In chapter 4 of Scott Rettberg’s book “Electronic Literature, he discusses the beginnings and evolution of Interactive Fiction (IF). Rettberg describes how IF derived from textual based games which allows the interactor to navigate textual scenes. A key component to IF is its riddle-like nature. While the “principal challenge to the reader of interactive fiction, and its central pleasure, is to find a solution,” successful exploration of these virtual worlds require the interactor to input what the text parser is looking for (90). Studying what commands the test parser accepts gives insight to what the author hopes you get out of the literature, similar to how mapping the structure of Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books offers insights to what the author views as important.
An example of this is found in our two readings Photopia by Adam Cadre and Galatea by Emily Short. Both readings offer instruction guides to help a first time user navigate the stories. While the examples they give lend some hints to the main ways to get through the story, the more notable aspect of these instructions are the phrases that warrant abbreviations. The phrases “look”, “examine”, “again”, “think about” and “ask about” demonstrate how these authors prioritize engagement with the characters and items to further the plot. This is a stark contrast to IF works that require navigation to the appropriate places to discover new plot lines. Revealing these priorities through further examination of how the test parser is designed resembles how moral structure is unveiled through analysis of CYOA mappings. In both cases, the impact of your decisions is only revealed through repeated readings of the work.
These similarities between CYOA and IF lead me to wonder what exactly distinguishes them all in the first place? Reading jokane’s post Interactive Fiction: Text Adventure Games in Today’s Games made me question even further. In their post, they claim that video games are a version of IF just disguised by its graphics and heavy interface. If this is the case, wouldn’t other forms of interactive works, such as hypertext be considered IF as well? Better yet, shouldn’t all digital literature be considered IF in the first place? Considering how interactivity is a critical affordance of digital literature, including a “genre” with the adjective “interactive” seems redundant. This is not to say that jokane was wrong in that video games are a type of IF. I agree, and even propose that video games prioritize certain interactions with the game like all times of digital literature.