Thursday, November 4, 2010

Interactive Fiction: Literature or Not?


When discussing Interactive Fiction, it’s important to know that it isn’t and shouldn’t be judged in accordance with traditional textual fiction. It has similar aspects while having characteristics that make it individual and unique. Although many people have argued that interactive fiction shouldn’t be put in the same category as works of literature, it does feature similar literary elements. A few are the presence of a main character, a plot, setting and a purpose or goal. The main character is what is known as a “player character” as described in Nick Montfort’s article “Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction”. The player character is the character in the story that the player who is interacting with the story becomes. It then becomes the player’s purpose to fulfill whatever the player character’s purpose is. The plot is not normally found out until a while into the story when the player has interacted with the story. The setting is normally told in the beginning of the IF before the player character is even able to interact and may be further elaborated as the PC plays. The purpose or goal may also be elaborated as the player character continues to find out information about the situation and what is necessary.
            In contrast with the elements of IF that are similar to traditional textual literature, there are also things that make it very different. A good definition by Dennis Jerz in his Weblog “Interactive Fiction: What is it?” he says, “The classic IF interface is a command based textual feedback loop: the computer displays a few lines or paragraphs of text; the interactor types a command; the computer describes what happens next, and then waits for additional input.” In other words, IF is very much like a game. In order to get further in the story and find out more about the character(s) and plot, the user must interact with the story. A lot of times there are puzzles included in the story. For instance, in “All Roads” by Ingold, there are many puzzles that must be figured out. One of the puzzles is that the user must find out a way to get down from being hung in front of what we assume are the citizens of Rome. 
Another puzzle in this very same IF is the need for the user to find out how to get the player character’s hands untied. This is accomplished by the player character finding out that the pile of dust in the corner of the room can be blown away and revel an empty wine bottle. This then must lead the user to figure out that this must be broken and the broken shards must be used to cut the ropes around the player character’s wrists.

            Although I enjoyed my time played and interacting with Interactive Fiction, there are elements that I believe to be conflicting with what the user takes away from the story. For instance when playing Ingolds “All Roads”, I got stuck in the very beginning and couldn’t seem to find a way to get out of the scene of the hanging. At first, I thought that this was it; this was to be the fate of my character. Then output said something about a darkness finally showing up and that I should follow it so I typed go which brought me to an empty room. The problem I see here is that many users may get discouraged, like I almost did, and give up entirely. In the end, I got further than I thought I would in the story but got stuck in a similar place that many of my other classmates did. When it came time to get past the guard, I just couldn’t do it and gave up. It wasn’t until we discussed in class later that I found out what I could have done and where I could have gone in the story. I was disappointed that I hadn’t gone as far and felt like I missed out on something. I also wouldn’t have been able to take away any kind of theme if I didn’t get that far, which was that no matter how many times you try to outsmart your fate, you will always end up in the same place, as the player character kept getting caught and eventually killed over and over again. I think IF is a unique form of literature and is not meant for everybody. While playing, I took it as more of a video game and forgot that the purpose was to learn and story and take away a theme from it. I treated it as when I was playing James Bond when I was in 3rd grade and all I cared about was entering the next level. Although, I think that this form of literature is good for people who get bored flipping pages and lose excitement in a story that lays it all out for you. I think people who enjoy figuring out puzzles may have much to gain from a story that calls for the user to put work and effort in.
            Now to discuss my own experiences in writing IF, which I absolutely detested. I am not the kind of person who finds joy in puzzles and I have always found making my own a hard thing to do. Although it may sound as if I am going to completely bash my experience in making Interactive Fiction, I am actually going to start it out by saying some good things. I think Interactive Fiction can open many doors within the creative process. For people like me, who find pleasure in simple, systematic things, this creative process can be frustrating because perhaps we lack this kind of creativity. But for people who excel, they can find many doors open. The ability to create a story that the user interacts with allows the writer a satisfaction when the user figures out the puzzle that they set for them. Something I enjoyed about the creative process was the satisfaction of putting information into Source area of Inform7 and seeing it translate into the story when I hit “Go!”. There was an immense satisfaction and wave of relief when this occurred but contrariwise, I was disappointed when I got an error message and a feeling of impending stress set in because I knew I had to find out a way to correct a problem. This forced me to rely heavily on both the manual given to us in class and the documentation provided in Inform7, as I’m sure many new users of this software do. I found that I was more fully able to express the mystery of my story because it required the user to find out what was going on in the room . On the opposite side of the spectrum, I found my creativity to be stifled as I was moving forward in the creation of my story. I had the basic gist of what I wanted to occur down but I’m the kind of writer that will have a basic outline but let the rest of the plot line come to me as I’m writing. This was hard to do when I had all the limitations and errors I was receiving from the software. For instance, all I wanted to do was have my player character take a note that had fallen onto the floor but I had the hardest time getting the software to do what I wanted it to do and had to read through the manual several times. 
            Whether or not I think my story would have been better expressed in IF or in text is a hard thing for me to say. My story was a mystery one of sorts where the player character came back to her dorm room to a bloody scene (I wrote this right before Halloween) and found a hooded figure standing in the room and suddenly disappeared. She then finds a note from her roommate saying that she made a horrible mistake and doesn’t think anybody can save her. There is where the user finds out his/her “mission” of sorts. They must try to save her roommate wherever she may be. I think they fact that it was a mystery plotline and the basis of IF is to work with it to find out what is going on. In this way, I think IF better suited my storyline because it matched the whole spirit of a mystery. In a different way, I think it would have been easier for me to formulate my story if I could use fully descriptive sentences and paragraphs and didn’t have to worry about what the user would need to say to advance in the story.
            I think I was inspired differently if I were to sit down and write a traditional textual story versus an IF. I’m not used to writing a story like this and it was a weird experience. I’m not the best writer, but I have enjoyed writing ever since I was in elementary school. I remember when it was first required for us to turn in papers that were typed on the computer and I couldn’t stand it. To this day, I still prefer to start writing with pen and paper and then retype it into a word processor. Because of this, I didn’t have an enjoyable experience writing my own IF. I was frustrated and quickly lost sight of what I was aiming for.
           Writing my own IF has given me great appreciation for the feats and successes of Interactive Fictions like Emily Short’s “Galatea”. The amount of information and twists and turns in that IF is enough to win Short a Pulitzer prize in my eyes after seeing how difficult it is to create.

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