Interactive Fiction and the Need to Preserve Its Artifacts

             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 17^th 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/>