Talk:Interactive fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Famicom style controller This article is within the scope of WikiProject Video games. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid This article is on a subject of Mid priority within gaming for inclusion in Wikipedia 1.0.
VG To-do:
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Adventure games, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of adventure games. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

To discuss this article, look for an existing section below to add your comment. Add your comment to the bottom of the section, or just below another comment you are responding to. If there is no relevant section, add a new one (The "+" link at the top of this page can help with this). Be sure to sign your posts with ~~~~.

Old discussions have been archived: /Archive 1. Don't add new comments to the archives; all new discussion should be here.


Contents

[edit] Adventure Game

This article covers almost exactly the same territory as Adventure game. ----Isaac R 05:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Interactive fiction is a subset of adventure games, but there are many adventure games which are not interactive fiction (these days most commercial adventures aren't). Grue 06:06, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I don't agree with your definitions, but I wont argue with them, because they're beside the point. Articles should be arranged for the convenience of readers, not to satisfy your personal definition of "correct" terminology. If the subject matter of two articles is almost exactly the same -- as it is in this case -- it makes no sense to have two articles. ----Isaac R 17:37, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Huh? The definitions for "interactive fiction" and "adventure game" are clear and are distinct topics. If you want an example, Myst is an adventure game which is not interactive fiction. The interactive fiction uses text to narrate a story, while most adventure games use graphics and video. I don't know why you want to merge the articles, certainly IF community won't approve that. Grue 19:23, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
      • On the other hand, Text based adventure game should probably redirect there, because it's the same thing. Grue 19:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
        • I might be wrong but isn't the difference between other genres and adventuregames that adventuregames focuse on the story as the main element, unlike forinctanse puzzlegames or some of the hybrides. My definition of a pure adventuregame don't include myst as I think of it as a hybrid. Then again I'm not a expert in the area and my skills in english isn't nearly good enough for me to edit this article. Luredreier 16:36, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
          • Reading the article and then this discussion page it appears to me that "interactive fiction" has been used (by different people) to mean both a kind of text adventure and hypertext fiction, and that until recently each group was largely unaware of the others' usuage. That has to be changing though, because video and computer games are increasingly being viewed as a form of artistic expression, and as text adventure games become increasingly antiquated they're shifting from the realm of popular culture into the realm of historical and literary study. What both usages have in common, however, is that they emphasize the narrative aspects of the interactive story. This emphasis I think will become the distinguishing feature of interactive fiction (if it isn't already), and will include any pre-written verbal narrative presented electronicly that shifts form according to the choices of the reader. I won't be viewed, IMHO, as a genre of game as all single player text-based narratives will be grouped under the tern text adventure.

--Logomachist 07:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Purge non-English external links?

The External Links could use some pruning. The non-English links leap out to me as being of questionable value. The current non-English sites listed don't appear to be generally important; they fill the same niche as English-language sites already linked. As this is the English-language part of Wikipedia, these seem to be of questionable value. They seem better fitting to the Spanish and French versions (as appropriate. I'm not against foreign language links, but they should provide value beyond "Just like the link above, but in Spanish." For reference, I'm currently referring to "*SPAC, a free online newsletter in Spanish." "*Club de Aventuras AD (CAAD), the portal of the Spanish interactive fiction community." and "*Sur Terre, interactive fiction in German and French." (I think the list needs even more pruning than this, but one step at a time.) Alan De Smet | Talk 04:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I redeleted the links to SPAC and CAAD for above reasons. I deleted the link to InformATE. Any reference to InformATE probably should go to the InformATE article, not an external web site. The InformATE article can link to the web site. InformATE is also awfully specialized; I'm not sure it should be mentioned here; it is better placed on the Inform page where it is already mentioned. Alan De Smet | Talk 22:30, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd like you to reconsider reinstating the spanisf IF sites links. It's true that this article is linked to its spanish wikipedia samesake, but the fact remains that this english article (unless I'm quite mistaken) is referenced by a more wide international comunity than the spanish one; hence the need for the spanish sites links. --Sarmas 22:20, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. Following the logic that en.wikipedia.org is the most widely linked Wikipedia, we would need to include links in every major language, something that would cause the list to balloon out of control. Even limited to English language links the External Links section is a bit out of control. For those interested in Spanish language information, there is a Español link to Aventura conversacional directly to the left of the article (for people using the default theme). It's reasonable for someone looking for Spanish language resources to go to the Spanish language Wikipedia to find them. Alan De Smet | Talk 02:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Addition/Removal

I wanted to ask if Leather Goddesses of Phobos should be added to the list, and thought it might be a good idea to create, at the same time, a "general" section for such questions. Ever wonder 12:44, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's as good a place as any. :-) Anyway, ignoring that damn near everything Infocom published was noteworthy in some way, I don't think LGoP makes te cut. I'm pretty sure it's not the first racy IF. If you play the game, even in the "lewd" mode, at worst it's PG-13. The core game itself is Yet Another Scavenger Hunt (albet, that's part of the joke). It's not really discussed as an important point in the history of IF. In counterpoint, what do you think is noteworthy about LGoP that you think it might deserve listing? Indeed when we do add games, the initial "Why I think it's noteworthy" can provide the initial summary we need in that list. Alan De Smet | Talk 23:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Smell props...? No, seriously, I'm not sure I can or wish to argue strongly for the inclusion of LGoP, though I would have expected to see it on the list. I don't really know enough about IF in general (and much of what I do know is centered around Infocom) or about LGoP, which isn't on the rather short list of games I've actually tried. Still: If not the first racy IF (which does seem quite improbable), I understand it to be the most talked about and possibly the first attempt by such an "important" producer (and maybe by any large-scale commercial manufacturer of IF) to enter that market. Some aspects of it are certainly discussed today except from the raciness as such and it being part of the "Infocom canon" - the different modes and the possibility and method of choosing your sex (and the "smell things", whatever they were called)are the things that I think of first, but there may be more. Also, I think the fact that it is not exactly "pornographic" (though perhaps partly marketed as such) but rather part of mainstream IF may be part of what makes it noteworthy. It was probably part of what made it stand out at the time (though, admittedly, people would probably have been more surprised if Infocom had released hardcore porn, even in written form). Lastly, I guess it has some interest as part of the battle against graphic adventures (being, if I recall correctly, at least partly a response to Leasure Suit Larry).Ever wonder 13:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
By the way I have no idea why Leasure Suit Larry is a red-link (as it appears to me), there is an article.Ever wonder 13:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
Oops... now I get it. Leisure Suit Larry. Still odd that I managed to spell it right several times when looking up the article but got it wrong twice here.Ever wonder 13:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Malinche

Any anonymous user drive-by added a link to Malinche without explanation. (I hate that.) I added some context. On one hand it's arguably an advertising link. On the other hand, to my knowledge, Malinche is the only existing business doing for-profit IF development as an active business venture. There is some debate over the quality of Sherman's work, but I believe he's publically claimed the business is profitable. He's pretty minor league, but these days so is all of IF. So I propose instead of just deleting as advertising, we add a short section on the current state of commercial IF. There isn't much, but there is some (Malinche, obviously, as well as 1893, and Emily Short's contracted project). Alan De Smet | Talk 22:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Malinche is the only distributor of IF for iPods and Cell Phones, though one may wonder if their porting results in a true IF experience. azazoth | 20:43, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it probably should be mentioned, but in PC Gamer magazine one of his games was rated 19% out of 100% by a fan of IF. So all it would do is make IF look bad...—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.0.32.247 (talk • contribs).

[edit] City of Secrets

Jake Wildstrom did a good edit, removing some sketchy stuff and adding the useful information on Future Boy to the "modern" section. In the process he deleted the bit about Emily Short's "City of Secrets". I've readded it. I believe it to be relevant: it's the only modern documented case I'm found of a company (a band in this case) trying to invest in IF (for promotional reasons in this case). That it fell through is also interesting and may reinforce how difficult it is to mark real money on it. Maybe it's not useful enough, but I think it deserves a second chance and perhaps some discussion before getting deleted. Alan De Smet | Talk 21:27, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sandbox thingie

I hope it isn't terribly wrong of me to just mention Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling#Text adventure game - At War with a Crossword Puzzle which I recently started. Might be fun!Ever wonder 12:50, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anybody Ever Hear of This?

Any room for mentioning this interesting but bizare work by Victor Thorn called Return to Eternity, it sounds interesting. Here is the Amazon article.

It's certainly interesting, but I'm not sure that it fits with the main focus of this article. Perhaps a more appropriate place for it is at visual novel. -Thibbs (talk) 14:50, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Infocom userbox

For anyone who's interested, I created an Infocom userbox. It looks like this:

>get all This user sorely misses Infocom and its works of interactive fiction.

The code to include it on a userpage is: {{User:DynSkeet/Userbox/Infocom}}
Feel free to use it if it strikes your fancy. -DynSkeet (Talk) 20:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"

While I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (computer game) is a great game, and it's an adventure game, it's not interactive fiction. I may be misremembering, but I believe the game relies heavily on graphics and (from memory) audio. Most of the interaction with the game is with the mouse, not text. If I've made the wrong call, please add it back and explain my mistake here. Alan De Smet | Talk 22:37, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect link?

Hello. I have noticed that clicking on the name "Philip Mitchell" (in the "Notable works of interactive fiction" section) leads to the page about Philip Mitchell, a British playwright. Which I believe is not correct, since the person who created "The Hobbit" is an Australian programmer. Also, in the original game's instructions he is credited as "Philip Mitchel" (with one "l"), although that might be a spelling mistake. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.24.51.224 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC1)

[edit] Listing interpreters

--- There should be the interpreter GARGOYLES mentionned! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 210.235.215.122 (talk • contribs) 08:45, October 22, 2006 (UTC)

I assume you mean the Gargoyle interpreter? It's a fine interpreter and the one I use, but it's not really relevant. No other interpreters are listed on this page. Oh, and a suggestion: you can use ~~~~ to sign your posts. Alan De Smet | Talk 02:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Weasel words

After looking at the article carefully, it occurred to me that (even though I am an IF fan myself) it fails to cite sources at some places and uses weasel words instead.

A fine example is the phrase "today, the games created by enthusiasts of the genre regularly surpass the quality of the original Infocom games".

Another example: "Infocom's games are now considered the classics of the genre, and the period in which it was active is thought of as the first golden age of interactive fiction."

Also, the "notable works" section is also affected. A "citation needed" is not enough to cover for phrases like "the game has earned notable praise for the vivid depiction ..."

As an IF fan, I know the above is very well true. But that does not mean that the article is immune to standard Wikipedia guidelines.

Therefore, I felt that marking the sections in questions with the weasel-tag is necessary. — Nikos 09:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've taken a stab at it, still quite a few unsourced claims left. I've cited a webpage by Alan De Smet, which I guess is pretty border-line, but I couldn't find any Wikipedia policy towards citing editors... Hrm. — Kwi | Talk 21:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia's guideline: "find a specific person or group who holds that opinion and give a citation to a reputable publication in which they express that opinion." The #1 source that jumps to mind here is the DM4, which I think fulfills the requirements. Also, the IF community is small enough so we don't need to cite BBC, in my opinion ;) — Nikos 04:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other definitions of "interactive fiction"

As regards this:

Secondary Definition Sometimes Interactive Fiction is used to describe a method of writing whereby multiple authors contibute sections of varying sizes to a story begun by a single author, often times in an Internet forum or by submission forms on a website.

I've never heard of this definition before. Can anyone back it up, or provide a few sources? How widespread is this use of the term? Adam Conover 02:01, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

I haven't heard that definition used widely, but there is a LiveJournal community that seems to use the term in that way [1].

However, in literary academia, "Interactive Fiction" is commonly used to refer to hypertext fiction and sometimes Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Less commonly, it is used to refer to collaborative writing exercises in which the line between writers and readers is unclear.

Oddly, Interactive Fiction in the sense addressed in this wikipedia entry is largely unknown or dismissed in literary academia. Montfort's book Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction [2] is a at least partially an attempt to introduce the academic community to IF in the sense of "text adventures" and set up a framework for discussing it in terms of literary analysis. It's also a very decent history of the craft.

For the hypertext fiction-centric meaning of the term, Montfort lists the following references (among many others):

Bolter, Jay (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and The Remediation of Print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.

Howell, Gordon & Douglas, Jane Yellowlees (1990). The Evolution of Interactive Fiction. Computer Assisted Language Learning, pp. 93–109.

Moulthrop, Stuart & Kaplan, Nancy (1991). Something to Imagine: Literature, Composition, and Interactive Fiction. Computers and Composition 9(1), pp. 7–23. [3]


Naltrexone 08:22, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. Perhaps we should change the "alternate definition" to something along the lines of "Interactive fiction is also occasionally used to refer to hypertext fiction"?

And yes, it is odd that interactive fiction is relatively unknown in literary academia, but I think you'd agree that this medium is still the one primarily associated with the term.

Adam Conover 17:19, Feb 20, 2004 (UTC)

On the net, without doubt, yes. But, yes, it's probably worth updating the "alternative definition" link. Would you like to or should I? Naltrexone 20:11, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I got it. Thanks for your help -- hope you stick around! A few of us are trying to build up the IF resources on the Wikipedia... check out User talk:Marnanel for our discussion. Adam Conover 01:26, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Putting "alternate definitions" at the bottom of the article is bad practice, by the way (see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Bottom links). I've moved it to the opening. –Unint 22:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

This article is all wrong: interactive fiction should not be limited to textbased formats but cover all media formats. Most importantly it is not a single tool nor linking method. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Leisku (talk • contribs) 02:56, December 20, 2006 (UTC)

You should use four tildes to sign your comments. The term "interactive fiction" was invented by Infocom to refer to the text-based games they produced. More than 25 years later, there is a great deal of tradition behind the use of this term. This is what people mean when they say "interactive fiction". You may want it to mean something broader, but it doesn't. Ntsimp 16:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
The article isn't all wrong; this is in fact one existing usage. There are multiple published books and articles using the term in exactly this way. This article summarizes what IF (by this one definition) is, how it came about, and where it is today. It's a good article and the name is accurate. There are other established meanings, but instead of expanding this article it would be appropriate to give them their own articles. For example, some people use "interactive fiction" as a rough synonym for hypertext fiction, which indeed has an existing article. In the event that two different fields need the same name, we'll rename the article to "Interactive fiction (video game medium)", put the new one somewhere similar ("Interactive fiction (hypertext)"), and turn this article into a disambiguation page. A general article discussing any interactive creative work doesn't seem particularly useful. It would need to stand on its own as an article, meaning it needs citations showing that the phrase is used in such a way, along with other facts like the history and development. — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

This article falsely limits interactive fiction only to text based fiction which is not right at all. Interactive fiction can happen in audiovisual media too using video, audio, images etc. it can be produced on various platforms: eg in radio, television, on the internet etc. Hence, this article is in dire need of rewriting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leisku (talk • contribs) 14:18, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My December 2006 comment above applies to your comment as well. Does it adequately address your concerns? — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


Recent "fact" notation

Someone added a "fact" notation regarding alternate uses of the term "interactive fiction." A 2004 article in The New York Times began, "In 2001, an Internet game designed to publicize the movie A.I. inspired a new genre called Alternate Reality Gaming, or ARG, puzzle-centric interactive fiction that blurs the line between fantasy and reality." Charles Herold, "NEWS WATCH: GAMES; Blur Fantasy With Reality, And Wrap It in a Puzzle." 05 Aug 2004. A footnote in my DHQ article, "Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave" reads

The term interactive fiction has also been applied to hypertext literature (Howell and Douglas 1990), AI-based character simulations (Anderson and Holmqvist 1990), and, sporadically, as a synonym for “alternate reality” or “viral marketing” games (McGonigal 2007, 6 and http://www.immersivegaming.com)...

So that phrasing does need a bit of work. Dennis G. Jerz (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 20:40, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Graphics-based?

What about adventure games with text parsers? Do those count as interactive fiction? Anything from Eric the Unready the King's Quest... Esn 22:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Per the definition given the in first paragraph, the answer is an unhelpful "maybe". As the article is written it focuses on games that use text as the primary input and output. By that definition King's Quest is an intermediate step between IF and graphic adventures with the text de-emphasized. But definitions exist that include graphic adventures in general, so by those definitions King's Quest would be definately included, but would wholly text parser free games like the games in the KQ series.. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
The King's Quest games, up until the fifth, did have a parser. A parser described to me as "pretty damn lame", but still a parser. Civil Again 08:02, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

To me, anything with a story where the user interacts with the game is interactive fiction. Text-based interactive fiction should have its own article- they're text adventures. Text adventures is a subcategory of interactive fiction. This article seems to assume that interactive fiction = text adventures. While that is a common use of interactive fiction (well, among the people who still use the phrase!), that's not really what it means. Alinnisawest (talk) 22:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Alinnisawest that while most people think of "text adventures" when they speak of "interactive fiction" the term has a linguistically broader definition. I also believe that when most people speak of the sorts of games this article covers they use the term "text adventures." Although WP:GOOGLE applies, I find 1.49m hits for "text adventure" and only 753k hits for "interactive fiction," and I think this is strong evidence (look at the usage by country and city) as well. I feel as though "Interactive fiction" should be made into a disambiguation page with "text adventure" prominently featured at the top of the ambiguous list and others like graphic adventure game lower down. Then this article would have to be renamed "text adventure." I don't think that text adventures should be limited to text-only adventures, though. Visual games with parsers are still text-based and I would include in this article a substantial section on vector graphic games and even the early point-and-click games which still retained parsers.
Here I have made two points which should stand independent of each other. (1)I suggest this article be renamed "text adventure" and "interactive fiction" should be made a disambiguation page, and (2)Visual games with a parser should be added to this article as a subsection either way since they are distinctly text-based games.
Thoughts on either point? -Thibbs (talk) 15:27, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
The usage dates back to at least 1983 [4]. Infocom called it interactive fiction. The community currently producing new works is calling it interactive fiction.[5][6][7] Text adventures have 25 years of claim to the phrase. What's the harm in calling it IF? Someone looking for text adventure will get to the right place. Are there other things that want to be listed as interactive fiction? Apparently not, as there isn't a disambiguation link to them at the top of the article, let alone the several that would suggest the need for a dedicated disambiguation page. I think you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. As for adding more coverage of games with both text parsers and output, but also graphics, yes, perhaps the article should have more coverage of that. There already is some (see the Legend Entertainment section), and although not mentioned here, several of the later Infocom games did have graphics. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
For future reference, when trying to use Google to establish the frequency of a phrase, put quotes around it. Searching for, say, text adventure will turn up pages that include "text" and "adventure", but not anywhere near each other. A more accurate study would be "text adventure" (247,000 hits) versus "interactive fiction" (525,000 hits). Ultimately it doesn't matter, as Google is an amazingly crude tool for establishing anything. All the results establish is that both phrases are in widespread use. We don't know what people are using them for. We don't know if one form is far more common in reliable sources. We don't know if the results are overly biased by modern usage, where 10 years ago te number might have been very different. — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I am not concerned that someone trying to find information on what they call "text adventures" will be unable to find this article but rather that the article's name is unnecessarily vague. I am well aware that the community uses both terms in discussing the subject, but I seek to eliminate the distinctly existing problem of Gorgian rhetors surfacing (see example 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc.) to voice their very valid complaints of vagueness of the term. Without changing the name of the article to be more precise, it is entirely accurate to suggest that non-text-based adventure games (like Myst or Riven), interactive movies (like Gadget), interactive cinema (like Fahrenheit), or FMV-based games (like The 7th Guest) are also interactive fiction. I would like to limit the scope of this article to text-based games ranging from traditional text adventures to parsed-text video games, but to do this in a non-arbitrary manner I think the article's title should reflect the content more precisely. After all, by a literal definition, games like Doom would fit the category insofar as they are both interactive and fictional.
My use of the term "text adventure" should not be unfamiliar to anyone who uses the term "interactive fiction" and as Alan De Smet has suggested, there is a 25 year history behind the term. To those few who might be stymied by this change of term, I believe the disambiguation page would prove invaluable especially if the text-adventure definition of interactive fiction were prominently listed as at the top of the dab page.
Perhaps I am being too cautious. I realize that nobody would seriously expect to see Doom listed here despite the fact that it fits the literal definition, but I am concerned that as Logomachist has pointed out above,

"What both usages have in common, however, is that they emphasize the narrative aspects of the interactive story. This emphasis I think will become the distinguishing feature of interactive fiction (if it isn't already), and will include any pre-written verbal narrative presented electronicly [sic] that shifts form according to the choices of the reader."

I can easily imagine future problems involving games like Myst that are very divorced from text yet retain all other aspects of the text adventure genre. Ultimately I fear that an article on the topic of text-based games will become diluted by non-text games simply as a result of its imprecise name. I think this doubly likely if we add a subsection on the history of the term "interactive fiction" to the article as you suggest below. I actually rather like your idea and would be very interested to know the history of the term, but it will inevitably broaden the scope of the article to include all of the genres I had discussed earlier as well as non-text ARGs (see above). Perhaps a workable solution is not to make "interactive fiction" a disambiguation page but rather to use it more as a summary page (like this example) containing all of the genres I have discussed (possibly even briefly including first person shooters, &c.). Thoughts?
Thibbs (talk) 20:29, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
One more quick note: A good example of the threat which this article's title poses to the maintenance of its subject matter content as text-based games can be found at Category:Interactive fiction. Please note the large Visual Novels section as well as such non-text-based titles as Façade, Dark Seed, Dark Seed II, Portal, Zork Grand Inquisitor, Zork: Nemesis, etc. I feel that all of these titles would be inappropriate in this article (except perhaps for a brief mention of the non-text-adventure Zork titles) -Thibbs (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Well thanks to the slow rate of response I'm getting here I've had time to reconsider my position. While I still stand by everything I've said here, I have thought of a much simpler solution. The only real problem which exists (and it does exist) is that people unfamiliar with the genre jump in WP:BOLDly and create problems. While BOLDness is encouraged, I think it causes unnecessary hassle here. My alternative solution is to change the first paragraph such that dab links are included at the top to siphon off those who are looking for graphical adventures and secondly that the definition for IF be made as exact as possible, highlighted further, possibly by making it its own paragraph, and then placing it at the very top. Following this, I think Category:Interactive fiction should be given a definition at the top as well (as with Category:Cave geology for random example, but in greater detail). Perhaps the talk page should be edited also to include the definition clearly at the top and it could be maintained at this position by including it on a {{consensus}} flag. The only thing left, then, would be to come up with a consensus definition. I like the one currently given in the first sentence of the article, but I feel it is slightly too vague (I don't mean to gripe honestly, I'm just trying to fix future problems). The vagueness comes from the fact that by this definition, any keyboard-exclusive game could possibly be considered to issue text commands wasd-games and letter-input games like Bard's Tale could be considered IF too. I propose that the definition be updated to mention the parser. I think we can all agree that IF is defined by a parser, right? Any comments would be welcomed. -Thibbs (talk) 22:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Tweaking the definition seems like a good idea; as you say, one could include the Bard's Tale under some readings of the current definition. Perhaps we should mention that both the input and output strive toward (but may not achieve) non-constructed languages (that is natural and constructed languages)? The current introduction does include what I think are good DAB links to other meanings; I'm hesitant to cram them all into the first paragraph, let alone the first sentence. I suspect it will weaken the article. The article should start with the key definition, not other things. But I'm open to the possibility that it can be well done and I simply lack the imagination to craft it. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
OK. This sounds reasonable. I guess we are agreed then to forget about my prior renaming suggestion, yes? I still think that the term "IF" is unfortunately vague but I suppose that as it seems to be a (somewhat) more common usage within today's community the term should remain. Logical argument to the contrary, it would seem, doesn't enter into cultural decisions. Darn you, meme theory! Perhaps mention could be made in your suggested "History of the term 'Interactive fiction'" of the prior history of the term "text adventure"? Anyway, I will apply what little imagination I have to the crafting of a tighter and more precise definition in the next few days hopefully. I'll post my suggestion here, of course, before altering the article so that we can gain a consensus before it is finalized. If this works the way I'm hoping it will, it should cut down on inappropriate suggestions of non-IF titles and at the very least it will provide an easy point of reference for editors to direct the voicers of such suggestion. Thanks for all the input, Alan De Smet. -Thibbs (talk) 18:41, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] never-updated sites

i removed brasslantern and xyzzynews as they havent been updated for years and re now horribly out-of-date —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.3.66.189 (talk) 22:34, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Untrue. In fact, on the day you removed those links, it had been less than six days from the last update to both sites. Civil Again 08:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Xyzzynews's latest edition is January 2008. Seems to me it's not "horribly out-of-date"! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alinnisawest (talk • contribs) 22:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ifarchive.org

its a bad idea to link to the achingly slow (unusably so) www.ifarchive.org website. much better to link to a random mirror via this link: http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.27.137.212 (talk) 00:12, 4 May 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Fair use of Zork I screenshot

There is apparently some disagreement about the validity of a Zork I screenshot. Here's my reasoning for a fair use claim (also present in a comment in the article proper: The screenshot illustrates: 1. IF games in general. 2. One of the first IF games. 3. One of the most famous IF games. 4. One of the most influential IF games. It is so important to the history of IF, that this is clearly more fair use than, say, the many images in First-person shooter or the stills in Western movie. It is perfectly reasonable fair use to take an important work within a medium and show a small snippit (and this is a very small snippet of the game) of a particularly famous work as illustrative of the medium as a whole. — Alan De Smet | Talk 01:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Also, I think this particular image really helps illustrate IF for people who may have only had a brush with it in the past, so they can say "yes, that is what I was thinking of" -Rebent 02:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Umm ... but wouldn't you get all of that from a screenshot of a game in the public domain e.g. Don and Woods' original Colossal Cave Adventure (computer game) or Dungeon, the more-or-less public domain precursor to Zork? Not sure what the reasoning is for using a commercial alternative.--Samwiseuk (talk) 14:51, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not aware of Colossal Cave being public domain. The copyright doesn't appear to have been enforced, but the copyright still exists unless the authors explicitly released it into the public domain. Were we to have evidence that Colossal Cave was public domain, that would be an interesting argument. Zork did have a much wider exposure, and seems likely more influential, but I might be convinced. As for Dungeon, it's definately not in the public domain. From the article itself, "Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed..." A noncommercial limitation is not acceptable for Wikipedia; we'd need to use it under a fair use claim. If we're claiming fair use, why not go with the more widely recognized image? (Do note that Zork being commercial is completely irrelevant. What matters is copyright, and noncommercial works are protected equally well.) — Alan De Smet | Talk 17:59, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Textfyre

I've pulled the addition of Textfyre information for now; they haven't shipped anything, no articles have really been written about them, we have no idea if they're really notable. They may, sadly, go under without shipping anything. When they ship something and get some coverage, feel free to re-add them. Be sure to give them their own article and use the media coverage as citations to establish notability and avoid the gaze of editors more interested in deleting than creating. Note that while a company founded online may have lots of of valuable information on Usenet or on Blogs, the stricter editors frown on such things. You can sneak some such citations in (Wikipedia:Ignore all rules), but if that's all you've got, you're destined for deletion. Fortunately the founding of an IF company is a rare enough event that I expect you'll get at least some minimal coverage. Note that under no circumstances a link to Textfyre's home page appropriate here. It would belong on Textfyre when that article exists. In the meanwhile, here's a place to start collecting citations. — Alan De Smet | Talk 03:39, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

months, programming 2 to 4 weeks, testing for a few weeks, then release. I expect each world will produce 3 to 4 games per year." "I expect this schedule to take place by the middle of next year or sooner." /* Error on call to Template:Cite newsgroup: parameter title required.

  • /

[edit] Rendition?

In these edits, an anonymous editor added Rendition (game) to the notable games list. From the description it sounds notable. However, the two citations given don't appear to lead to a discussion of the game. Can someone track down more direct links or more accurate citations? — Alan De Smet | Talk 05:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

this quicktime movie contains the slides and the audio of the CU presentation: http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/Tragedy-Electronic-Lit-7-Examples.mov
this is a SWF of the slides: http://www.natematias.com/cam/trag-elit/TragPresentation.html#SlideFrame_26 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.107.192.92 (talk) 11:47, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think Rendition is a strange choice for inclusion in this list. It has seen some discussion, but so have other (and far more substantial) works not mentioned in this list. In the IF-community, Rendition has not made a big splash. Victor Gijsbers (talk) 13:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Pretty much any game notable enough to justify a non-stub Wikipedia article is probably notable enough to list here. If the article gets glutted with games, perhaps we should look to pruning to a smaller set, but I think we're good for now. — Alan De Smet | Talk 00:56, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History of term "Interactive fiction"

A brief bit on the history of the phrase "interactive fiction" seems like a good addition. Here is what I've turned up so far as possible sources. (Many thanks to Peter Scheyen of [8] for his collection of articles].) — Alan De Smet | Talk 04:35, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Earliest usage: These are from reliable sources and are the earliest I can found. They establish legitimacy.
    • 1983, Time: "Computers: Putting Fiction on a Floppy" Time (magazine) December 5, 1983 By Philip Elmer-De Witt. Refers to "interactive fiction" several times. [9] [10]
    • 1983: New York Times: "Reading and Writing: Participatory Novels" The New York Times Book Review - May 8, 1983 By Edward Rothstein. "Infocom has been a major pioneer in such games, which have been called 'participatory novels,' 'interactive fiction' and 'participa-stories.'" [11] [12] [13]
  • 1984, New Zork Times: The New Zork Times (Infocom), Winter 1984 [14] First mention I can find of Infocom using the word. I can find later ones, but when Infocom publically first used it is most interesting.
  • 1985 Usenet discussions with the term, including several that overtly refer to Infocom's games as IF. This establishes general public use.
  • We continue to have mainstream, reliable usage:
    • 1985, Newsweek: "Zorked Again" by Bill Barol. Newsweek, December 23, 1985, page 70. [15] [16]
    • 1986, AmigaWorld: "The Wizard of Wishbringer" by Brian Moriarty. AmigaWorld, January/February 1986, pages 70-73. [17] [18]
    • 1988, Compute!: "Interactive Text In An Animated Age" COMPUTE!, Vol 10, No 1, Jan. 1988, Pages 17-19 By Keith Ferrell. [19] [20]
    • 1991, CGW: "The Rise and Fall of Infocom" by Johnny Wilson. Computer Gaming World, November 1991. [21] [22]
    • 1996, "Computer Game Review: Where Are They Now?" By Steven Greenlee (Computer Game Review, April 1996, pages 82-88) [23] [24]
    • 1999, PC Gamer: "Game Gods: Steve Meretzky." PC Gamer, September 1999, pages 80-81. [25] [26]
    • 2004, New York Times: The Ivy-Covered Console By Michael Erard, February 26, 2004, New York Times [27]
  • Places with more links to check on
I would just like to voice my endorsement of this proposed new subsection. I think the idea would serve the dual purposes of establishing legitimacy of the term as well as providing an interesting timeline to the genre. I also suggest that a pre-history be added where the genre was referred to strictly by the term "text-adventure" as this would advance the timeline goal of the subsection. Thoughts? -Thibbs (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classicfilm's edits; electronic literature

I've reverted these three edits by Classicfilm. The general gist of the edits was to include electronic literature in the definition. This seems well intentioned, but overly broad. Hypertext fiction has a reasonable claim as being a sort of interactive fiction, but electroic literature doesn't. According the article, EL does include HF, but it also includes, "Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs" and other forms which aren't interactive (beyond the level you interact with, say, a book, by looking at it/reading it). This just muddies the definition of IF in a way that I don't believe to be supported by actual usage. There was also other oddness, including limiting the definition of video game IF to commercial works; I see no reason to do so. So, I reverted it. I'm certainly open to arguments that I've made the wrong call. — Alan De Smet | Talk 22:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New sourced claims about ZIL

Does High Score really claim that "Zork Interpretive Language" [sic] was Infocom's parser? If so, I'm not sure I'd call it a reliable source. ZIL stands for Zork Implementation Language; it's the Lisp-like programming language Infocom's games were written in. I can't speak to the claims about Inglish, but if it got ZIL so far wrong... Ntsimp (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)