this arises simply from authors giving NPCs more\r\npersonality -- both Small World and Kissing the Buddha\'s Feet in the\r\n1996 competition gave key NPCs a wide variety of one-liners and amusing\r\nreactions to the game\'s events, making them feel like well-developed\r\ncharacters even though the PC didn\'t need to interact much with them.\r\nBut the complexity of NPC interactions, in the form of more elaborate\r\nconversation systems, has also played a key role.\r\n<P>\r\nAt the forefront of this particular development is Emily Short, whose\r\nGalatea (2000) consisted almost entirely of interactions with a single\r\nexhaustively realized NPC, interactions that, both through an ASK/TELL\r\nconversation system and a variety of other means, helped develop a\r\nhighly complex NPC personality; different questions or approaches would\r\nelicit different reactions depending on the conversational context and\r\nsend the relationship between the PC and NPC down a variety of different\r\npaths. Subsequent Short efforts, including 2001\'s Pytho\'s Mask and Best\r\nof Three and 2003\'s City of Secrets, featured a novel conversation\r\nsystem that blend the freedom of an ASK/TELL interface with the specific\r\nphrasings (and associated tone choices) of menu-based systems, allowing\r\nfor considerably more complex interactions -- and more complex\r\ncharacters, like Grant from Best of Three and Evaine from City of\r\nSecrets, have emerged as a result. Other notable NPC-centric games were\r\nAdam Cadre\'s Varicella (1999), many of whose NPCs were vividly rendered\r\nloathsome characters, and Stephen Granade\'s Common Ground (1999), a\r\nshifting-perspective look at complex family relationships. Both the\r\ntools and the precedents are there for multilayered NPCs, in short,\r\ncharacters that drive the story rather than merely being cogs in the\r\nwheel.\r\n<P>\r\n5) EXPERIMENTATION. As noted, commercial IF is largely gone and is\r\nunlikely to make a comeback any time soon -- but with the decline of\r\ncommercial IF has come a great deal of narrative experimentation with\r\nthe IF medium, some of which, of course, has worked better than others,\r\nbut most of it has offered something worthwhile.\r\n<P>\r\nThose experiments have taken a variety of forms, many of which cannot be\r\nrevealed here without spoilers -- authors began testing the waters with\r\npuzzleless and puzzle-light IF in 1996 and 1997 (In the End, Tapestry,\r\nSpace Under the Window), and have moved on to more radical experiments.\r\nSome of the experiments have included novel PC points of view, from dogs\r\n(Ralph, 1996) to cats (Day for Soft Food, 1999) to teddy bears (Bear\'s\r\nNight Out, 1997) to robots (Bad Machine, 1998) to genies (Djinni\r\nChronicles, 2000), and others have taken the form of PCs that prove\r\nunreliable in a variety of ways. An even more striking experiment was\r\nThe Gostak (2001), written in a language whose syntax was akin to\r\nEnglish but whose vocabulary was entirely unfamiliar, and the challenge\r\nwas to decipher it sufficiently and interact sensibly enough to solve\r\nsome simple puzzles. Other notable experiments have included Aisle\r\n(1999) and Rematch, both of which offer just one turn (repeated over and\r\nover) but manage to provide surprisingly varied and deep exploration of\r\nthe game\'s world, and Heroes (2001), where the player has a task to\r\nachieve and can assume any of five separate roles to achieve it. There\r\nhave also been attempts at literary adaptation (The Tempest, 1997, and\r\nNevermore, 2000); surreal/symbolic settings (So Far, 1996, and For a\r\nChange, 1999), IF games in reverse (Zero Sum Game, 1997, and Janitor,\r\n2002), and games where most or all of the challenge is to figure out\r\nwhat is going on (Shade, 2000, and All Roads, 2001). These and other\r\nsuccessful experiments have helped pushed the boundaries of what IF\r\nauthors can do with the craft.\r\n<P>\r\nThe common thread here is that many, if not all, of these experiments\r\nwould have been hard to market (at least, the history of commercial IF\r\nincludes little boundary-pushing as ambitious as the above efforts,\r\nwhich says something); it\'s reasonable to conclude that the freeware\r\nrevolution gave rise to an environment that made innovation of this sort\r\npossible. It\'s undeniable, however, that things have been done with IF\r\ntools in the past ten years that have expanded the frontiers of the\r\npossible -- at least, in this setting. (No, not Z-abuses.)\r\n<P>\r\n6) MULTIMEDIA FOR THE COMMON MAN. While most IF is still text-only,\r\ndevelopment tools facilitating the use of multimedia have, if not\r\nflourished, at least achieved a modicum of popularity in recent years,\r\nnotably HTML-TADS, Glulx, and Hugo, such that basic graphics and sound\r\nfiles are now relatively commonplace. Particularly notable in this\r\nregard were Carma (2002), which had fairly polished animations and\r\nwell-produced music, and Kaged (2000), which had photographs and a\r\nnicely mood-enhancing soundtrack.\r\n<P>\r\nIt\'s not clear whether this represents a significant advance in relative\r\nterms -- the progress of multimedia IF has been slow enough, and the\r\nenhancement of multimedia in commercial games fast enough, that\r\npotential players accustomed to highly vivid graphics and professionally\r\nproduced sound are likely in for a rude shock. Still, there are viable\r\nmultimedia tools available, which is certainly an improvement on 1994.\r\n<P>\r\n7) PARODY/COMMENTARY. I\'m not sure how much it says, in these\r\nself-conscious times, that IF has developed the ability to comment on\r\nitself and on its own limitations, but that it has is undeniable.\r\nArguably the first example was Undo (1995), a peculiar little effort\r\nwith no puzzles in the traditional sense, one problem that is solved\r\nwith linguistic trickery, a possible score of 86 points but no actual\r\nopportunity to score said points, and a variety of bizarre red herrings.\r\nZero Sum Game, where the goal was to undo the entirety of a\r\nhack-and-slash fantasy quest and thereby bring the score down to 0 (and\r\nthe protagonist caused considerably more mayhem in trying to set things\r\nright than he/she had caused during the \"original\" game, was another\r\ngame that explicitly poked fun at IF conventions, and the list has grown\r\nfrom there: 9:05 (1999), Shrapnel (1999), Being Andrew Plotkin (2000),\r\nLASH (2000), Guess the Verb! (2000), Voices (2001), and Janitor have all\r\nemployed self-reference in one way or another to amuse or inform. All\r\nthis suggests that, if nothing else, the medium is stable and defined\r\nenough that critique and mockery makes some level of sense, which is\r\nprogress of a sort.\r\n<P>\r\n8) GENRE WITH THE WIND. Finally, one of the more encouraging aspects of\r\nlatter-day IF development is that most of the better games have\r\ntranscended genre limitations in ways that very little old-school\r\ncommercial IF managed to do. Whereas much of the most successful IF in\r\nthe \'80s fell firmly into well-trodden genre categories, much of the\r\nmost acclaimed IF of the last ten years has avoided such categories.\r\n<P>\r\nConsider the competition winners: over the nine years of the\r\ncompetition, the first-place games have included an elliptical little\r\nnightmare about being stuck in the rain, an allegory of sorts for\r\nevolution and civilization, a fragmented tale of untimely death that\r\ndefies categorization, an medieval-Venice metaphysical-fantasy story\r\ninvolving political scheming and a narrator who moves into and out of\r\nvarious bodies, and a steampunk story set in an insane asylum with a\r\ndash of unreliable narrator. Other notables of the past few years\r\ninclude: an 18th-century France drama with incursions of fantasy-style\r\nmagic; a palace-intrigue game in an anachronism-heavy alternate-history\r\n19th century Italy where none of the contenders for the throne,\r\nincluding the PC, are even vaguely sympathetic; a\r\ndelve-into-your-own-head saga arising from the PC\'s attempts to quit\r\nsmoking; a parody of an offbeat indie movie, shot through with IF\r\nreference; and a neo-Platonist story freighted with symbolism and object\r\ntransformation. By this point, well-regarded IF games that fall within\r\ngenre boundaries at all are more the exception than the rule: Anchorhead\r\n(1998), Spider and Web (1998), and Worlds Apart (1999) could fairly be\r\ncalled Lovecraftian horror, espionage, and sci-fi games without\r\nstretching the definitions too much, but not many other top-flight IF\r\ngames of the last several years could be so classified.\r\n<P>\r\nThat latter-day IF increasingly ignores genre boundaries is noteworthy\r\nin a few respects. First, it tends to elevate the significance of story\r\nover puzzles, a dynamic discussed above; if the setting and plot are\r\ngeneric fantasy or sci-fi, the game often becomes an excuse for\r\nset-piece puzzles (since the appeal of the game tends to lie more in the\r\npuzzles grafted into the setting than in a tired plot). If the concepts\r\nand settings are fresh, however, the author is less tempted to play them\r\ndown, or ignore them for long stretches, in favor of puzzles. To be\r\nsure, genre does not necessarily mean trite -- but without striking\r\ninnovations that stamp a game as somehow transcending a category\r\n(notable examples are Enlightenment (1998), which both inhabits and\r\nsatirizes fantasy, and LASH, science fiction that encourages the player\r\nto apply the story\'s themes on multiple levels), it can be difficult to\r\nmake genre fiction feel fresh. (The increasing complaints over the years\r\nabout genre IF, particularly fantasy -- without regard for the\r\ncleverness of the puzzles in the genre setting in question -- underscore\r\nthe IF audience\'s increasing dissatisfaction with puzzles as a game\'s\r\nraison d\' tre.)\r\n<P>\r\nSecond, the decline of genre IF -- in particular, the decline of fantasy\r\nand sci-fi -- suggests a growing acknowledgment that realistic and\r\ncomplex characters and compelling human conflicts matter, as those\r\ngenres traditionally have been better on outlandish visions of\r\nalternative worlds, or on bizarre occurrences in traditional settings,\r\nthan on bringing characters to life. (At the very least, the rise in\r\n\"realistic\" high-quality IF that eschews both fantastic settings and\r\nstrange/mystical events -- Varicella, Common Ground, Exhibition (1999),\r\nGourmet (2002) -- indicates more interest in bringing to life the\r\ninteractions within those settings than in portraying the fantastic and\r\notherworldly.) There\'s nothing about those hallmarks of fantasy and\r\nscience fiction that precludes character development, of course, but it\r\nsays something that authors, more and more, no longer need to rely on\r\nthe outlandish and unusual as a hook. Finally, whatever you might think\r\nof IF\'s aspirations toward serious literature, going beyond genre --\r\neither by subverting it or disregarding it outright -- certainly\r\nreflects those aspirations.\r\n<P>\r\nIn short, the past ten years have been quite a time for the development\r\nof IF -- and while the long-sought foothold in the commercial gaming\r\nworld, a few heroic attempts to the contrary notwithstanding, has not\r\nyet materialized, that day may yet come. If it does, thanks to the\r\nfreeware revolution, the medium will certainly be a good deal more\r\nmature than it was when the market petered out in the early \'90s.\r\n<P>',0,'2005-01-25 01:05:39','2005-01-29 21:55:42',4,5,3051),(42,'Characterizing Interactive Fiction',48,'<h2>Characterizing Interactive Fiction</h2>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nI do not have a good definition of IF. This is not just because the\r\ncommunity has many conflicting opinions about what IF <em>is</em>.\r\n(Although the community does). It\'s because we have a lot of conflicting\r\nopinions of what the <em>important</em> aspects of IF are. I\'m going to\r\ngive my opinion about that. I don\'t expect to convince everybody -- but\r\nhopefully it\'ll strike a chord with people, and spark some more\r\ninteresting discussion.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<h3>But First, Some Wibbling About Definitions of Definitions</h3>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nA good definition does not cover every single weird case. (Platypuses\r\nare mammals.) It covers most of the important territory, and makes\r\npeople say \"Yeah, that\'s basically it.\" The weirder and more\r\nhypothetical the case, the less a definition should worry about it.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIn fact, it\'s worse than platypuses. Platypuses are an odd example of\r\nmammals, but at least we can easily tell a platypus when we see one --\r\nand a platypus <em>is</em> unquestionably a mammal.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nBut when I start thinking \"Is this game IF? What about that game?\" I\r\nimmediately run into cases of \"Yes, mostly.\" Or \"Not much, but it has\r\nsome IF elements.\" Or \"Parts of the design are handled in an IF-like\r\nway, but others aren\'t.\"\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIt\'s almost completely useless to categorize games as <em>IF</em> or\r\n<em>not-IF</em>. Instead, I want to characterize <em>aspects</em> of\r\ngames. Some games have more IF elements; some have fewer. In some games,\r\nthe majority of the gameplay is IF. In others, only a minority. We will\r\nsee a lot of continuums in this essay.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(You might say that any game which is at least 50% IF counts as being\r\n<em>really</em> IF, but of course that\'s always going to be a fuzzy and\r\nsubjective measurement. I don\'t care whether a particular example is at\r\nthe 49% level or 51%; I want to talk about the characteristics that 49%\r\nor 51% of it are <em>like</em>.)\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<h3>My Definition, With Underscores and Boldface and Such</h3>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nThis is what I think interactive fiction is:\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n<em>A <strong>program</strong> which <strong>reveals a story</strong>\r\n(or related stories), <strong>created by an author</strong> (or\r\nauthors), <strong>to a player</strong> (or players); such that the\r\n<strong>range of action</strong> available to the player is <strong>only\r\npartially known</strong> to him, and <strong>must be understood in terms\r\nof the story world</strong>; and such that <strong>the majority of\r\nimportant results</strong> of the player\'s actions are <strong>unique\r\nresults</strong>, specifically created by the author to support that\r\npart of the story which the player is experiencing.</em>\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<h3>We Now Begin a Long Stream of Footnotes</h3>\r\n<P>\r\n<dl>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>A program...</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nIF happens between a computer and a player. Live role-playing (with a\r\nhuman game master) is just a different category of thing, and I\'m not\r\nincluding it in this definition.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(A human may undertake to game-master an IF work to another human --\r\nI\'ve done this with the <em>Enchanter</em> trilogy. If he sticks\r\nstrictly to the program, he\'s just taking the role of a computer in\r\nexecuting that program. If he allows the player as much freedom as is\r\ncustomary in live role-playing, he\'s doing live role-playing. In between\r\nis a continuum.)\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>Story or related stories</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nThe difference between a single-story IF work and a work with multiple\r\nendings (or multiple stories in some other sense) is an interesting\r\ndivision within IF. But from the standpoint of defining IF, we take no\r\nnotice of this distinction.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>Created by an author or authors</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nA totally open system, in which all the story comes from the player and\r\nnot from an author, is not IF. It\'s a toy which you can make up stories\r\nwhile playing with.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nA system where the <em>program</em> creates the story... is\r\nhypothetical. (It\'s probably also true artificial intelligence.)\r\nErasmatron notwithstanding, we don\'t have it. I\'m not going to distort\r\nmy definition to include examples which don\'t exist (and have no\r\nprospect of existing soon).\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>Range of action is only partially known</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nThis is one of my two keynotes of IF. In a <em>Colossal-Cave</em>-style\r\ntext parser, you know a lot of the verbs which are available, and (when\r\nyou read the room descriptions) you know a lot of the nouns which are\r\navailable. But you don\'t know <em>all</em> of each, and you can\'t\r\ndiscover them in a blind or mechanical way (treating the program in\r\nfront of you as a program). You must think in terms of the story world:\r\nwhat do I have available to me? How do these things behave? If I were\r\nreally there, what would I do?</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIn a <em>Myst</em>-style graphical game, your \"verbs\" are completely\r\nknown to you: you can click. (Perhaps there are a couple more, like\r\n\"open the inventory window\" and \"drag one object onto another\", but\r\nthey\'re all in the manual.) But the range of \"nouns\" available to you is\r\neverything depicted on the screen, and it\'s not obvious which are\r\ninteractive -- which are within your range of action. You must study\r\nyour screen and make sense of it <em>as an environment</em>. Thus, it\r\nsatisfies my requirement, although in a completely different way than\r\n<em>Colossal Cave</em>.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n\"Hunt the Wumpus\", on the other hand, only has two commands: move to an\r\nadjacent room, or shoot into an adjacent room. (The adjacent rooms are\r\nlisted for you.) The range of action is entirely known -- even though\r\nthe <em>results</em> of an action may not be known until you try it.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nThis requirement encapsulates my impulse to categorize\r\nchoose-your-own-adventure games, or other purely-menu-driven systems, as\r\n\"not-IF\". My problem with CYOA games (or books) is that the range of\r\naction is never uncertain -- you <em>can</em> progress mechanically, by\r\ntrying every menu possibility. In fact, this is what usually happens\r\nwhen I play a CYOA game. There is never any sense of thinking of\r\nsomething <em>new</em> to try.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(Of course, one could imagine a CYOA which has <em>so many</em> options\r\non each page that you <em>can\'t</em> try them all, or even read down the\r\nlist looking for ideas. I reply: that\'s absurdly hypothetical. A CYOA\r\nbook with a million options per page, like an AI story generator, is an\r\nimaginary trick -- at least this decade. Of course my intuitive\r\ndefinition of IF doesn\'t account for it. If it ever becomes real, my\r\ncategorization of the world will <em>change</em>, in the face of new\r\nevidence.)</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(Contrariwise, you might say: aha, the range of action for <em>Colossal\r\nCave</em> is perfectly well known -- you type on a keyboard and hit\r\nEnter. I reply, don\'t be a silly person. That does not characterize the\r\nrange of action in the way that the player thinks about it... unless the\r\nplayer is entirely unfamiliar with IF.)</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(And such a novice player will in fact not succeed in playing the IF\r\ngame. Thus my point.)\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>The majority of important results are unique\r\nresults</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nThis is my second keynote of IF. It distinguishes IF from a CRPG\r\n(computer role-playing game).</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIn an IF game, many of your actions cause \"simulationist\" results --\r\naccording to wide-spread, easily-learnable rules of the model world. In\r\nfact these results are probably a requirement of making playable IF. You\r\ntype \"get rock\"; the rock moves to your inventory. You type \"north\"; you\r\nmove to an adjacent room to the north.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nBut these common responses in the simulated world are not the\r\n<em>important</em> part of the IF work. They are tools you use to get to\r\nthe important parts. Your attention is focussed on <em>new</em> text or\r\nimages, new scenery. You\'ve solved the puzzle not when you make the\r\nblock slide according to the rules, but when the block slides to its\r\ngoal and you read the author\'s hand-written description of the door\r\nunlocking.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nThe characteristic of a CRPG is that <em>most of what you do</em> is in\r\nthe results-of-rules sector, not the hand-written-results sector. There\r\nwill certainly be some of both. But if you spend most of your time\r\nthinking \"How do I marshall my spells and weapons to kill the next\r\nmonster? How do I get enough gold or experience to get more spells and\r\nweapons?\" then you\'re playing a CRPG. The hand-written plot scenes (and\r\nthe specially-coded puzzles) are interludes and payoffs -- they\'re not\r\nthe point of the game.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nI don\'t mean to disparage what has been called \"simulationist IF\". This\r\nis indeed a division of IF -- a game in which the rules of the world are\r\nmore complex, and you spend more time employing them to get to the\r\nimportant outcomes. We <em>certainly</em> see a continuum between IF and\r\nCRPGs. A very heavily simulationist IF game would approach being a CRPG,\r\njust as a CRPG which was mostly hand-coded puzzles would approach being\r\nIF.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(Furthermore, any game can have sub-parts which are of a different form.\r\nZork 1 and Beyond Zork had small CRPG interludes, in which you fight\r\nmonsters in a strongly rule-based way. Note that these are generally\r\nconsidered jarring scenes -- not fitting well with the rest of the game.\r\nThis is more true of Beyond Zork, whose fight model had more rule\r\ncomplexity than that of Zork 1. Thus my point.)</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nJust to be clear, a <em>Myst</em>-style graphical game certainly fulfils\r\nthis requirement as well. Ask anyone who\'s worked on such a game. Most\r\nof the implementation work goes into hand-designing rooms to explore;\r\nhand-designing objects; hand-designing animations and sounds with which\r\nthe game will respond to the player\'s actions. Just about everything is\r\na one-of-a-kind.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(A CRPG has lots of hand-designed maps and rooms -- but that level of\r\ndesign doesn\'t work into the gameplay very much. As a player, you treat\r\nmost of those maps as \"floor\" and \"wall\", which are general categories\r\nwhich behave according to certain rules. Then there are doors (also\r\nbehaving according to consistent rules), water (ditto), etc, etc. Now,\r\nthis may be a <em>complex and interesting</em> set of rules -- it may in\r\nfact provide for a lot of good gameplay, as you figure out how to use\r\nthe environment to support your goals in the game. I\'m not saying that\'s\r\nan inferior kind of game. I\'m saying that it\'s a CRPG kind of game, as\r\nopposed to an IF-style game.)\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n</dl>\r\n<P>\r\n<h3>I Got Some Feedback From Folks</h3>\r\n<P>\r\n<dl>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>Getting IF from a work</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nUp above I said, \"Such a novice player will in fact not succeed in\r\nplaying the IF game.\" This produced a bit of discussion about the purely\r\nrelativist view, where you don\'t say \"That game is IF\", but rather \"That\r\ngame is IF <em>to this particular player</em>.\"</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIt\'s certainly true that my criteria are subjective, and different\r\nplayers will judge them differently. In fact, they may <em>be</em>\r\ndifferent for different players. You may know none, all, or some of the\r\nrange of action of a given game. Does that make it not-IF or IF <em>for\r\nyou</em>? Well, I guess so. But I don\'t want to make a big deal out of\r\nthat. I\'m perfectly willing to take the implied \"average IF audience\" as\r\nmy standard. That\'s what I do when I design a game, after all.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>Most of what you do</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nI also got a lot of comments on what the \"important\" parts of a game\r\nare. In an action game, for example, you might fight your way past two\r\ndozen demons in order to reach a switch; flipping the switch lowers a\r\ndrawbridge, and that lets you into a castle.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nLowering a drawbridge is a unique result, in my sense. Flipping a switch\r\nto do that is, I would say, an IF element in the game. And getting to\r\nthe castle is also a unique result -- you get to explore the castle.\r\nPerhaps you even get a cut-scene when you enter, which is scripted and\r\nanimated for that particular point in the story.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nBut are these the <em>important</em> parts of the game? Not in the sense\r\nI intend. Entering the castle is your motivation; flipping the switch is\r\na major goal of the scene, and the motivation for killing the demons.\r\nHowever, in the generic action game, killing the demons is <em>what\r\nyou\'re actually doing</em> when you play. That\'s where the challenge of\r\nthe game is; that\'s how you spend most of your time. The game mechanics\r\nhave lots of rules to manage different weapons, different kinds of\r\narmor, health and injury. You\'ve got dozens of controls devoted to\r\nfighting. You\'ve got <em>one</em> control devoted to \"flip the switch or\r\nbutton or lever or whatever.\"</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nThis is not insignificant.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nOf course, more recent action games <em>do</em> spend more time on\r\nenvironment manipulation, and environment puzzles. They make you think\r\nmore about accomplishing scripted tasks in the game world, and give you\r\nmore interesting hand-designed results. The action game genre, in other\r\nwords, is incorporating more and more IF elements. (As are other game\r\ngenres.)\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>IF with pull-down menus</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nSome of the transitional text-with-graphics adventures (for example,\r\n<em>Spellcasting 101</em> and sequels) had menus for choosing verbs and\r\nobjects -- in addition to the traditional text parser. That certainly\r\nseems to violate my criterion about \"partially known range of action.\"\r\nDo these games count as IF?</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nI\'d say that interface does weaken the games as IF, but probably not by\r\nmuch. The IF element is diluted exactly to the extent that the player\r\ncan try every combination of verb and object. If there are enough\r\noptions, it becomes impractical to deal with the interface in a\r\nbrute-force mechanical way -- you mostly <em>have</em> to consider the\r\nrange of action in terms of the game world. So mostly, the game plays as\r\nIF.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIf, in some particular situation, you stare at the menu and say \"Aha! I\r\nsee a command the game accepts which will help me!\" then that\'s a glitch\r\nin the IF experience. That\'s the case where the menu system becomes a\r\nnon-IF element.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nIn <em>Spellcasting 101</em>, that almost never happened, so I have no\r\nqualms about categorizing that game as IF.\r\n</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<dt><strong>About those pesky CYOAs</strong>\r\n<dd>\r\n<p>\r\nI\'ve been pretty clear about categorizing choose-your-own-adventure\r\nsystems as \"not-IF\". This is kind of harsh, I admit. They\'re obviously\r\nclosely related to what I\'m calling \"IF\". Does it serve any purpose to\r\ndraw the boundary to exclude them?</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\n(I am, of course, speaking of the generic flat-out 100% CYOA game. The\r\nCYOA genre, like all other game genres, has evolved and hybridized over\r\ntime. Some CYOA-based games incorporate IF elements -- inventory\r\nmanipulation, keyword dialogue systems, etc. In that, they become more\r\nIF-like. But I want to discuss the archetypical categories, not specific\r\ngames.)</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nI <em>do</em> see a boundary between the two groups, and the boundary is\r\nprecisely this criterion of \"partially-known range of action\". And this\r\ncriterion seems important to me. It was the great innovation of\r\n<em>Colossal Cave</em>, and -- differently implemented -- the great\r\nstrength of <em>Myst</em> as well. These are the sorts of games we call\r\n\"adventures\"; I am fascinated by that structural similarity; I certainly\r\ncan\'t dismiss it. And CYOA games distinctively <em>lack</em> that\r\nparticular feature. It seems to me that this is why I am unsatisfied\r\nwith them. So: whether you call them \"IF\" is a matter of terminology,\r\nbut I think that I am describing an important category, and CYOAs are\r\noutside it.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nMaybe I should be inventing a new term -- \"dynamic-range-of-action\r\ngames\", maybe. Only that\'s lame and nobody would use it. So I won\'t\r\nbother.</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nI\'ll probably wind up using the term \"interactive fiction\"\r\ninconsistently -- sometimes in a general sense which includes CYOAs,\r\nsometimes specifically as defined in this essay. But hell -- I\r\n<em>already</em> use the term inconsistently. (Sometimes I use it solely\r\nfor text-parser games; sometimes I including graphical games as IF.)</p>\r\n<P>\r\n<p>\r\nSo what the heck.\r\n</p>',0,'2005-01-25 01:35:09','2005-01-25 01:35:57',4,18,2628),