I'm so in-to-active fiction

Interactive Fiction (IF) is described by Rettberg as originally a digital platform that allows readers to explore a space and navigate by typing phrases. These readers would control a character or player and often talk to other characters within the fiction. Rettberg also talks about the development level between characters that interact with the reader. Some have more of a confrontation and a dialogue, whereas, others may mean less to the narrative or progression of the game. As well, the story is unfolded by adventuring to different parts of the area and talking/reading. Another interesting aspect of IF is that there are a lot of puzzle-based aspects and players "win" by achieving some goal or solving a puzzle. One video game that I've played in more modern developments that still has puzzle-based aspect is Zelda. As I was reading this, I was thinking about how Zelda uses a lot of clear puzzle-based mechanisms to solve dungeons. Even the newer game, Breath of The Wild, uses more than 10 different puzzle games to achieve Korok seeds. In other words, modern gaming continues to use aspects of Interactive Fiction that were once crucial for interaction and are now completely optional. Aspects such as dialogue have been kept for a lot of video games, when there are yet other ways to tell the story within the game. In a way, I think these aspects of IF are what made them so enjoyable.

The reference that I looked into was the web poem "Arteroids" by Jim Andrews. Basically, this is a game where the reader plays as a red phrase that is chased by other lines of poetry. Modeled after "Asteroids," this game merges poetry and game. As Rettberg mentions, the merge between the two interactive mediums begs the question: When are you reading poetry and when are you simply playing Arteroids? (Rettberg). It also comes in the form of a book where the print version has a style of "Asteroids" (spaced sequences, main phrase, exploding bits), but focuses on the reading more than physical interaction. The change from web to print interestingly contributes more to the poetry aspect than the game aspect. Zelda is awesome.

-J!ll!an