Hello gamebookers! Today, we have a new addition to the April A to Z series and someone with her
own Wikipedia page This is Emily Short, expert at interactive fiction. I'm so glad to be making steps into the interactive fiction world by interviewing Emily who has a
fabulous blog.
> Tell us about yourself.
I work as a consultant in interactive narrative, mostly for video games
but also sometimes for publishing and other types of creative projects. I
got into this field through interactive fiction, which I've played
since I was a young kid; I've been writing IF for about 15 years now. I
also write a lot of reviews and other coverage of interactive
storytelling, which you can find at
emshort.wordpress.com.
> What is the best Interactive Fiction game you have played?
I really couldn't narrow that list down to a single game, but
here are a few that are favorites of mine. (If you asked on a different
occasion, you'd probably get a different list.)
ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III (Porpentine) -- Porpentine has written a lot
of excellent IF, but I think this may remain my favorite because the
ending is so personal and accessible, in contrast with the filigreed
bonework style of a lot of her other writing (gorgeous; likely to cut
you if you handle it at all). The trick of characterizing the
protagonist via reactions to an old-school game is also beautifully
handled.
Solarium (Alan DeNiro) -- This is masterfully horrific because, alchemy
and superhuman characters aside, the scary thing it describes is true:
there were fanatics during the cold war who did bring us close to
destruction repeatedly, and who used the threat of nuclear disaster as
justification for unethical experiments. It's also a structurally
inventive piece of choice-based fiction with very good prose.
Even Cowgirls Bleed (Christine Love) -- A story about the personal
dysfunction that undermines a relationship, told through a choice-based
story with a bit of an arcade mechanic tucked in: you "shoot at", and
thus select, whatever links your mouse passes over, and at a certain
point in the game this may become more difficult to control than you
might wish. Compact, effective, and highly personal; and a rare example
of IF in which the UI itself is a critical part of telling the story.
Spider and Web (Andrew Plotkin) -- One of the best story-and-puzzle
moments in all of interactive fiction, in which the protagonist does
something that is not only surprising and clever but also has a profound
effect on the other major character in the game. People talk a lot
about the puzzle design here, but often I think in the process they
undervalue how much of its success comes from the puzzle-story
integration. There's something wonderful about solving this puzzle and
getting a huge reaction out of the story.
Horse Master (Tom McHenry) -- Compellingly gross, with a very effective
switch on what kind of story it's even going to be: it starts out
feeling like a sim and winds up as a dystopian horror story about
poverty and exploitation. One of the most viscerally powerful games I've
played. Today I happen to give it a slight edge over Michael Lutz's My
Father's Long, Long Legs, which could also have occupied this slot,
because in Horse Master I was fooled into thinking maybe I could make
things come out well, whereas in MFLLL I pretty much always realized
things were going badly. But on a different day I might go the other
way.
Fallen London (Failbetter Games) -- FL's size and structure are unique,
providing a network of stories that you can sink into and inhabit for
months or years. The content ranges from silly to horrific to affecting.
People have often talked about the possibility of shared-world writing
in the IF space, but this is one of the few to actually pull it off,
since FL's contents and related games have been worked on by many
authors over the years. (* Disclaimer: I've written for FL myself; otoh,
my contributions are a drop in the ocean, and I was not involved in any
of the original design.)
Make It Good (Jon Ingold) -- Very difficult, but with superb good
puzzle/story integration. Characters pay attention to every little thing
you do, and everything they notice matters; solving the story requires
thinking deeply about the NPCs and their motives and probable reactions,
then manipulating them to get the results you want. They seem to have
their own inner life, purposes, and goals, to a degree very rarely found
in IF.
80 Days (Meg Jayanth/inkle) -- Grand, beautiful, polished, with lots of
lovely individual tales that weave together over replays, describing a
world full of very different people with a wide variety of individual
concerns. One of the most truly replayable pieces of IF out there, and a
success of commercial IF in the modern era.
> What makes a good Interactive Fiction Game?
This really varies from one game to another. Some games are great
because they have difficult but fair puzzles; other games are great
despite having no puzzles at all, instead offering strong writing, a
compelling story, or a particular emotional experience that you couldn't
get elsewhere.
I've written some here (
http://xyzzyawards.org/?p=386) about qualities of a good puzzle.
> What IF games would you recommend to people who want to see what IF is about?
There are multiple kinds of interactive fiction — parser IF,
which is the descendant of text adventures like Zork, where the player
has to type something to make progress, and choice-based IF, which is
more like a CYOA where you click options to proceed. There are also a
few interesting hybrids that use interfaces combining elements of both —
but those are more of a rarity.
For choice-based IF, this list contains some good material:
http://ifdb.tads.org/search?sortby=ratu&newSortBy.x=0&newSortBy.y=0&searchfor=tag%3A+cyoa
Parser IF is usually a bit more challenging than choice-based IF, so not
all highly-rated parser games are necessarily going to be ideal for
someone just starting out. But there are some games that were designed
to be friendly to novice players:
http://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor=tag%3A+beginners&searchgo=Search+Games
Those wanting to dig a little deeper into what the IF community considers canonical might want to check out
http://ifdb.tads.org/viewcomp?id=p6s9uem6td8rfihv
— this is a list of the "top 50 IF games" as voted on by the intfiction
bulletin board. It's skewed in favor of parser IF and is obviously a
matter of opinion, but the games on this list tend to be things that the
intfiction community talks about a lot or regards as touchstones. You
can get more background about why people voted the way they did in the
discussion thread at
http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=17422 .
> What systems or programming languages would you recommend for people starting out with Interactive Fiction?
Twine is very popular for people who want to write primarily
hypertext-style choice-based games. You can make a basic Twine piece
with very little technical experience — check out
http://twinery.org/ for the tool and forum links. Games made in Twine can be hosted for free on
http://philome.la/ , so you don't need your own website to share your work with the world.
If you want to write some parser-based IF where the player will actually
be typing commands to interact, Inform 7 is probably the most widely
used and supported system available. You can find the system at
http://inform7.com/ (or at the Mac App Store, if you're an Apple user) and get support at
http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=7 . In addition, Carolyn VanEseltine has some recent, up-to-date tutorials for getting started with Inform:
http://www.sibylmoon.com/game-dev-resources/
> What tips would you offer for someone who wants to write an Interactive Fiction game?
If you're starting on your first interactive fiction piece, try
to keep your project reasonably small: you'll want something where you
can see some progress and have a hope of completing the thing in a
reasonable time.
Don't be afraid to ask for technical help. For that matter, don't be
afraid to ask for design help and alpha-testing. Getting someone to have
a look at your work in progress can be extremely useful, as well as
morale-boosting.
> There is a lot of Interactive Fiction on the internet including an
active community and competitions. Where do you think someone can start
in the world of Interactive Fiction?
To get in touch with the community, try the forum at
http://www.intfiction.org/forum. From there you can find out about local meetup groups, as well, if you're interested in that.
To read blog posts, including a lot of reviews and news, check out the feed aggregator at
http://planet-if.com/ (and feel free to have your own blog aggregated there if you're writing about IF!)
ifwiki (
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page ) contains a lot of useful information about past and present projects; in particular the Craft page (
http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Craft ) provides some design help for people learning the ins and outs of IF development.
IFDB contains links to a lot of games; it's a great place to look for
things to play and for things that might be similar to a project you're
working on yourself.
http://ifdb.tads.org/ . Among other things, IFDB contains tags that can help you find particular types of game (the tag cloud is at
http://ifdb.tads.org/showtags ), and you can also start your own poll to ask other users for recommendations of a particular game style.