…or: What does it mean to be writing interactive fiction?
When asked about outreach prospects for IF at PAX East, I said this:
We have a two-part accessibility problem.
One part is the interpreter: people don’t want to download separate files and don’t want to have to figure out file formats. That structure is unattractive and increasingly out of step with the way casual players play games — and especially with the way that they’re persuaded to try new work. We (as a community) are working on that by developing better browser-based interpreters and making it easier for people to publish material to websites. It’s not true that there’s been no Java Glulx terp at all, but it required its own downloading and does not offer the option of creating an attractive game display within a browser window. Just the last couple of months have seen major strides on this front, with both Quixe and ZMPP reaching the point where they can play Glulx games in a browser window. Zifmia is a project to present games from a server interpreter, while FyreVM is an experiment in letting authors customize their output with channel IO. For TADS 2 there is Jetty, and Mike Roberts is actively working on changes to TADS 3 that would make it possible to do web service of those games. So we’re making a lot of progress here.
The other problem is the parser. When you look at novice reactions to IF — found in responses to IF games posted on indie gaming sites, or in student reactions to playing IF for the first time — the initial reaction is often enraged frustration with the parser. The first few (or few dozen) moves of a new player’s interaction with the game often consists of many many failed attempts that do not move the game forward in any way.
This is alien to most gamers these days. These days, even fairly difficult console games usually guarantee that at the beginning of the experience it’s just about impossible for the player to do something wrong or to fail meaningfully. Interaction options are introduced gradually. By contrast, most IF games are not designed with any kind of tutorial mode or game-opening section, instead offering (at best) a lengthy menu of instructions. There are exceptions (Dreamhold, Blue Lacuna). My own recent games have included an optional tutorial mode (which I think of like training wheels) that give turn-by-turn contextual advice to the player based on what’s currently happening.
It’s not clear to me how well those games have worked in attracting novices and making them comfortable with IF, however. (I just don’t know: I’d love to hear about it if, e.g., there were a bunch of Blue Lacuna players who got acclimatized to IF through that approach.)
Fundamentally, however, we’ve got a bigger problem, which is that the command prompt is a lie. It tells the player “type something, and I’ll understand you.” Which it won’t.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 