Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction (IF) is a genre of game (usually computer game) that is text-based, and requires the user to interact with the story, usually by making a decision. Some people may consider Choose Your Own Adventure books interactive fiction. Another word for interactive fiction is text adventure game. The first computer IF was made circa 1976 by Will Crowther, a caver. He made a game called Adventure, commonly known as Colossal Cave Adventure. This game is a story, written in the second-person point of view. The user types in commands that define which direction the character goes, what item the character picks up, or pretty much anything else the character does. IF games typically become puzzles. By the early 1980s, there were new games in this genre, including the popular Zork, made by the famous software company Infocom. Infocom released a whole Zork series, among other interactive fiction games, and eventually branching out into adventure games with some graphics. Also, the Z-machine was invented, a virtual machine that read Z-code, a bytecode designed specifically for interactive fiction. The Inform programming language was designed, which is usually what Z-code is compiled from. With the capability of computers allowing complex graphics to be processed, video games tend to be more popular than interactive fiction, but certain programmers and adventure-lovers still enjoy, and create, new IF.
Modern day interactive fiction[edit]
There is an interactive fiction scene online with a decent number of followers. In the late 1990s, ifMUD (interactive fiction multi-user dungeon) was started, a chatroom/communication outlet (mostly for interactive fiction people) thathat looked like an IF game. In 2003, Nick Montfort wrote a book, Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Classic games have been recompiled/rewritten for modern interpreters. In late 2004, IFWiki, a MediaWiki-based interactive fiction guide, was started. Many other sites exist, including the IF Archive, IF Database (IFDB), and Baf's Guide to IF Archive. There is even an independent film about this kind of gaming, titled Get Lamp. Many IF-specific programming languages exist; Inform, Tads, Adrift, and many more. Since 1995, the Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) has taken place. Since 1996, the XYZZY Awards have taken place for the best works of interactive fiction. There used to be an online magazine called XYZZYnews, who put the XYZZY Awards on for the first twelve or so years, before shutting down, and the XYZZY Awards becoming their own separate entity. There are many other IF competitions, websites, publications, and miscellaneous stuff.