Editing Interactive fiction (section)

==Medium==
[[File:Zork I screenshot video game Gargoyle interpreter on Ubuntu Linux.png|thumb|256px|''[[Zork I]]'' is one of the first interactive fiction games, as well as being one of the first commercially sold.  It is one of the most famous interactive fiction games. Here it is portrayed running on Gargoyle, a modern [[interpreter (computing)|interpreter]].]]
Text adventures are one of the oldest types of [[video game|computer game]]s and form a subset of the [[adventure game|adventure]] genre. The player uses text input to control the game, and the game state is relayed to the player via text output. Interactive fiction usually relies on [[reading (activity)|reading]] from a screen and on [[typing]] input, although text-to-speech synthesizers allow blind and visually impaired users to play interactive fiction titles as [[audio game]]s.<ref name="fundamentals" />

Input is usually provided by the player in the form of simple [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]]s such as "get key" or "go east", which are interpreted by a [[text parser]]. Parsers may vary in sophistication; the first text adventure parsers could only handle two-word sentences in the form of verb-noun pairs. Later parsers, such as those built on ZIL ([[Zork Implementation Language]]), could understand complete sentences.<ref name="DeMaria">DeMaria, Rusel and Wilson, Johnny L.  (2002) ''High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games'' McGraw-Hill/Osborne, Berkeley, Calif., p. 52, {{ISBN|0-07-222428-2}}</ref> Later parsers could handle increasing levels of complexity parsing sentences such as "open the red box with the green key then go north". This level of complexity is the standard for works of interactive fiction today.

Despite their lack of graphics, text adventures include a physical dimension where players move between rooms. Many text adventure games boasted their total number of rooms to indicate how much gameplay they offered.<ref name="fundamentals"/> These games are unique in that they may create an ''illogical space'', where going north from area A takes you to area B, but going south from area B did not take you back to area A. This can create mazes that do not behave as players expect, and thus players must maintain their own map. These illogical spaces are much more rare in today's era of 3D gaming,<ref name="fundamentals"/> and the Interactive Fiction community in general decries the use of mazes entirely, claiming that mazes have become arbitrary 'puzzles for the sake of puzzles' and that they can, in the hands of inexperienced designers, become immensely frustrating for players to navigate.

Interactive fiction shares much in common with [[Multi-user dungeon|Multi-User Dungeons]] ('MUDs'). MUDs, which became popular in the mid-1980s, rely on a textual exchange and accept similar commands from players as do works of IF; however, since interactive fiction is single player, and MUDs, by definition, have multiple players, they differ enormously in gameplay styles. MUDs often focus gameplay on activities that involve communities of players, simulated political systems, in-game trading, and other gameplay mechanics that are not possible in a single player environment.

===Writing style===
Interactive fiction features two distinct modes of writing: the player input and the game output. As described above, player input is expected to be in simple command form ([[Sentence (linguistics)#Classification by purpose|imperative sentences]]).<ref>{{cite magazine|last= |first= |title=The Next Generation 1996 Lexicon A to Z: Text Adventure|magazine=[[Next Generation (magazine)|Next Generation]]|issue=15 |publisher=[[Imagine Media]]|date=March 1996|page=41}}</ref> A typical command may be:<blockquote>{{mono|> PULL Lever}}</blockquote>

The responses from the game are usually written from a [[Second-person narrative|second-person]] [[point of view (literature)|point of view]], in [[present tense]]. This is because, unlike in most works of fiction, the main character is closely associated with the player, and the events are seen to be happening as the player plays. While older text adventures often identified the protagonist with the player directly, newer games tend to have specific, well-defined protagonists with separate identities from the player. The classic essay "Crimes Against Mimesis"<ref name=crimes>{{cite web| url = http://www.geocities.com/aetus_kane/writing/cam.html| title = Crimes Against Mimesis| access-date = 17 December 2006| last = Giner-Sorolla| first = Roger| date = April 2006| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20050619081931/http://www.geocities.com/aetus_kane/writing/cam.html| archive-date = 19 June 2005}} This is a reformatted version of a set of articles originally posted to Usenet:{{cite web| url = https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/a11e304d16463816?dmode=source| title = Crimes Against Mimesis, Part 1| access-date = 17 December 2006| last = Giner-Sorolla| first = Roger| date = 11 April 2006|url-status=live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111102164022/http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/a11e304d16463816?dmode=source| archive-date = 2 November 2011| df = dmy-all}}{{cite web| url = https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/6ac868aff97a3afb?dmode=source| title = Crimes Against Mimesis, Part 2| access-date = 17 December 2006| last = Giner-Sorolla| first = Roger| date = 18 April 2006|url-status=live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111102164025/http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/6ac868aff97a3afb?dmode=source| archive-date = 2 November 2011| df = dmy-all}}{{cite web| url = https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/66f04d5ba816f0fa?dmode=source| title = Crimes Against Mimesis, Part 3| access-date = 17 December 2006| last = Giner-Sorolla| first = Roger| date = 25 April 2006|url-status=live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111102164018/http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/66f04d5ba816f0fa?dmode=source| archive-date = 2 November 2011| df = dmy-all}}{{cite web| url = https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f21986cae9320282?dmode=source| title = Crimes Against Mimesis, Part 4| access-date = 17 December 2006| last = Giner-Sorolla| first = Roger| date = 29 April 2006|url-status=live| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111102164032/http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/msg/f21986cae9320282?dmode=source| archive-date = 2 November 2011| df = dmy-all}}</ref> discusses, among other IF issues, the nature of "You" in interactive fiction. A typical response might look something like this, the response to "look in tea chest" at the start of ''[[Curses (video game)|Curses]]'':

<blockquote>{{mono|"That was the first place you tried, hours and hours ago now, and there's nothing there but that boring old book. You pick it up anyway, bored as you are."}}<ref name="cursesplay">[[Graham Nelson|Nelson, Graham]] ''[[Curses (video game)|Curses]]'', 1993.</ref></blockquote> <!-- Taken from Curses, in response to "look in teachest" from the first prompt -->

Many text adventures, particularly those designed for humour (such as ''[[Zork]]'', ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', and ''[[Leather Goddesses of Phobos]]''), address the player with an informal tone, sometimes including sarcastic remarks (see the transcript from ''Curses'', above, for an example). The late Douglas Adams, in designing the IF version of his 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', created a unique solution to the final puzzle of the game: the game requires the one solitary item that the player ''didn't'' choose at the outset of play.

Some IF works dispense with second-person narrative entirely, opting for a first-person perspective ('I') or even placing the player in the position of an observer, rather than a direct participant. In some 'experimental' IF, the concept of self-identification is eliminated, and the player instead takes the role of an inanimate object, a force of nature, or an abstract concept; experimental IF usually pushes the limits of the concept and challenges many assumptions about the medium.