Events
May 1 will be the beginning of the fourth annual Rayuela de Arena interactive fiction jam. Submissions will be open until May 30.
May 1 is also the opening of ParserComp 2021. Submissions can be sent in until June 30.
May 1 is also the next SF Bay Area Meetup.
May 7 is the Spring Thing voting deadline, when you can pick favourites from the more than 30 choice- and parser-based games submitted this year. If you’d like to nominate something for this competition, there’s still time – and if you’re hunting for people’s opinions on games, you can find a bunch of review threads on the intfiction forum.
May 16 is the next Seattle Area IF Meetup.
May 23 is a workshop-style meeting of the London/Oxford IF Meetup. The group will be offering feedback on open design problems (some tips and guidelines are included in the event description). You’re welcome whether or not you’ve got an open problem of your own to share.
June 21 I will be presenting to the VOLUPTAS summer school, which is working on playable experiences to teach architecture. Game designers interested in the crossover with architectural pedagogy might find this an interesting project.
Links & Articles
Last weekend I was a panelist at LudoNarraCon with Marta Fijak, Richard Rouse, and Thomas Grip on the topic of “Telling Dark Stories with Games.” The full panel is available on YouTube (as are other panels from the con, for those interested).
The Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives has posted a call for papers for the ICIDS November 2021 Conference.
“The theme for the conference this year is Interconnectedness and Social Impact. We encourage authors to consider possible connections to this theme in their papers, but we emphasize that there is no requirement that papers reflect the theme, either implicitly or explicitly. The theme is meant as inspiration, and is not intended to act as a constraint.”
More information is available on the site; the main submission deadline is June 25.
Aaron A. Reed’s 50 Years of Text Games series continues to be a great read, with recent articles on Plundered Hearts (1987), A Mind Forever Voyaging (1985), and Uncle Roger (1986). If the latter doesn’t ring a bell, you’re not alone: it’s a much less-known work by hypertext/digital literature creator Judy Malloy, whom I know mainly for her work Yellow Bowl. One of the great things about this series is that, alongside the background on familiar favourites, it also introduces some important developments in the history of interactive story that might not be so well known.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
Hi, Emily. It’s been nearly a year since you posted something other than a link assortment. I wonder if this is just a fallow patch, or whether you’ve decided to bring your non-announcement blogging to an end? Thanks!