intfiction.org

So there's been a bit of a discussion regarding "Zombie Exodus", a CYOA (that went, I daresay, mostly unnoticed by most IFers, though I could be wrong) that got tons of votes for the XYZZYs. The discussion is in the appropriate thread, in the appropriate board.

Out of that discussion arose another - the status of CYOA and whether it can be placed alongside traditional IF, and therefore whether it even has a place here in this forum, in this forum's activities, in this community's awards.

It might be time to discuss the issue in full. I don't know if it has been discussed before - if so, then it was surely quite awhile back. I'm also not sure whether there is much *interest* in this discussion, because for all practical reasons there is little real interference - occasionally we have CYOA games being nominated for IF awards, and little else.

If there is interest in this discussion, then I'll cast the first stone. I believe CYOA is a form of IF - much less complex, offering more limited options to the user, often focusing more on the storyline and characters than on any actual puzzles. The system is the same: the computer textually describes the situation and asks for your input, which it will then use to further the story. The difference is that it limits your command to a few choices, thus losing one of the key charms in IF, surely - but still IF, much like Myst is as much a graphic adventure as the ones with tons of verb-icons, and Loom is a graphic adventure as much as any game with inventory management.

I will refrain from posting any replies for a while now. I don't want to start a dialog between me and someone else - I'd like to start a discussion, and that's another thing I'd like this thread to measure: whether there's even enough interest in this issue to *generate* a discussion.

I don't think that's right. IF and CYOA are both forms of text game, and that you can easily spin the disadvantages you list into advantages doesn't say much for either judgement. CYOA offers affordances integrally tied into the game world, helping to make the player experience smoother and more immersive. By limiting your commands to a few choices, you make the experience less frustrating and at the same time easier to implement on devices where typing is less enjoyable.

If a moderator could move the relevant posts from the XYZZY thread to this one, that would be awesome.

And that makes them different. Whether they're better or not is subjective. But they're different enough to need their own classification and rules.

CYOA[1] is definitely Interactive Fiction. It is interactive: you have to make choices which have meaningful consequences for the story. It is fiction: not in the sense of it necessarily being 'made up' (after all, you can have nonfiction interactive fiction), but in the literary sense of the word: a hyperlink game is a textual medium written with the intent to afford someone a fictive experience; to tell them a story.

Of course, a hyperlink game isn't a parser-based text game, but I think they're sufficiently similar to be judged by much the same standards. Just like Maniac Mansion, a parser-based graphical adventure, can be compared to the entirely point-and-click Day of the Tentacle.




1. Or hyperlink games, as I prefer to call them- CYOA is a brand name, and like 'text adventure' can be a little misleading.

You cannot use the literal meaning of the term here. Because then I'm going to object that Doom is also Interactive Fiction because it's both interactive and fiction. Or I can attempt the same joke I did in another thread: the New York Times is interactive fiction too, because their website is interactive and it's also mostly fiction. So there.

Maniac Mansion, parser-based? I never played a parser version of it... though obviously I understand what you mean, and will mentally translate to "Space quest I-III --> Space Quest IV-VI" (or any of the Sierra Quest games).

I'm sorry you misunderstand me; you are equivocating here: there are different senses of the word 'fiction'. You are using it in the sense of 'an invented idea or narrative; an imaginary thing', and I am using it in the more specific sense of literature: i.e. text-based stories. The Play, Zork and Lost Pig are all interactive text based stories; Doom and arguably the New York Times are not.


I might have recalled incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure that while there were verb buttons, the whole thing was built over a parser-engine and you could type commands. But yeah, I'm sure Sierra presents a clearer example.

But you used the term "Interactive Fiction", not "Interactive Literary Fiction". Therefore, by following your own logic, Doom is a piece of IF.

This is what my whole point is. "Interactive Fiction" doesn't explicitly mention written text. And it also doesn't mention a parser. But it still uses text as a central medium, as well as a parser.

Joey, while I agree with you, I'll have to ask you to remember that, if we go the literal way, any game can be a RPG in that it involves playing a role, usually the role of the player character. "Interactive Fiction" is too broad a term to be applied literally - "text adventure" might be best used in this scenario.

A term which, I must say, can also encompass CYOA.