| <html lang="en" xml:lang="en"> | |
| <head> | |
| <title>Interactive Fiction as Literature</title> | |
| <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> | |
| <meta name="Description" content=""Interactive Fiction as Literature" is an early literary analysis of IF. | |
| Originally written by Mary Ann Buckles and published in the May 1987 issue of BYTE magazine. | |
| Transcribed into HTML by David Welbourn." /> | |
| </head> | |
| <body style="padding-left:0.5in;padding-right:0.5in;background-color:white;color:black"> | |
| <p style="text-align:right"><big>Mary Ann Buckles</big></p> | |
| <h1>Interactive Fiction as Literature</h1> | |
| <h2 style="font-family:Arial;Helvetica;sans-serif"><i>Adventure games have a literary lineage</i></h2> | |
| <p>When Willie Crowther and Don Woods wrote the narrative-based game Adventure, they most likely did not foresee | |
| that they were creating a new way of telling a story or that Adventure might some day be considered a work of | |
| literature.</p> | |
| <p>The adventure game genre is now called interactive fiction (IF). In some ways, IF closely resembles the traditional | |
| literary genres of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and adventure tales. These types of popular literature are | |
| based on rules, games, and the creation of fantasy worlds. They all emphasize a step-by-step, action-consequence type | |
| of thinking and imagination.</p> | |
| <h3>Mystery Literature: Detection as a Game</h3> | |
| <p>Edgar Allen Poe would have loved IF; he was a master at solving cryptograms and thought problems, and he wrote the | |
| first detective story, “Murder in the Rue Morgue.” Ever since then, mystery literature has been compared to | |
| games. The Sherlock Holmes stories, for example, have been called “crossword puzzles.” Mystery novels like | |
| those of Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett are more like jigsaw puzzles, while James Bond novels and spy stories can | |
| be compared to games of chess.</p> | |
| <p>Mysteries challenge the reader's powers of deduction; they are games in the form of stories, in which the reader | |
| competes with the author, matching wits in the game of “who done it” and how.</p> | |
| <p>Some writers have even established mystery literature “rules” to make sure the competition between the | |
| reader and the characters, or the reader and the author, is fair. One set of rules that was set forth to give the reader | |
| a sporting chance requires that the author at least mention the criminal early on in the story, that there be no more | |
| than one secret passage per story, and that no secret twin brothers or sisters may suddenly appear to explain the crime. | |
| To promote such fair play with the reader, the famous Detection Club (founded by G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Cristie, | |
| Dorothy Sayers, and others) requires new members to swear to the following initiation oath (see reference 1):</p> | |
| <blockquote><i> | |
| <p>Ruler: Do you solemly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader?</p> | |
| <p>Candidate: I do.</p> | |
| <p>Ruler: Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Trap-Doors, Chinamen . . . and utterly and forever | |
| to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to science?</p> | |
| <p>Candidate: I do.</p> | |
| </i></blockquote> | |
| <p>Of course, fair play in no way hinders an author from trying to fool the reader; trickery and the ability to manipulate | |
| the rules to one's own advantage are admired qualities in gamesmanship.</p> | |
| <p>As in mystery literature, the fascination of the intellectual challenge in IF may make up for weaknesses in | |
| characterization and style, which often suffer from the all-consuming goal of making the plot as thick as possible. | |
| In both IF and in detective literature, events and characters' choices are often not explained psychologically. | |
| In many mystery stories, the author simply establishes that the crime is puzzling, without providing any plausible | |
| motivation for it.</p> | |
| <p>However, the suspense in mysteries can evoke total involvement and escape from our real-world problems. Because the | |
| reader is the detective and unraveller of puzzles in IF, and therefore more actively and intensely involved in solving | |
| the problems, IF can become a more powerful type of suspense and escape literature than current mystery literature.</p> | |
| <h3>IF and Adventure Literature</h3> | |
| <p>Crowther and Woods' Adventure is a story of exploration, like Jules Verne's <i>Journey to the Center of the Earth</i>. | |
| Both take place in caves, and many of the descriptions are similar. Perhaps surprisingly, the cave descriptions in | |
| Adventure are often more realistic and vivid than in Verne's story. Whereas Jules Verne explored only in his imagination, | |
| Willie Crowther is a real-life spelunker. Adventure began as a map, a computer model of an actual Colossal Cave in | |
| Kentucky, which Crowther explored and then accurately duplicated in the first few levels of Adventure's cave.</p> | |
| <p>Similarly, Adventure is related to Robert Louis Stevenson's <i>Treasure Island</i>. The desire for treasure motivates | |
| both stories, and both were inspired by maps. Location and physical setting dictate the process of action. | |
| Stevenson once explained how he got the idea for his famous story:</p> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><i>I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy | |
| beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the | |
| predestined, I ticketed my performance 'Treasure Island' . . . as I paused upon my map of 'Treasure Island,' the future | |
| character [sic] of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons | |
| peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few | |
| square inches of a flat projection. The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of | |
| chapters . . . the map was most of the plot.</i> (See reference 2.)</p> | |
| </blockquote> | |
| <h3>Chivalry is Alive</h3> | |
| <p>Adventure, which was made possible by technological advancements in computers, is similar to the first | |
| “novels,” which were also dependent upon a new technology, the printing press. These novels of chivalry were | |
| prose versions of medieval knightly verse epics that, with the introduction of the printing press, could be | |
| mass-produced for a wide audience.</p> | |
| <p>Compare Irving Leonard's comments on the romances of chivalry to the reactions of Adventure lovers:</p> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><i>These tremendously popular works of fiction . . . stimulated the emotions and won the passionate | |
| devotion of all literate classes of Spain, from the great Emperor Charles V himself to the lowliest clerk in his | |
| service. . . . The pages of this chivalric fiction were thumbed with an enthusiasm amounting to a passion. | |
| . . . The aristocracy of every shade and degree, including its womenkind, and even the clergy, devoted much | |
| of their ample leisure to this diverting pastime.”</i> (See reference 3.)</p> | |
| </blockquote> | |
| <p>The prose novels of chivalry, which Cervantes satirized in <i>Don Quixote</i>, delight in childlike fantasies of | |
| overcoming all difficulties, vanquishing all foes, and being rewarded with treasure and success in the process. | |
| The hero and characters in the chivalry stories are basically cardboard figures without internal conflicts and can be | |
| said to have no psychology at all. The pop-up characters in Adventure are limited in the same way.</p> | |
| <p>Adventure and the novels of chivalry are based on a story structure of more of less independent units that are | |
| strung together and can be expanded infinitely. Today, we do not usually consider plot profusion and complexity as | |
| positive literary attributes, but this was not always the case. In the Renaissance, entangledness and complexity of plot | |
| were regarded as admirable qualities; the novels of chivalry have been considered “vast, almost unreadable | |
| jumble(s) of episodes that stand as a fitting monument to sixteenth-century taste for the fantastic.” (See | |
| reference 4.)</p> | |
| <p>Similarly, complexity in Adventure is achieved through the difficulty of remembering the layout of the cave and | |
| through the intricacies of the brainteasers you encounter. Such complexity seems to appeal to the computer enthusiast | |
| mentality. In <i>The Second Self</i> (see reference 5), Sherry Turkle comments on the worship in the computer | |
| subculture of the fantastic, the bizarre, and the intricate. This applies not only to a style of programming but also | |
| to tastes in literature (science fiction and fantasy) and music (baroque and jazz).</p> | |
| <p>The loose structure in the prose novels of chivalry promoted joint or multiple authorship, another characteristic | |
| of text adventures. John O'Conner writes: “In general, the longer a chivalric prose narrative, the better and | |
| more influential it was. This kind of tale was written in such a way that, if popular response warranted, succeeding | |
| books could easily be added. Hence the number of volumes a romance finally attained is an approximate gauge of its | |
| popularity.” (See reference 4.)</p> | |
| <p>The same can be said for text adventures as they get passed around on computer networks, modified, and expanded: | |
| the longer, the better.</p> | |
| <h3>IF and Fantasy/Science Fiction</h3> | |
| <p>In fantasy and science fiction, the author makes up an imaginary world and plays with the probable consequences | |
| of a set of rules that may be different from those governing our real lives. The author can set up the rules for the | |
| imaginary world in any way desired, but he or she must abide strictly by them.</p> | |
| <p>This attitude toward rules is similar to that in computer programming, where the rules are arbitrary but absolutely | |
| binding. It is also an age-old literary technique. Around 330 B.C. Aristotle wrote:</p> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><i>The poet should choose probable impossibilities rather than incredible possibilities . . . if a poet | |
| does take such a[n impossible] plot and appears to have handled it with some appearance of probability, the absurdity | |
| may be pardoned. Even the improbabilities about putting Odysseus on shore in the Odyssey would clearly not be tolerable | |
| if treated by an inferior poet. As it is, the skill of Homer conceals the absurdity and makes it pleasing.”</i> | |
| (See reference 6.)</p> | |
| </blockquote> | |
| <p>Adventure's authors drew some of the content, characters, and motifs from science fiction and fantasy literature, | |
| especially from Tolkien's <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. Don Woods says that he had glanced at Tolkien's description of | |
| Orodruin (Mount Doom, the volcano in the Land of Mordor where the evil Sauron forged the One Ring of Power) before he | |
| wrote the “Breathtaking View” scene in Adventure. Tolkien says of Mount Doom,</p> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><i>. . . its ashen cone would grow hot and with a great surging and throbbing pour forth rivers of molten | |
| rock from chasms in its sides . . . some would wind their way into the stone plain, until they cooled and lay | |
| like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth. Sam beheld Mount Doom, and the light of it . . . | |
| now glared against the stark rock faces, so that they seemed to be drenched with blood.”</i> | |
| (See reference 7.)</p> | |
| </blockquote> | |
| <p>Compare this to the beginning of Wood's “Breathtaking View”:</p> | |
| <blockquote> | |
| <p><i>Far below you is an active volcano, from which great gouts of molten lava come surging out, cascading back down | |
| into the depths. The glowing rock fills the farthest reaches of the cavern with a blood-red glare, giving everything | |
| an eerie, macabre appearance.</i></p> | |
| </blockquote> | |
| <h3>How is Interactive Fiction New?</h3> | |
| <p>Although the story content of Adventure and other interactive works is related to established forms of literature, | |
| IF also differs from them on a very basic level—the reader's participation in creating the story and text makes | |
| the reader both a character and, in some sense, the coauthor of the story.</p> | |
| <p>In IF, the nature of the text is also changed. The fluid computerized text allows a personalization and | |
| individualization of a literary work. The reader can talk to the text, and the text, in the form of the story's | |
| narrator, can talk back to the reader.</p> | |
| <div style="float:right;border-top:solid black 3px;border-bottom:solid black 3px;padding-left:1em; | |
| padding-top:0.5em;padding-bottom:0.5em;font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-style:italic;width:25%">An | |
| acquaintance has calculated that the 'battery maze' in Adventure can be experienced in 187 billion trillion | |
| unique ways.</div> | |
| <p>In conventional literature, a “gap” occurs when readers must interpret for themselves what the text means; | |
| the story is told, but its meaning is not. IF, however, contains not only gaps in meaning, but physical gaps in the | |
| text that the reader must fill in. These physcial gaps in the interactive text allow such a wide range of explanations | |
| or interpretations of the fictional events taking place in Colossal Cave that it often seems as if different readers | |
| are not reading the same story. Some people play Adventure strictly as a game, while others read it as a straight story | |
| about exploring a cave and discovering the treasures.</p> | |
| <p>Many, however, see Adventure as a story with deeper meanings. One player/reader believed the treasures in the cave | |
| were left by the good wizard of a long-vanished civilization, whose long-lost secrets would be revealed only when all of | |
| the puzzles in the cave were solved completely.</p> | |
| <p>Another reader, a camper-backpacker, imagined that careless spelunkers had left the treasures in the cave. Yet | |
| another reader interpreted taking the treasures in the cave as stealing them.</p> | |
| <p>The texts these three readers created were completely different because they read different stories into Adventure. | |
| This apparent drive to make context is a reflection in some ways of readers' psychological needs.</p> | |
| <p>Some attempts have been made in more conventional literature to allow the reader choices about how a story unfolds, | |
| such as the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series. These books contain many story units; each lasts only a few | |
| pages and is complete in itself. At the end of a unit, either the story ends or you are given a choice and the story | |
| continues.</p> | |
| <p>The artistic effects of these techniques fall far short of those in IF, due to the linear nature of text printed on | |
| paper. In IF, you make choices about each individual step and construct the story units for yourself; the choices are | |
| not predefined.</p> | |
| <p>The quantitative difference between the number of possible stories in computer-based fluid text and the printed | |
| texts is also great. In one printed book, <i>The Cave of Time</i> (see reference 8), for example, there are 56 possible | |
| stories. In Adventure, the number of different stories must be, strictly speaking, infinite, since you can travel in | |
| repetitive loops within the cave and type in any comment and elicit at least some response. Even without resorting to | |
| loops and nonsense commands, though, the number of distinct possible texts is astronomical. A scientist acquaintance has | |
| calculated that the “battery maze” in Adventure alone (which has 12 different locations, 11 of them connected | |
| to 9 or 10 of the others) can be experienced in 187 billion trillion unique ways.</p> | |
| <p>The fluid nature of interactive text and its computer medium explodes the traditional literary concept of the | |
| individual authorships of a printed text. In some ways, the authorship and transmission of the interactive text is similar | |
| to those of oral literature. With a printed text, we generally have the idea that there is a single author who | |
| “owns” the text; copyrighting reflects our views about this. But in oral literature and IF, single, joint, | |
| multiple, communal, unknown, and anonymous authorships are common. Adventure, for example, was first written and | |
| released by William Crowther, enlarged and improved by Don Woods, and released again. There are now many versions of | |
| Adventure, and programmers often personalize the programs so that the dwarves have the names of their friends, | |
| enemies, or despised professors, for example.</p> | |
| <h3>Bringing Beauty to the Beast</h3> | |
| <p>For those who would like to write interactive fiction, a few suggestions and observations follow. I have based them on | |
| the scripts of the texts readers created while playing Adventure and on the varying degrees of enthusiasm the readers | |
| expressed in interviews when they discussed Adventure's literary qualities.</p> | |
| <ol> | |
| <li><p>Provide a unified but open text. In traditional literature, almost everything of importance to the story itself | |
| is explained to the reader. If a cave bear were locked up in golden chains in a conventional story, the author would | |
| probably explain somewhere who locked it up and why. This doesn't happen in Adventure. You not only stumble in surprise | |
| upon the events; you never really find out what they mean. Unfortunately, in Adventure, they ususally don't mean | |
| anything.</p> | |
| <p>I would suggest that any text adventure writer make up a supra-story, that is, a story that explains every object | |
| and the behavior of every creature, even though you don't reveal this supra-story to the reader directly. The events | |
| will then have an inner coherence, but readers can project their own supra-story onto them, just as each person | |
| arrives at a personal meaning for a poem.</p></li> | |
| <li><p>Take advantage of step-by-step build-ups. “Breathtaking View” was the aesthetic highpoint of Adventure | |
| for many readers. From the first hint of rumbling in the distance, through the stifling passages with their trembling | |
| walls, to the stunning vision of the volcano, most readers were gripped with emotion. Not surprisingly, many readers | |
| felt let down when they found out that nothing happens at the viewpoint. This letdown was one of the aesthetic low | |
| points of the game. The lesson to be learned is, if you build up story tension, make sure something exciting happens!</p></li> | |
| <li><p>Give the puzzles a moral quality. For many people, merely winning points for gathering treasures is not as | |
| emotionally satisfying as doing good and overthrowing evil to win the points or treasures. Most readers preferred using | |
| the treasures and doing something with them later on, not dragging them back to the surface to win points. For example, | |
| several people told me they thought the hungry bear bound with the golden chains was the most enticing problem because | |
| they were emotionally involved with it. They didn't want to hurt the bear, yet they were mildly afraid of it. When the | |
| puzzles have a moral dimension, it gives them emotional depth.</p> | |
| <p>Although there is no moral basis to the text in Adventure or to the solutions of the narrative puzzles themselves, | |
| the reader practices reality testing as a principle of action, which can be useful when carried over into the real world. | |
| While playing Adventure, readers test their interpretation of the story and events many times over. If you can't solve | |
| a puzzle, you must face the fact that you don't have enough information, that you overlooked or misjudged the | |
| information you do have, or that your general view of the story might be wrong. You have to maintain a critical attitude | |
| toward yourself and the fictional situations you confront, even as you are making choices. Needless to say, this can be | |
| a useful philosophy of life.</p></li> | |
| <li><p>Create a narrator with a unified personality and vision. The narrator of a story is the one who tells the story | |
| in the text. Readers know that whoever or whatever they are talking to has a personality. Sometimes it is peevish, | |
| petulant, or whining; sometimes it seems to laugh at the reader. Make sure that your game has a personality that is | |
| consistent from the reader's point of view.</p> | |
| <p>You should also watch the narrator for consistency in what it does or doesn't know. For example, in Adventure, some | |
| readers seem confused as to whether the narrator knows the entire layout of the cave and is simply hiding it from them, | |
| or whether the narrator only knows about what it sees directly in front of it. They also are not quite clear about what | |
| the narrator is: a robot like R2D2, a computer like “HAL” in <i>2001, A Space Odyssey</i> or some entity | |
| with feelings of its own. You don't need to explain the narrator to the readers directly, just make sure you've got | |
| a clear image of it in your own mind.</p></li> | |
| <li><p>Test your interactive story on other people. Get as many people as you can, in as many combinations as possible | |
| to play or read your story for you. Then watch them and ask them questions, during or after the game. (Some people are | |
| not able to explain what they are thinking or get frustrated if they get interrupted while they're playing.) The most | |
| revealing interviews or readings are often made by two or three people playing together at once. Group players often | |
| discuss and argue about whose interpretation of the fictional events is correct. This is an excellent way of finding out | |
| the various ways people interpret the events.</p> | |
| <p>Have the computer make a script of the game as it is being played, which includes both the game prompts and the | |
| reader's responses. After studying the scripts, you can modify your programs to deal with players' commands and | |
| vocabulary that you hadn't considered before. For example, one Adventure player assumed that “lamp” meant | |
| “flashlight,” while others thought of it as Aladdin's lamp. The authors were clever enough to prepare | |
| responses consistent with either meaning.</p></li> | |
| </ol> | |
| <h3>The Future of Interactive Fiction</h3> | |
| <p>The first interactive texts were written by programmers who thought of them mostly as games, and the literature | |
| they created is unsophisticated. The computer itself, however, does not limit IF to frivolous works. Consider the | |
| development of film. Early film was an unsophisticated medium, “so crude in its initial stages that it was | |
| considered to be beneath contempt” (see reference 9). Only with D. W. Griffith's “Birth of a Nation” | |
| and, later, Charlie Chaplin's films, did audiences become aware that film could transmit and aesthetically | |
| mature experiences.</p> | |
| <p>Now interactive stories are being written by traditional authors with technical assistance from programmers. | |
| Perhaps it will take someone who is both a programmer and an author to explore the artistic promise of IF and create | |
| works of literature that rank with the classics of traditional literature. | |
| <span style="font-family:Webdings"><</span></p> | |
| <p>REFERENCES</p> | |
| <ol> | |
| <li>Buchloh, P., and J. Becker. <i>Der Detektivroman</i>. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, | |
| 1973, page 70.</li> | |
| <li>Stevenson, R. L. <i>Treasure Island</i>. London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1955, | |
| pages xiv–xv.</li> | |
| <li>Leonard, I. <i>Books of the Brave</i>. New York: Gordian Press, 1964, pages 19–20.</li> | |
| <li>O'Conner, J. <i>Amadis de Gaule and Its Influence on Elizabethan Literature</i>. New Brunswick, NJ: | |
| Rutgers University Press, 1970, page 4.</li> | |
| <li>Turkle, S. <i>The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit</i>. New York: Simon and Shuster, 1984, | |
| pages 175–193.</li> | |
| <li>Gilbert, A. (ed.). <i>Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden</i>. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, | |
| 1962, page 107.</li> | |
| <li>Tolkien, J. R. R. <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>. New York: Ballantine Books, 1954, page 214.</li> | |
| <li>Packard, E. <i>The Cave of Time</i>. New York: Bantam Books, 1979.</li> | |
| <li>Deer, H. and Deer, I. <i>The Popular Arts: A Critical Reader</i>. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, | |
| 1967, page 9.</li> | |
| </ol> | |
| <hr style="margin-bottom:0" /> | |
| <p style="margin-top:0.25em"><i>Mary Ann Buckles (9240-L Regents Rd., La Jolla, CA 92037) | |
| is co-owner and writing consultant of Transgalactic Software. This article is based on her doctoral | |
| dissertation written at University of California at San Diego.</i></p> | |
| <p style="text-align:right"><small>MAY 1987 • B Y T E <b>135–142</b></small></p> | |
| </body> | |
| </html> | |
Xet Storage Details
- Size:
- 24.5 kB
- Xet hash:
- c7c936dce781c6cf9f35d0e07d8dda1c48241dfc2d2961314fcdebd5273211b9
·
Xet efficiently stores files, intelligently splitting them into unique chunks and accelerating uploads and downloads. More info.