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.