Isn’t it amazing how the best thoughts (or so we think) come to mind when we are purposely striving for non-activity mindlessness? I was just playing Solitaire while waiting for my hair to dry (excuse) and I realized that there is even an element of interactive play between the computer and player that involves a strategy similar to using the computer for IF. Knowing that all Solitaire games are preplanned (after losing three or four, they’ll give you an easy one), I tend to have developed what I think is a strategy in winning. (Jeeezus!, the programmers are saying to themselves, she just figured that out?) Briefly, always moving cards from the right with the larger covered pile, holding out on moving until a King makes it necessary, knowing that if they give you two black sixes on top, they’ll give you a red seven somewhere, etc., etc. Obviously Solitaire is an old timer in the interactive computer world, but the concept could be extended to text-based interactive play.
This is probably all figured out already somewhere, but half the fun of exploration is discovering things for yourself—even if it is twenty years after the fact.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Reading some of the earlier entries on interactive fiction got me curious enough to follow a link. I was a huge fan of the Infocom offerings when they were released and decided to give Photopia a look. Now that I’ve spent far too much time on it given today’s schedule I’m drawn back into thinking about it more. What if I hadn’t pushed on her chest? What if I just left the seed pod where it was instead of picking it up?
Now I’ll be going back to see what will occur differently (if anything) from these “inactions”.
I am beginning to find that interactive fiction is indeed a whole course in itself–following links (and especially from Mr. Timmons’site and Mr. Jerz’s) you just get deeper and deeper into the subject–much like the fiction itself. You also need to back up a few pages (steps) and return again to where you were before moving on. Jeepers, the similarities are right there. But shouldn’t you be doing some of that other stuff you told me you had to do? Actually, you’re not playing a game, this is education under literature. At least that’s the theory…