In the beginning…
Adventure, also known as ADVENT (due to the restricted naming conventions of early computers) or Colossal Cave, was the first text adventure game, released in 1975 by Will Crowther, a caver and a programmer on the ARPANET. Being one of the first forms of entertainment available on a computer that could be interacted with in natural language, it instantly went viral on university mainframes and is reported to have caused a loss of 2 weeks of productivity wherever it was played. In 1976, a re-worked and improved version by Don Woods was released onto university networks and the text adventure phenomenon exploded, with extended versions of Adventure and similar treasure-hunt/fantasy-based text adventures appearing all over America and England. In 1980, Scott Adams would release Adventureland (having more than titular similarity with the original Adventure), the first computer game to be sold to the general public, thus igniting the computer game industry. However, It wasn’t until a group of students at MIT, who had developed a sprawling text adventure with an advanced parser called ‘Dungeon’, that the genre began to mature. The creators of Dungeon would go on to form Infocom – the most influential Interactive Fiction software company of the 80s, and Dungeon would sell millions of copies distributed as the classic Zork trilogy. Throughout the first half of the 80s, multiple Infocom titles, selling at $40 each, could be found on the Top 10 selling software chart each month. Then, with the growing quality of graphics and the evolution of video games themselves, the commercial appeal for Interactive Fiction simply faded away. Who would have known that this was the necessary step for Interactive Fiction to truly evolve?
Phoenix Rising
With the demise of Interactive Fiction in the marketplace, many fans continued to make their own games using commercially available software. But it wasn’t until the mid-90s, with the introduction of powerful Interactive Fiction programming languages, such as TADS and Inform, that a new, innovative and free era of Interactive Fiction would rise form the ashes.
Thanks to the Internet, a global community of Interactive Fiction fans were brought together through USENET discussion groups, which led to the creation of a central IF repository for fan-created works – the IF Archive, and the organising of the first of various annual Interactive Fiction competitions. These competitions are largely responsible for the bulk of Interactive Fiction that gets written today, and have had a tremendous effect on the quality of games created as well as having pushed the genre beyond it’s self-constructed boundaries of the 80s. Experimental works began to appear: single location games, puzzle-less games, use of different voices (instead of the traditional second person) and above all, the literary aspect of Interactive Fiction was finally given the chance to blossom. Free from the shackles of needing to sell and make a profit, the current era of Interactive Fiction has truly embraced the art of participatory storytelling – the narrative has won over the crossword. Another pivotal change introduced by the competitions was the compulsory creation of Interactive Fiction that could be played in less than 2 hours – making it much easier to introduce IF to new audiences and of course, to incorporate into the language classroom!
While many of the game files for text adventures from the 1980s and early 90s can be found in the repositories listed below, many published works are still under copyright and are not available. Included amongst these, unfortunately, are the Infocom canon, except for a handful of the games from the Zork series. However, some of the Infocom games are available to play online here.
Where to find free Interactive Fiction games:
- The Interactive Fiction Database – http://ifdb.tads.org/
The IFDB is my preferred platform for finding IF games and learning more about them. The layout is attractive and very clear. Game files and information can be found by using a search engine (by game name, author or tags, etc.) or by browsing through lists. The best aspect of the IFDB is its community based wiki-like interface, where users can leave comments about games and create lists of games based on topics, such as:
· Various Top 10 and recommended lists
Users of the IFDB can also ask the community for recommendations or help in finding specific games or information about them. Each page devoted to a single IF game will contain downloads for various game files (if available), any existing documentation (including walkthroughs) and links to play online. Additionally, links to reviews of the game and further recommendations are to be found.
- Baf’s Guide to the IF Archive – http://wurb.com/if/
Baf’s guide is a front end to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which is a nightmare to navigate due to the quantity of files contained within it. Like the IFDB, it offers a well-implemented search engine and various categorised lists to browse. The site itself posts the following warning:
“The Archive is the principal place from which new text adventures are disseminated, but it’s also a repository for old games, enabling veteran players to take a nostalgic look at what they played on their TRS-80’s back in the late 1970’s. The result is that, although the if-archive contains many good games, it contains many more bad games”.
- The Interactive Fiction Archive – http://ifarchive.org/ – not even worth the time trying to explore it – just use Baf’s guide instead.
Although the submitted games are already available from IFDB, you might like to have a look at the site for the 17th annual Interactive Fiction competition.
In this blog, I will recommend IF to use with English learners, as I get around to playing them myself and experimenting with different activities. However, between the IFDB and Baf’s guide, you have a whole world of IF at your fingertips – a lot of it very bad, but some of it very, very good. Explore the sites, browse the tags that interest you and importantly, read player reviews and comments to help you make your selections.
For the ultimate history lesson in Interactive Fiction, Jimmy Maher’s ‘Let’s Tell A Story Together’ is an incredible resource. Read it here.
I couldn’t finish this article without linking to this fantastic YouTube clip by The Game Shelf, which beautifully summarises much of what I’ve been talking about in the last 4 posts. A must watch!
The Gameshelf – Episode 8: The state of modern Interactive Fiction
IF Only: 