Concerning Interactive Fiction
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building . . .
My interest in computer interactive fiction, a.k.a. “adventure games,” dates from before I could read chapter books. I belong to the first generation to grow up with the personal computer. When I entered elementary school, computers had just made their first forays into classrooms, and I remember vividly my first encounter with a Commodore PET, the most popular educational computer during those formative years. Soon after, I met the Apple ][ . . . and Adventure. (Perhaps I met Hunt the Wumpus before Adventure, but I’m no longer sure.)
Adventure, also known as Colossal Cave, Colossal Cave Adventure, and its original file name ADVENT, started life as a simulation of an actual location in Kentucky, the Bedquilt section of the Flint-Mammoth Cave System. Programmer and caving enthusiast Will Crowther created the textual simulation in FORTRAN. But instead of simply writing descriptions of cave locations the user can visit through a series of movement commands, Crowther merged the real world with elements of Tolkien-esque fantasy and puzzle-solving. The result: interactive fiction, or IF. Most of the conventions of the genre that still exist today debuted in Adventure: the “VERB NOUN” parser, moving using compass directions, locations referred to as “rooms,” logic puzzles, treasure-hunting, locked doors and keys, mazes, monsters.
