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Interactive Fiction Then and Now

Posted by Hemos on Mon Apr 24, 2006 08:59 AM
from the infocom-4-eva dept.
Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games
Flipkin writes "Interactive Fiction was immensely popular in the 80s and believe it or not has a strong, albeit small, following today. MobyGames takes a look at the origins and history of Interactive Fiction and where it is heading." These games really were some of the best I've ever played.
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Interactive Fiction Then and Now 25 Comments More /

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  • Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:3, Informative)

    by RockModeNick (617483) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:02AM (#15189210)
    Were my first interractive fiction, I used to love those. Especially the ones where you could die really easily.

    • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Informative)

      by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:16AM (#15189279)
      The best ones had the endings derived totally on luck, where even choosing the most logical and safe path would lead to your untimely demise. I liked that Packard guy who wrote the later ones (shiny covers). The earlier editions had stuff like "To run from the bear, turn to page 37. To fight him off with your fists, turn to page 129". And you always knew the endings were in the back :)
      • TSR produced a short-lived D&D-based series of books that were actually mini RPGs. There was a tearout character sheet/bookmark in the front, you rolled up your character, and then you started reading. You'd get up to a part where you had to pick a lock or fight a monster. Depending on your stats and the die roll, it'd tell you to turn to different pages. It made the whole Choose Your Own Adventure thing more interesting because you could sit down and go through the same book/story multiple times with d

        • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Informative)

          by ronfar (52216) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:50AM (#15189475) Journal
          I have one, Knight of the Living Dead [gamebooks.org]. It's pretty well written, by some guy named Allen Varney [slashdot.org]. I loved some of the dialogue in that game.. oh, and the neat picture of the one vampire lady taking a bath...

          Now, Tunnels and Trolls [flyingbuffalo.com] made this their focus for a while. I have a ton of Solitare dungeons for T&T.

          Chaosium had their Alone Against series, though I think there were only two, Alone Against the Wendigo and Alone Against the Dark, I have both. Pagan Publishing published a similar solitare scenarion Alone on Halloween [trollandtoad.com] which I do not have, and looking at the current price probably never will.

          Oh, and there is something called Fighting Fantasy [fightingfa...ebooks.com] which is apparently British, so I missed out on that.

          Still, being an angry loner as a teenager really paid off for me, as you can see....

        • Re:Choose Your Own Adventure Books! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by PatrickThomson (712694) on Monday April 24 2006, @10:03AM (#15189544)
          In practice though, nobody did them. Why? because a failed luck stat either lead to death or a fight, and a failed fight lead to death. Noone's going to go back to the start of the book because they rolled a 5.
    • "Especially the ones where you could die really easily."

      I had a set where - no matter what set of choices I made - I always was killed by ninjas. No, seriously; "Oh no, there's a tornado outside! Do you: get into the storm cellar (turn to page 54 and be killed by ninjas hiding in the storm cellar) or face it head on (turn to page 86 and be killed by ninjas falling out of the tornado)?

      Madness, I tell you.
      • That's quantum mechanics - the universe was in a superposition of containing organization x and not containing it, and by turning to page 137 or 25 you collapsed the wavefunction. Either that, or it was a neat way of making sure you could re-play the game without knowledge of what was going to happen if you took a different turn early on...

  • No mention of MUDS?!? (Score:5, Informative)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Monday April 24 2006, @09:03AM (#15189220)
    How can you write an article about IF and not mention MUD's, which continue to be popular even today? These games not only continue the text-based adventure tradition, but they also allow for interaction with other players within the text "world."

    -Eric (former alum of the Kobra MUD)

  • Slash interface (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:04AM (#15189227) Homepage Journal
    > L
    You are on slashdot.
    You can see the headlines.

    > Read headlines
    There are 12 old articles.

    > N
    You are in the mysterious future.
    There is 1 article here.

    > RTFA
    I'm sorry, you cannot do that.

    > open article
    You open the article in the mysterious future.

    > L
    It is empty in the comments section, You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

  • Where it's heading? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mccalli (323026) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:08AM (#15189239) Homepage
    MobyGames takes a look at the origins and history of Interactive Fiction and where it is heading.

    I can tell you that. Currently it is in a maze of twisty passages, all alike...

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • You have:

    no tea

  • Some good amateur IF (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2006, @09:15AM (#15189270)
    Try Metamorphoses [wurb.com] and Photopia [wurb.com]. The former is known for its diverse ways of solving the puzzles; the latter is known for its nonlinear plot, touching story, and controversial lack of influence over ultimate outcomes. (Slight spoilers in the Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org].)

  • Adventure (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tedgyz (515156) * on Monday April 24 2006, @09:20AM (#15189295) Homepage
    Playing Adventure on a PDP-11 at the local library was the primary reason I got into computers. Now, as a Software Architect with 20 years experience, I can safely say that computer games did me good.

    I just saw a great sig on another thread:

    You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.

  • Grues (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rik Sweeney (471717) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:27AM (#15189330) Homepage
    I'll always remember the line

    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

    It always excited me, as back then it was the only sort of sex I could get.

    Come to think of it, that still is.

    sigh

  • Good games (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rekolitus (899752) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:32AM (#15189366)

    Myself, I reccomend Return to Ditch Day [wurb.com] and The Plant [wurb.com] (as well as Adam Cadre's works [adamcadre.ac].)

    Anyone else played these?

  • Recommended book and game (Score:4, Informative)

    by MythMoth (73648) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:39AM (#15189403) Homepage
    I recently read "Twisty Little Passages" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262134365/ [amazon.com] ) by Nick Montfort which despite its horribly self-consciously academic approach (it's all about developing a "theory" of IF for lit. crit. purposes) still has some interesting sections about the history of IF and comparing the various approaches to the field against each other.

    It also introduced me to my favourite work of IF, "For a change" by Dan Schmidt, which is really proof that the genre has more to offer than you might have expected. He's a genius, and it's beautiful.

    Give it a go online here: http://paperstack.com/for_a_change/ [paperstack.com] (requires Java) or download the ZCode files from Dan's site: http://www.dfan.org/IF/ [dfan.org]

  • No mention of online IF? (Score:5, Informative)

    by aussie_a (778472) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:50AM (#15189479) Journal
    Wow, I'm really surprised that this article could completely miss online IF (otherwise known as MUDs). Not only are there commercial entities successfully running online IF (such as Iron Realms [ironrealms.com] it allows for a much larger story to be told.

    The big problem with IF is that you can't do whatever you want. You're limited to what the creator was able to forsee and program. Not so with MUDs, which are able to have long and rich stories. The reason MUDs are able to overcome this limitation is that they have staff running it all the time, who are constantly adding new code updates and story updates.

    An example of a player run storyline is in ArmageddonMUD [armageddon.org], which is based on Dark Sun. In it a player playing a dwarf decided to free his fellow dwarves who were slaves in the obsidian mines, and lay seige to the city-state that had kept them enslaved. This was entirely thought up by players, and with the staff's help, done by the players.

    MMOs sometimes attempt to be roleplaying games, to enable an interactive story to be told. But they're even further limited by the fact that, you can't do what you want. You can only do what animations have been coded. Again, MUDs don't have this limitation, with any action being able to be provided by emoting. [armageddon.org] MUDs have the advantage over IFs in that they are multiuser. Whereas in an IF there's no-one but yourself.

    So I'm very surprised that something discussing interactive fiction, including it's future (which IMO are MUDs, with more and more being created every day while others continue to be run for over 10 years), didn't feel the need to mention MUDs.

    • Re:look around (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:10AM (#15189250) Homepage Journal
      >witty reply

      I don't know how to "witty reply."

      >clever reply

      I don't know how to "clever reply."

      >lame reply

      You make a lame, cliche-ridden Slashdot post, probably having something to do with Netcraft or "Star Wars."
      There is an angry moderator here.

      • Re:look around (Score:5, Funny)

        by allanc (25681) on Monday April 24 2006, @09:48AM (#15189463) Homepage
        >examine moderator

        This moderator looks like a pasty white Linux geek who hasn't left his parents' basement in at least a month. He is unsubtle, and quick to anger.

        >attack moderator

        The moderator is unphased by your ad hominem attack
        (Score:-1, Troll)
        (Your karma has just gone down by one point)

        >tell moderator about linux

        The moderator already knows about linux.
        (Score:-1, Redundant)
        (Your karma has just gone down by one point)

        >tell moderator about linux superiority

        You tell the moderator stuff he already knows about how much better Linux is than Windows. Even though he already knows it, he likes hearing about it.
        (Score:+5, Insightful)
        (Your karma has just gone up by five points)

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