Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction
Author(s)
Montfort, Nick
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The idea that interactive fiction (IF) is potential narrative encourages the consideration of how it is potential – what space of narratives is defined – and of how the elements of IF correspond to narrative elements. There are rather direct correspondences between characters and events, certainly, but levels of simulation can also correspond in interesting ways to diegetic levels. While poetry generation systems, chatterbots, and video games originated before IF, the form has a rich and reasonably long history. This chapter traces a few threads of influence, explains some of the material ways in which interactors encounter IF, and considers modern‐day IF development systems in a bit more depth. The riddle helps to explain how figuration and a negotiation of understanding can take place in IF.
Date issued
2013Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/WritingJournal
A Companion to Digital Literary Studies
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Citation
Montfort, Nick. "Riddle Machines: The History and Nature of Interactive Fiction." A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, edited by Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2013, 267-282. © 2013 Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISBN
9781405177504
9781405148641