Heirs of Infocom: Where interactive fiction authors and games stand today

Mobile devices are helping authors present their stories to a new audience.

Read the whole story

 

[crm-114]

update, Reconstructing Remy looks like it is up on itunes for mac and iOS devices:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mich ... d541568257

 

[Lobotomik]

Larger number of OS versions? For text and click on graphics? Come on, what are you talking about? It can be done for the Froyo api, or earlier, and cover 99% of the deployed Android devices, and almost 100% of those in actual use.

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

crm-114[/url]":2lod9t04]update, Reconstructing Remy looks like it is up on itunes for mac and iOS devices:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/mich ... d541568257

Oh sweet, good timing! When I submitted the article it wasn't quite approved yet on iTunes.

EDIT: I've updated the article and the link.

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

Lobotomik[/url]":26u28gvo]Larger number of OS versions? For text and click on graphics? Come on, what are you talking about? It can be done for the Froyo api, or earlier, and cover 99% of the deployed Android devices, and almost 100% of those in actual use.

This might be true, but I'm just going by what the game developers told me. When you are a one-person shop, you have to decide whether or not to invest your time to port or in developing new content. I'm confident that some of these titles will come to Android eventually, however.

 

[BeowulfSchaeffer]

I love the text on the front cover for this article. I did so many of those text based games when I was young.

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":3fd2h8k3]I love the text on the front cover for this article. I did so many of those text based games when I was young.

Thanks, I whipped this up in Photoshop, although the bottom bit got cut off by the article title:

 

[Carabas]

An article on the status of interactive fiction and no mention of Cypher ?

 

[crm-114]

Lobotomik[/url]":3feoifni]Larger number of OS versions? For text and click on graphics? Come on, what are you talking about? It can be done for the Froyo api, or earlier, and cover 99% of the deployed Android devices, and almost 100% of those in actual use.

This comment is informative in my estimation it should not be getting down votes.

 

[DStaal]

I think there's also a substantial non-commercial segment of this market: Game development systems like RAGS get a lot of freeware/shareware games that would be in the same vein. (Or Flash, or HTML...)

 

[potato44829]

This article brings attention to what in my opinion are great ways to spend time. I've written some IF in inform myself, but only on my PC and never published anything. I've played some stories by these authors and IF is truly a unique experience. Great app for iOS/Android: Frotz. Comes with some IF preloaded.

The Ars Technica is a room.
In the Ars Technica is an article.

 

[dmsilev]

Re: Infocom and Activision, it's worth noting that the Lost Treasures set is available for iOS (a very quick search didn't find an Android release, but I certainly might have missed it). App is free and includes Zork I. The other games, along with maps and the old hidden-ink cluebooks, are available via in-app purchase. The full library is $10, or you can buy subsets for less.

Brings back childhood memories of Zork and Enchanter and so forth on the Apple II.

 

[MattDarling]

The only IF-style game available for Android I know of is The King of Shreds and Patches (free for PC/Mac/Linux, or for Nook and Kindle). Which I found out about through the web, and not through the Play store. And it's... not exactly making a lot of money.

I've found a couple of seemingly-abandoned interpreters, though: HunkyPunk and jFrotz. So there's that!

In a similar vein of "things that are cool but may not make money so I understand why you didn't talk about them"... I have a real soft spot for Inform 7. And another project from Emily Short, Versu seems pretty cool (though I sadly lack an iOS device). And from Short's blog, there's a link to the XYZZY awards which is the best-of-the-best of IF from 2012.

Their post about tools for creating IF is particularly interesting, as are the reviews of various award winners (eg best writing).

Anyway, IF authors stand in a lot of places, so you can't cover everything

 

[potato44829]

dmsilev[/url]":3byzxk7y]Re: Infocom and Activision, it's worth noting that the Lost Treasures set is available for iOS (a very quick search didn't find an Android release, but I certainly might have missed it). App is free and includes Zork I. The other games, along with maps and the old hidden-ink cluebooks, are available via in-app purchase. The full library is $10, or you can buy subsets for less.

Brings back childhood memories of Zork and Enchanter and so forth on the Apple II.

Ahh, Zork. The first time I played it I got killed by the Thief.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Doctor Hoot[/url]":1czeaoys]
Ahh, Zork. The first time I played it I got killed by the Thief.

I bought my first computer (C-64) largely to play Zork. I remember getting stuck, many places in those pre-internet days. You pretty much had to figure it out(or buy clue books), and it was much more rewarding when you did.

I remember that annoying thief. Once I was mapping a maze of twisty passages, by dropping junk in each room. Then I hear the voice of the thief drifting in from another room saying something like "What is this pile of leaves doing here?". He was messing with the stuff I dropped for mapping. Fiendish. Awesome game.

I can definitely see the appeal of playing reading heavy games on a tablet.

 

[BadNflu3nce]

Interactive fiction may get a bit of a comeback through the American anime fandom as well. There has been growing interest in the Japanese breed of interactive fiction, the "visual novel", thanks to some high profile anime that use visual novels as the source material; Fate/Stay Night and its spin-offs comes to mind. A bunch have been fan-translated by cult fans. Some official visual novel imports like Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors got reviewed to acclaim by mainstream video game outlets, english language fan creation Katawa Shoujo got very good press by Kotaku, and the upcoming If My Heart Had Wings is getting a release on Steam. Admittedly, these visual novel games have a much different look and feel than the old school Interactive Fiction games, since they are firmly entrenched in the anime aesthetic, but it is still nice to enjoy another culture's different take on the same concept.

 

[joninjersey]

MattDarling[/url]":2itx6saq]I have a real soft spot for Inform 7. And another project from Emily Short, Versu seems pretty cool

Another vote for Inform - "Curses" is a superb adventure I have played on and off for about 20 years and I still haven't completed. And another vote for Frotz (which has a number of classics, including Curses, Jigsaw and Christminster, included), which means I can now at least play on my iPad.

Thanks for pointing me at Versu, looks interesting!

 

[casper ghost]

An HD (hah) video of getting eaten by a grue in Zork I:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ltsSaGelnI

 

[Rain Rain]

Was a fascinating article I read on "The Last Days of Infocom". Described how an arrogant CEO who never wanted to do interactive fiction shunned their incredibly successful interactive fiction line to pursue databases which they had no expertise in and for which they finally delivered a mediocre also-ran effort that sucked resources from their interactive fiction division. Can't find the article on Google though. Maybe the title was a bit different, but worth reading if you can find it.

 

[FulciLives]

Well this is all very interesting as I grew up playing Infocom games BUT there's a big huge "rub" here. I have an Android phone and an Android Tablet. I use Windows 7 and Linux (Usually Ubuntu/Mint).

So even if I wanted to buy and experience these games ... I cannot.

So you know what? A big "FU" to the game developers and companies behind these. Thanks for nothing.

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

Rain Rain[/url]":24vrlqg1]Was a fascinating article I read on "The Last Days of Infocom". Described how an arrogant CEO who never wanted to do interactive fiction shunned their incredibly successful interactive fiction line to pursue databases which they had no expertise in and for which they finally delivered a mediocre also-ran effort that sucked resources from their interactive fiction division. Can't find the article on Google though. Maybe the title was a bit different, but worth reading if you can find it.

My interview with Michael Berlyn confirmed this. From my notes:

The problems of Infocom had nothing to do with the demise of text adventures, and everything to do with Tombstone [Infocom employee's nickname for "Cornerstone" database]. They sunk everything they had into Tombstone. [It] was delayed. What they were trying to do was compete with Lotus, and they hired two guys from MIT who were very smart to design a literal machine, bytecode interpreted, just like their Zork implementation (ZIL) was, and do a full sized relational database. They had one guy with a PHd in Mathematics and programming and he was sitting there coding his brains out, two mainframe computers. Founding Flounders were “ashamed” of the games. I headed up a research and development product that created a graphical kids game, was used in Infocom’s development system. They wouldn’t market it. Didn’t want to dilute image of text adventure company, so marketed only mail order. Before I jooined the company I had shipped two text adventures and two graphic games, so I had experience in both areas.

After leaving Infocom, left before things turned bad. 84-85. You could sense something was amiss. You could smell the death.

Lots of companies from that era self-destructed for various reasons, usually the incompetence of management.

 

[mgabrysSFO]

Carabas[/url]":19h3gnid]An article on the status of interactive fiction and no mention of Cypher ?

Ya, he's a little too focused on Infocom Alums. He even missed the upcoming Steve Jackson Adventure game Sorcery which looks to really advance interactive fiction to the next level instead of wallow in nostalgia. http://www.tuaw.com/2013/04/15/steve-ja ... app-store/

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

mgabrysSFO[/url]":3b2wnz41]

Carabas[/url]":3b2wnz41]An article on the status of interactive fiction and no mention of Cypher ?

Ya, he's a little too focused on Infocom Alums. He even missed the upcoming Steve Jackson Adventure game Sorcery which looks to really advance interactive fiction to the next level instead of wallow in nostalgia. http://www.tuaw.com/2013/04/15/steve-ja ... app-store/

Well, for this article I only had a budget of about 1,100 words, so I had to choose two particular examples, and then hope that kind people like yourself would fill in the gaps in the comments section.

 

[mgabrysSFO]

Jeremy Reimer[/url]":16inpdzl]

Well, for this article I only had a budget of about 1,100 words, so I had to choose two particular examples, and then hope that kind people like yourself would fill in the gaps in the comments section.

That's cool. Enjoyed "Get Lamp" - still have the coin. Always meant to ask - I don't recall Don Woods in the main part of the documentary - but you had almost an hour and a half of interview footage with him (in the extras). Why no inclusion in the main infocom narrative?

Keep up the good work(s).

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

mgabrysSFO[/url]":87faa5mn]
That's cool. Enjoyed "Get Lamp" - still have the coin. Always meant to ask - I don't recall Don Woods in the main part of the documentary - but you had almost an hour and a half of interview footage with him (in the extras). Why no inclusion in the main infocom narrative?

You'd have to ask Jason Scott, who did the Get Lamp documentary. I only did the review of the documentary.

I still have my coin too!

 

[Daemonworks]

Any video game with a story is interactive fiction, and the visual novel genre's been huge in various parts of the world for ages, Japan in particular...

 

[Jim Salter]

mgabrysSFO[/url]":3q4iciie]Enjoyed "Get Lamp" - still have the coin.

Me too! I can't believe Andrew freaking Plotkin had a Kickstarter THREE YEARS AGO and I didn't know. I just sent him an embarassingly frothy message including the sentence "In the immortal words of Steven Fry, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY". I kickstart heavily; I cannot freaking believe I never knew there was a Kickstarter from Plotkin. And it only adds cruelty that his Kickstarter says "the ONLY way to get a version for anything other than iOS is to contribute to the kickstarter." NO FAAAAAIIIIIIIIIR

 

[xyzzymagic]

FulciLives[/url]":173799kb]Well this is all very interesting as I grew up playing Infocom games BUT there's a big huge "rub" here. I have an Android phone and an Android Tablet. I use Windows 7 and Linux (Usually Ubuntu/Mint).

So even if I wanted to buy and experience these games ... I cannot.

Not those specific games, no -- but there's a massive number of very high-quality titles that the community has created in the last 10+ years using the standardized formats, like the many submitted to the annual IF Competition. The relevant interpreters are definitely available for Windows & Linux, and some of them are also in Android. (I can't recall their names, but at least a few would be listed at the IFComp site.)
EDIT: a quick search turned these Android interpreters up:
Twisty
HunkyPunk (Z-Code Only)
HunkyPunk w/TADS support

There's also the option I've used a few times of either loading the original Infocom/Magnetic Scrolls/etc. game files in a compatible interpreter, or using an emulator with compressed disk images.

I got the sense that the author and developers that he spoke with are firmly iOS/OS X guys, so folks that use other platforms can't really go by their guesses as to what's available outside Apple-land. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, as the reverse is usually true for anyone focused on a particular brand or platform, and in my case, often true even for my own preferred platform/s.

So you know what? A big "FU" to the game developers and companies behind these. Thanks for nothing.

Agreed. I'll expand on what someone else above pointed out: these days, there are (reportedly) great engines available for producing & running games that rely on any combination of text, images, video, or sounds, so creating a brand-new engine from scratch that's wedded to a single OS just means fewer potential users/buyers in the end.

Hopefully Ars will publish a *real* "state of interactive fiction" article that's platform- & cost-agnostic, rather than just focusing on commercial software for Apple devices. :-/

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

xyzzymagic[/url]":3m7yl5aa]
Hopefully Ars will publish a *real* "state of interactive fiction" article that's platform- & cost-agnostic, rather than just focusing on commercial software for Apple devices. :-/

Well, some of these titles are available for Windows 8 devices as well.

But the point of the article was to examine whether or not there was a possible return for commercial interactive fiction (it's more or less assumed that there will always be free interactive fiction-- this was mentioned in the review of Get Lamp, and in Get Lamp itself). Free is nice, and I've always applauded the efforts of game developers who give away their work simply for the betterment of humanity (I'm a big fan of the modding community, for example).

But it's also interesting to examine whether or not it's possible to actually make a living from the work that one is most passionate about. The authors in this article are trying to do just that. I asked them specifically about Android versions, and got the answer that was in the article. I understand that for people who only own Android devices, this answer will be frustrating. But there it is, for now at least.

 

[JonnyBritish]

Good to see Michael Berlyn's products are also available for Windows 8 and coming soon for Windows Phone
The Art Of Murder - http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us ... 5d703cbb48
Carnival Of Death - http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us ... 92feddd5e7
Reconstructing Remy - http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us ... 4a08655e1b

The real power behind the system Mike Berlyn has developed is that he can now build these apps with no coding needed. You could take any author and have them create an app without them writing a line of code. Perhaps they could build an interactive experience around the first two chapters of their hot new book as a way of getting people to buy the full book - the technology exists now if Mike decides to license it

 

[mgabrysSFO]

re: Android's left out - I tried the activision version, but I still prefer Frotz (more font color and background options). It's available for everything last I checked and runs your treasure files with ease (mine's from my old CDrom) - except HitchHikers. Can't BELIEVE they were too cheap to re-new the rights to that one.

 

[bonelyfish]

I always think that the problem with interactive fiction is the burden of doing something trivial. You have to type "look" to get the sense of intuitive information like the number of exit in a room. You have to remember what you have in the inventory. The descriptive text when you first encounter something is really a breeze, but repeatly reading the same paragraphs is a curse. In fact, if you print out all the interaction during playing an IF game into a book, it is a poorly written novel. The experience is acceptable in those day, but not today.

 

[zarfeblong]

He is planning to release Hadean Lands' display library and iPhone interpreter engine as Open Source when the game is complete.

Small correction: I have already released these as open source. They're available on my github page (http://github.com/erkyrath). While Hadean Lands is not done, I have put a few of my older games onto the iOS App Store using this software.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that porting an interpreter (or two) to iOS was easier than writing a large IF game from scratch...

It is true that I have focussed on iOS programming. Nothing against Android, but my time is already split enough ways! It's important that these interpreters and VM formats be portable, and I've done my share to keep that true, but I can't do all the *ports*.

 

[Jeremy Reimer]

zarfeblong[/url]":179cr0uf]He is planning to release Hadean Lands' display library and iPhone interpreter engine as Open Source when the game is complete.

Small correction: I have already released these as open source. They're available on my github page (http://github.com/erkyrath). While Hadean Lands is not done, I have put a few of my older games onto the iOS App Store using this software.

Cool! I'll update that part of the article.

 

[BFG10K]

This article has interesting timing.

I’ve just built a text adventure game engine for Windows with a complete game. It’s pretty much done, it just needs a few minor internal adjustments.

I wanted to sell it for cheap on GoG but they weren’t interested, which is kind of surprising given the ‘o’ stands for old, and given they already sell text adventure games.

I think I’ll release it for free when I’m done.

 

[KeillRandor]

Daemonworks[/url]":4nv5k4ml]Any video game with a story is interactive fiction, and the visual novel genre's been huge in various parts of the world for ages, Japan in particular...

No. Unfortunately, this is one area where the lack of understanding and recognition of the 'big picture' really hurts our understanding of the specific elements - (in this case, applications of things that happen) - involved.

(And our problems with the 'big picture' potentially go as deep as it can possibly get - affecting our perception, recognition and understanding of language itself, if not (potentially) worse - communication in general).

The problem we have is that the different labels we use to represent different activities, especially, (though also including certain states (of behaviour/things that happen) - game, art, puzzle, competition, work and play etc. - are not recognised and understood either in isolation, or in relation to each other and the rest of the language, (and even language itself, in general).

The biggest effect is that we end up trying to define such activities based upon how they're applied - (or perceived to be) - rather then using such applications to derive a consistent definition from. Since this is part and parcel of how language functions and therefore how it must be studied, most of our problems in this matter stem from such a simple failure of linguistics.

For example - if I define the word chair as and by the word wood, because all the chairs I know of are only made out of wood, instead of only concentrating on what matters for a chair - the functionality it involves as an item of furniture - then not only will I cause problems with understanding chairs as an item of furniture, and therefore understand how they are related to beds, tables etc., but I will also have trouble understanding both how and why chairs can be made out of different materials (metal, plastic etc.) in addition to the other pieces of furniture.

So, we're having problems understanding game, art, puzzle, competition and work and play, because we're lacking the equivalent of 'furniture' that demonstrates how and why they are related. Because we do not fully understand what the relationship is, we do not understand exactly what is it that these words represent, and therefore what it is we need to be studying to find out. And so we're then often confusing such different activities for each other, just because of a completely optional medium that can be used to enable and and all of these, often interleaved with each other - a computer.

If you really want to know what activity interaction fiction truly belongs to, then it's PUZZLE:

Interactive fiction, at its most basic, is simply a maze in whatever (often literary) form - (such as choose-your-own-adventure books etc.).

And puzzles are not games - they represent completely different applications of completely different things that happen (behaviour).

(Interacting with a creative story being told, is not, nor can never be, the same as competing (in a structured environment) by writing your own story!)

 

[stickboy]

Rain Rain[/url]":1jl734z3]Was a fascinating article I read on "The Last Days of Infocom". Described how an arrogant CEO who never wanted to do interactive fiction shunned their incredibly successful interactive fiction line to pursue databases which they had no expertise in and for which they finally delivered a mediocre also-ran effort that sucked resources from their interactive fiction division. Can't find the article on Google though. Maybe the title was a bit different, but worth reading if you can find it.

Were you thinking of http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/ ?

 

[Fritzr]

Jeremy Reimer[/url]":1dd30xby]

mgabrysSFO[/url]":1dd30xby]

Carabas[/url]":1dd30xby]An article on the status of interactive fiction and no mention of Cypher ?

Ya, he's a little too focused on Infocom Alums. He even missed the upcoming Steve Jackson Adventure game Sorcery which looks to really advance interactive fiction to the next level instead of wallow in nostalgia. http://www.tuaw.com/2013/04/15/steve-ja ... app-store/

Well, for this article I only had a budget of about 1,100 words, so I had to choose two particular examples, and then hope that kind people like yourself would fill in the gaps in the comments section.

For iPhone & iPad fire up iTunes, select the appstore tab in the upper right
Select Apps
In the search box enter "text adventure" press Enter
(Colossal Cave is available, but with the exception of a Spanish language Pirates Cove, the Scott Adams adventures are missing)

For Android
Android Market: https://play.google.com/store/search?q= ... ame&c=apps
Multiple versions of Colossal Cave in the Market
Alternate app source: http://www.3androidapps.com/index.php/a ... /adventure

For computers in general. Mostly Windows versions, but there are multiple editions for browsers and other OSes.
Note this is an article on Text Adventures that is mostly links for adventures classic to modern, paid and free.
http://www.howtogeek.com/124460/the-bes ... ure-games/
Don't Panic! They have 3 editions of HHGTTG

The Interactive Fiction Database: http://ifdb.tads.org/

For those who do not remember the original Scott Adams (no connection to Dilbert)
The Scott Adams classic games are freely downloadable: http://www.msadams.com/index.htm
From his FAQ

Who is Scott Adams?

Scott was the first person to put an Adventure game (also known as Interactive Fiction) on a personal computer. This was in 1978 and the computer was a 16k Radio Shack TRS-80 model I. Scott went on to write over a dozen different adventure games for the personal computers of the 1980s. He is credited with starting the entire multi billion dollar a year computer game industry. Many people have written Scott and explained how his early games help led them into a career in computers today. Scott is 56 years old now [2009] and living in Wisconsin. He is married and has 5 children.

How long has Scott be playing computer games?

Let see I have been playing computer games from the time before there were any. I had to write them if I wanted to play them. Actually first I had to build my own computer THEN write the games.

My first home computer was a Sphere. (they came out same time as Altair) It was a kit.

I built and designed a graphic video card for this machine so I could then write a tank war game for it. I also built two hand controllers. The card and game also won the first annual "What do you use your Sphere for?" contest.

I also remember putting Star Trek on the tracking monitors of a SDC RADAR station I worked at downrange. I used to play after hours when they were not tracking satellites. I had to use the tracking monitors as everything else was Teletype 35.

I guess you can say I really love computer gaming.

 

[OskarW85]

For people looking for another Android interpreter there is also ZMPP that supports IF games in all Z-story versions except 6 (.zX and .zblorb files). Very basic, but easy to use and does not scan whole SD card on every run. I used to run JFrotz, but ZMPP is a bit faster and does not lag.

 

[liquidblueocean]

This article is from the Western perspective only though. Visual Novels in East Asia are king over all other gaming types. They "are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles released in 2006."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_novel