I just stumbled across an interesting recent post by Zachary Reese, which includes the following observation:
I play a fair amount of interactive fiction, if only because each piece is an extension loaded by a single client of your choice (an interpreter). These are unintrusive entities that can coexist with the important functions of the computer. I can have an indie game minimized with the sound off, then play a few rounds while I’m waiting for an audio mixdown or a video render. Doing such a thing with a traditional PC game would likely result in a massive CPU fire.
People make a big stink about casual games, but I don’t think that label is appropriate. It’s more like transparent games. Games that don’t interfere. The reason games like Rocket Mania and Bejeweled took off isn’t because of some gameplay mechanic that reach a previously untapped market; they became successful because the games became accessible with minimal effort. That audience has always wanted to play games, they just didn’t have the means. They weren’t going to go out and buy a console and they didn’t want to dedicate hard drive space and system resources to the big boxed titles. These are the same people who played the shit out of Minesweeper in Windows 3.1 while on a conference call at work.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
I appreciate his basic point, but, following his reasoning, it seems like IF would be even more appealing if instead of having to download an interpreter one could play effectively in a browser. (If Flaxo was finished or if Parchment was just a little bit better…)
The jayisgames interpreter is pretty good. It’s only for games that show up on their site, though.
I feel like the need to save and continue a session somewhat invalidates the ‘casual browser game’ feel, though. I know most of the time I play a Flash game if I can’t finish in one session I don’t finish at all.
it seems like IF would be even more appealing if instead of having to download an interpreter one could play effectively in a browser. (If Flaxo was finished or if Parchment was just a little bit better…)
I agree — I think that works fine with the reasoning of the original post. I was mostly interested in the idea of transparency — because, although I’m not sure I’ve ever articulated this myself, I feel the same way. I prefer a game that I can run while I’m at the same time keeping an eye on my email and other sources of input.
One of the reasons I hate booting my Mac over to Windows to play games is that then I’m cut off from my email, text editor, preferred browser, etc.; I feel out of touch, and also do not have at my disposal the tools I usually use to make notes on games or to check background information while I play. (I’m probably atypical in the sense that I review almost every game I ever play, and therefore have a somewhat more analytical approach to playing than most.) I could, of course, set up a Windows email client and so on, but as I prefer to keep my files consolidated under OS X, this would be more bother than it’s worth to me. I’ve actually started playing more Windows games now that I can simultaneously check my email on my iPhone… but it still is awkward compared to just running a game as one of many windows under OS X.
I also haven’t bought any form of gaming console for similar reasons: when I am doing nothing but playing a game (with no multitasking) I often feel as though I am wasting time. I generally enjoy console gaming when I try it, but that is almost always when I am on vacation staying with friends, and feel I have an excuse not to be on call, as it were.
This may all say more about me than about gaming, but I was interested to see someone else saying some familiar things on the topic.
You might look into Wine (winehq.org). I’ve never used it, not having an Intel Mac, but supposedly it lets you run Win apps inside OS X without all the slowdown of an emulator.
I ended up hooking my Xbox 360 to my secondary monitor input, and can easily switch back and forth with a few button-pushes. I play it a lot more now, and am skipping buying a new TV for a new monitor (which I’ve noted will come with a remote and an associated ‘select input’ button).
I’m not sure whether I’m making a suggestion or realizing the connection to Reese’s ideas.
I think that, ideally, interactive fiction should be accessible through a number of methods… running in a client on your PC, played in a browser using some sort of Flash interpreter, or even experienced via SMS/IM on a cell phone. I’d love to see a site like the Interactive Fiction DataBase have all their hosted titles available in a format that can be accessed through the browser… while having a Z-Machine interpreter running on my computer doesn’t bother me, many ‘casual’ gamers will be turned off by the idea and prefer to interact with the games in a way that requires much less effort (how likely would you be to install a piece of software you’ve never heard of onto your work computer?). The easier it is for someone to engage with your work, the larger your audience will be. If interactive fiction can achieve the level of transparency that current Flash portals like Kongregate have (a couple of mouse clicks and nothing but a cookie left behind), then I imagine the number of people willing to try the genre will expand greatly.
In regards to session play: I’ve been finding myself increasingly attracted to what I call ‘fun sized’ IF (I think ‘single-room’ is a more common nomenclature; I just like labeling games according to candy bar sizes). Something I can play to completion in a single lunch break, but also something possessing enough variety to keep me coming back. Enlightenment and 9:05 come to mind. Coincidentally, both of those games can be played in-browser at JayIsGames using the Leaflet interpreter (which is, sadly, not available for outside use).
I think it’s amazing at how the general populous has come to accept games in any form over the past few decades. When I was a kid they were nothing more than time wasters… now, they’re considered an essential cool down for people who spend most of their time in front of a computer. My previously employer actually encouraged me to take ‘solitaire breaks’ so I wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by my workload.
Nicholas Carr came out with a book called “The Big Switch” recently that touches on this idea (albeit with something of a negative spin)… basically, the ease of most computing tasks has ‘rewired’ our brains, and multitasking is such a part of our nature that to focus on one specific task feels somewhat wrong. The rest of the book talks about how this is going to lead to the apocalypse or something, but if you just ignore that part it’s an interesting read.
Actually, your basic interpreter (ifpe/legion, gargoyle, whatever) takes a lot fewer system resources than a web browser, so I’d still prefer stand alone interpreters.
Something I can play to completion in a single lunch break, but also something possessing enough variety to keep me coming back.
That describes exactly my design intention with “When in Rome 2”: the game is supposed to be short to play through once, but because of the randomized starting features, it can be replayed in a way that brings in new puzzles.
I’m not sure it does a perfect job. Actually I’ve gotten relatively little feedback on it, so it’s quite hard to tell how well it fulfilled its design intentions, but one thing I would in retrospect like to have added is a feature to track which of the scenarios the player has already beaten, so as to keep a kind of scorecard and also maybe make sure that the same things don’t repeat after they’ve been solved. But that requires some features of Inform that weren’t fully implemented until after the game was written, so I’d have to upgrade it to do that.
One of the reasons I hate booting my Mac over to Windows…
Another commenter suggested Wine; a better solution for Mac users is definitely VMWare Fusion…it’s eighty bucks but it lets you run things from your Windows install transparently right along with your Mac stuff.