Nick Montfort and Andrew Stern have published the text of their very interesting speech given at the Electronic Literature Organisation “Visionary Landscapes” conference; the subject is ELIZA, the 1966 parody of a Rogerian therapist — more correctly, it’s where the next ELIZA-like program (in terms of influence) is going to come from and what it may look like. It’s an interesting piece, coming from the perspective of “bigger and flashier is not always better”:
Working weekends here at Kotaku means that we can’t lay claim to articles when we find them — and I’m constantly amazed as to what interesting articles I’ve come across have (and haven’t) been posted by the time I stumble in on Saturday mornings. This week, it was the ‘Infocom Drive,’ a complete backup of Infocom’s shared network drive from 1989 — including a whole lot of discussion and documentation about the unreleased sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Milliways: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It’s an interesting look at the internal workings of Infocom and a look at a game that never was:
This is an oldie (appearing in 2006) but goodie if you’re interested in interactive fiction — Jimmy Maher wrote a lengthy, well-written and comprehensive history of interactive fiction, from Eliza to the era of Infocom to the state of IF today. It’s a fascinating wrap up, even if you’re not one of the handful of active IF players; but IF’s fall from commercial grace hasn’t stopped IF creators from trundling on to creating bigger and better things:
A short time ago, Pac-Txt made the rounds, billing itself as a text adventure adaptation of the famous arcade game. The problem is, Pac-Txt is lousy. It’s a conceptual piece that takes advantage of none of the features of interactive fiction (IF), like good writing and interesting puzzles.
Fear not though, IF arcade fans. A number of years ago a few key players in the IF community came together to create IF Arcade, a set of clever and well-written arcade-to-IF adaptations. Games represented include Centipede, Donkey Kong, Joust, and Pong.
An excerpt from Adam Cadre‘s excellent Pac-Man IF, after the jump. More »
Interactive fiction is a hot hot hot subject these days (at least in some circles), and plenty of independent takes have cropped up relatively recently. But David Cornelson, CEO of Textfyre, Inc., is setting out to see that interactive fiction gets a commercial resurgence, and has goals like getting a licence for Harry Potter IF game (hey, it would probably be better than the Wii version of the last game). Targeting reading-aged kids with an episodic format, Cornelson says to Gamasutra:
I think I will be able to sell hundreds of thousands of games in a year and we’re going to expand into educational, subject-matter, library, and other markets and we will be the market leader in high quality text-based interactive educational entertainment.
I have to wonder how successful text-based games are going to be when aimed at a generation raised on CGI, but stranger things have happened (though it’s certainly ‘an eyebrow-raising prospect,’ as GameSetWatch says). It’s an interesting interview and an interesting concept – we’ll see how it pans out in the future. Could it be that interactive fiction is no longer going to be the pet project of PhDs across the country? Though I really have a difficult time imagining this as a truly commercially viable concept.
Textfyre’s Cornelson On An IF Resurgence [Gamasutra via GameSetWatch] More »
The University of California – Irvine’s Beall Center for Art + Technology will be hosting an installation called (astonishingly enough) Grand Text Auto, featuring work by the gang of six that make up the Grand Text Auto blog: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Mary Flanagan, Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern, Nick Montfort, and Scott Rettberg. This is pretty neat since it’s apparently the first time a blog has made the jump from blog to physical exhibit (and a very interactive one, to boot). There are a lot of sections planned: Noah’s Screen, developed in collaboration with Josh Carroll, Robert Coover, Shawn Greenlee, Andrew McClain, and Ben (“Sascha”) Shine will be there for you to experience in 3D splendor. Mary’s [giantJoystick] , a ten-foot-tall Atari joystick, will make its United States debut and provide massive multi-player fun.
