In
1975 when Will Crowther wrote ADVENT he gave birth to a wholly new form of
literature. Dubbed “Interactive Fiction,” this genre became a staple of
computer software in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Today,
the concept of Interactive Fiction, or IF, is foreign to much of the populace,
which has long since traded in text based adventures for their graphical
counterparts offered on modern computers. Despite this, IF still commands a presence
on the Internet thanks to the diligence of the community it has spawned.
There
has been plenty written about the need to preserve the games of Interactive
Fictions themselves. “Preserving Virtual Worlds” was creating at the University of
Illinois in August 2008 with the mission of “developing basic standards for
metadata and content representation; and investigating preservation issues
through a series of archiving case studies representing early games and
literature …”
The
IF community has done well to ensure that the spirit of IF lives on. The
Interactive Fiction Competition is held yearly (now in it’s 17th
year) and it encourages people to write their own, new titles. More recently
the release of the iOS app ‘Narratavius,’ which was designed to bring IF to
Apple’s app store, was funded by the community via a Kickstarter campaign and
pulling in an additional $437 over its $600 goal. From these examples we can
see that, indeed, the spirit of IF lives on.
There
are also multiple websites that are dedicated to the preservation and
recreation of IF, offering them for download or to play directly in a browser.
Most of these are fan efforts, not scholarly editions.
It’s
important to remember however that preserving IF doesn’t stop with preserving
the works by themselves, as they do not exist in a vacuum. From the “Preserving
Games Project” from the University of Texas we see that, “Most of the current
preservation projects for new media and video games focus on the end products:
the "final" art objects or the released video games themselves.” This
statement is true among the IF community as well. This is not by itself a bad
decision. Given the choice, many scholars would rather have the works
themselves over any artifacts related to the topic. Still, this will only provide a cursory glance at what IF
really was during the peak of it’s popularity.
The
artifacts that are most important to preserve would be box art and manuals (if
produced with the work), documents that the creators used when building the games
and that the players used when experiencing them, and the communication that
existed in the community. These may seem like broad categories, but given the
multiple forms these artifacts have taken, it would not be possible to
successfully collect this data otherwise.
IF,
like many games, is not simply a matter of playing through the game to the end.
It’s about exploring the pictures associated with that title, or pouring over
the books that came with them. For this reason, we need to make an effort to
preserve as best we can the original contents, packaging, and the marketing of
IF titles.
With
regards to cataloging box art and advertisements the work has already been
started on the Internet thanks to the careful work of hobbyists. Two websites
that do this best are infocom-if.org and csd.uwo.ca/Infocom. They focus
exclusively on Infocom, the largest business that focused on IF, but they
provide some of the most robust collects online. Both sites feature an
exhaustive list of Infocom games and includes details about the packaging of
the games and advertisements that Infocom put out, including scans of many ads
and boxes as well. This gives the games the context that they deserve and
provides an understanding of the tactile artifacts associated with IF.
If
we already have this information readily available it seems be unpraticle to
create another digital repository for this information. However when looking at
the sites themselves, we find that the images are small (many measuring only
540 x 660 pixels), which while suitable for the web, would not be adequate for
any work in print. Also there are no encoded pieces of work or text-dumps, the
written text of a game extracted and placed in a plain text document, which
would help in engaging with the fiction in more meaningful ways.
It
is disconcerting to also see that neither of these sites have not been updated
since the fall of 2010. Comparing this to a more “traditional” online archive,
The Walt Whitman Archive, which updates monthly, we can see that the website
may easily fall into disarray. It is important to note that the updates do not
have to appear in the form of new content, but an upgrading of code or the
interaction with the community that surrounds the site.
Another
important aspect of cataloguing IF would be to collect the notes that were
taken by both the authors and the players.
In
the documentary “Get Lamp” by Jason Scott, the audience is given insight into
just how important note taking and mapping can be to enjoying IF. “It’s very
rarely that I find myself playing a game of IF without taking notes…I like
having my own little…notch on the bed post…my own little progress bar,” David
Welbourne, a long time player of IF, states. Since it is of importance for
scholars to study the way that people interact with the texts of their time,
these notes would be beneficial to archive.
Apart
from the notes that individuals make, it is also important to save the notes
that the authors of IF use to create their works. The “Whitman Archive” sports
the notes that the esteemed poet wrote throughout his lifetime, and authors of
IF should not be held to any lesser of a degree. The “Preserving Games
Project,” located in the University of Texas shares this feeling. From their
homepage, we can see “...there is the realization that digital preservation
starts with creation; it is impossible to reliably and authentically preserve
an object without having a very good idea of the circumstances and particulars
of that object's creation.”
The
70s and 80s were known for the use of zines to disseminate information between
fans and hobbyists of multiple genres, and the IF hobby was not excluded from
this medium. Multiple zines existed during the apex of IF’s popularity,
featuring news regarding the hobby, guides for conquering certain games, and,
most importantly, a way for fans of the genre to exchange ideas. Despite the
importance of the zine with the fan community however there is a dearth of
information on them.
The
most complete archive of any of these zines comes from Britain and is located
at syntax2000.co.uk. “Syntax magazine” was created in 1989, when zines had
fallen into relative obscurity. Because of this Sue Medley, one of the
founders, “suggested a disk based adventure and RPG magazine…,” which would
eventually make it much easier to catalogue online later. The editors would
create the zine, then mail the disc to those that subscribed. Today, the
entirety of the zines publication (90 issues) can be accessed for free online.
Sadly,
the successful move to the web that Syntax magazine saw did not resonate to
others. It is difficult to even ascertain the names of many of the zines that
existed (I contacted Sue of Syntax magazine to aid me in this hunt). Even after
acquiring a list of names however the details remain sparse.
The
result of a google search for specific popular zines of the time such as
“Adventure Probe,” “Spellbreaker,” and “From Beyond” and causes concern. The
most detailed account of any of these comes from ifwiki.org, which provides
general information including that it “…ran from June 1986 until 2007, making
it probably the longest running paper-based Adventure / IF fanzine.” Despite
it’s longevity and popularity (achieving a distribution of 250+ issues at it’s
height) the only content to exist online is this wiki entry and an HTML
advertisement for the fanzine, which can now only be accessed via wayback.
Other
fanzines suffered the same fate as “Adventure Probe,” making it difficult, if
not impossible to track down any information on the web about them. In order to
get a hold of this information, we would have to either track down collectors,
or get into contact with the original publishers.
Building
the collection would prove to be a challenge in itself, but we can look to
Mathas for a possible solution. “The sources for such a collection will likely
primarily be private collectors. Online auction sites, such as eBay, are one
possible starting point.” Since the collection that we would eventually want to
produce would not be limited to the games themselves, it is not enough to
simply grab the source code and start converting it for use on a modern browser
or machine.
It
would serve well to be able to purchase a complete set (box, disc of the game,
and any manuals or extras the game originally come with), or to purchase the
various pieces individually to create a full set. Another solution would be to
contact the owners of several of the already established websites to work out
an agreement to either use their images or to borrow their source material in
order to recreate the images as we would like them to be displayed.
Another
issue to tackle is time. As we move further and further away from the original
dates of publication for many of these items it is entirely possible that their
scarcity will increase, making it more difficult, and more expensive, to track
down these items. Zines in particular are susceptible to the wearing away of
use and, if not stored away properly, decay.
Instead
of purchasing the materials it would serve the author of this digital archive
better to instead enlist the help of the community at large. As already shown
the community around IF is one built on the love of the hobby, and it would be
a cheaper route to be able to acquire materials in this manner by either borrowing
materials or calling for donations.
Even
if we did acquire every game released there are sometimes multiple versions of
these games, which would need to be represented if we were to collect a
complete set. These versions may be as simple as a conversion from one type of
computer to another, or may even have slight variations of the narrative.
“Adventure” itself boasts over 5 different versions, some with graphics, others
with the total points value bring different. It will be necessary to also
highlight the differences in these versions as well, which will take either
interviews, taking notes through experiencing the work itself, or using
programs to compare and contrast the code of each.
An
important point to remember with these artifacts, however, is that they are
still copyrighted material. This would most likely not prove to be an issue,
since the commercial sustainability of IF is no longer likely in the commercial
sector. Still, whenever possible, it would behoove the curators to seek
permission.
Apart
from cataloguing this, data the collection should also provide proper metadata
and possibly encoded text –dumps (through XML). If these were done properly,
the material would gain a greater presence in the academic community and be
more of an aide for scholars. These things would not be difficult to do but
require time and money to have provide the tools to use them.
Another
way that we may be able to encode the games would be to look at the
documentation methods employed by the “Narratavius” app. Each “story” featured
in “Narratavius” is tagged in certain ways that allows the program to properly
perform. This may be a good way to not only encode the text for searching but
also to have our encoded games work in the “Narratavius” program as well.
As
we can see, IF is not simply the composed of games, but the artifacts that
surround them. To stay true to the spirit of IF, we must take on the task of
collecting these artifacts, and creating a repository to preserve them reliably
and honestly.
Works Cited
Adventure Probe. The Interactive Fiction
Wiki. February, 2010. Web. April, 2012. < http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php>
Get Lamp: The Text-Adventure
Documentary. Scott, Jason. 2010. Film
Granade, Stephen. IF Competition. 2011. Web. April 2012. < http://www.ifcomp.org/>
Ham, Michael. Narratavius Home. Web. April 2012. Web. April 2012. < http://narratavius.com/dotnetnuke/>
Ham, Michael. Narratavius Story Engine.
Kickstater. November, 2011. Web. April 2012 < http://www.kickstarter.com/>
Infocom-IF.
August 20, 2010. Web. Aprl 2012. < http://www.infocom-if.org/>
Mathas, Adam. Collecting and Preserving
Infocom Interactive Fiction. 2010. Web. April,
2012. < http://www.adammathes.com/academic/rbsc/infocom.html>
Medley, Sue. About. Syntax Magazine. August, 2011. Web. April, 2012. < http://www.syntax2000.co.uk/hello.html>
Price, Kenneth. The Walt Whitman
Archive. University of Nebraska – Lincoln. April,
2012. Web. April 2012. < http://www.whitmanarchive.org/>
Scheyen, Peter. The Games. Infocom. August 4, 2010. Web. April, 2012. < http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/>
Winget, Megan. Project Research Goals.
Preserving Games. University of Texas. Web. April,
2012. < http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~megan/Games/>
