Twisty Little Passages An Approach to Interactive Fiction

by Montfort, Nick

• ISBN13: 9780262633185
• ISBN10: 0262633183
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-02-11
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Interactive fiction-the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure-has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages(the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction) is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passageslooks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventureand its precursors (including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragons), and follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the 1990s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration.

Author Biography

Nick Montfort is a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania

Table of Contents

PREFACE	VII
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	XIII
ONE THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT ADVENTURE	1	(36)
TWO RIDDLES	37	(28)
THREE ADVENTURE AND ITS ANCESTORS	65	(30)
FOUR ZORK AND OTHER MAINFRAME WORKS	95	(24)
FIVE INFOCOM AND COMMERCIAL BEGINNINGS	119	(50)
SIX DIFFERENT VISIONS WORLDWIDE	169	(24)
SEVEN THE INDEPENDENTS	193	(30)
EIGHT INTERACTIVE OUR CULTURE	223	(12)
INTERACTIVE FICTION WORKS CITED	235	(12)
SECONDARY SOURCES	247	(26)
INDEX	273