Worksheet for GDV talk by Heather Albano

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
A parser game is more like playing out a story and following a path, with prompts to encourage a player to stay interactive with simple directions such as turn left, open the door, and talk to this person. A Choose your path interactive offers more options for the player, but therefore has a shorter playtime because there are more stories that need to be created. There are more options to go eft or right, which will then change the gameplay and the results of the story to a certain degree. A personality plays more of a role in this type of gameplay.

2. Name an example of a parser game.
Hadean Lands

3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
Codename Cygus

4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
One of the major companies, Infocom, closed down, therefore leaving the world to fend for itself on the technology needed to create other Interactive fiction games, until other companies opened up, but with different goals in mind. With new technologies came new narratives and the interactive fiction became less about telling a story and more about wowing the audience/players. With the redevelopment of MMORPG and more advanced technologies created less parser and Choose your path games and more complex, action based games.

5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Albano talks about poetry in terms of what the words imply to the audience and what weight they hold. Without making the setting dull, the story must provide details and descriptions of settings in a limited number of words. The poetry leaves the audience room to fill in the blanks with their own imagination, but provides the key elements of the setting for the audience to know where and what they are. Albano uses an excerpt from With Those We Love Alive to prove how only 32 words can create a setting and pull the reader into the game.

6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
Albano says that ambiguity is the tool used to encourage the player to use their imagination. It is easy to tell a story, but to leave a story open to interpretation while at the same time filling in the necessary details takes finesse. Things can be left to be interpreted in their own way by the choices that the player decides to make. The challenge may always be the same, like a boss fight at the end of a chapter, but the person being fought may have a different role: a female vs a male, a jilted lover vs a long-time enemy vs an evil sibling.

7. What’s important about complicity?
Complicity is the tool used to keep a player interactive and immersed in the game. IN a parser game, it is important that the actions feel like choices regardless of the lack of options available. The quote she uses says to make the change of gameplay from ‘it happened to me’ to ‘I did it’. When the freedom of action is available, it makes the player truly feel immersed in the gameplay and care more about the results of the game purely with words alone.

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
A Choose your path interactive fiction game can best be describe as a game book that gives the player multiple options and/or choices that they can pick from. Any option picked from the player will have a different ending. This is calculated by the player’s initial selections. The Parser interactive fiction game is a story telling game without any graphics and is an adventure.

2. Name an example of a parser game.
An example of a parser game is Zork I.

3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
An example of a choose your own path game is Sugarcane Island.

4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
She stated that Interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s because of the competitions they were up against such as, annual IF comp.

5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Poetry is an important element because it engages the players with fill in the blank that gives a powerful description. Example “Those we love alive”

6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
She stated ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary because it is to be filled by the player’s imagination. It is used intentionally for the player to wonder and to leave things open so the players can draw their own conclusions.

7. What’s important about complicity?
Complicity is important because it lets the players interact with the story. It gives the players choices and makes them feel like they can do anything but they can’t. All the choices are open-ended.

Albano Video Assignment
1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
Parser interactive fiction games don’t have graphics and have a chunk of text and a cursor and the player types where they wish to go next and the game responds by telling them what they see. A choose your path interactive fiction game is where you change to a page in the book depending on what decision you decide to choose.

2. Name an example of a parser game.
Zork 1

3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
The Adventures of you on Sugarcane Island by Edward Packard

4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
She said interactive fiction virtually died out because of competitions .

5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
When words are all you have you spend most of the time to make the words powerful. An example is from With those We Love Alive.

6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
The player has to fill in some of the details with their imagination. Decide where you want the player to fill in the those gaps.

7. What’s important about complicity?
Defined as a feeling of ownership in the plot. Complicity is part of giving the player actual choices and containing different ways to allow their choices to feel like a real choice.

Worksheet for GDV talk by Heather Albano

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
Parser interactive fiction games are text based, the player uses typing responses to dictate the progress of the game. “Choose your own path” game offers players the option to choose a path as the game is progressing, different path you choose will lead to a different ending.
2. Name an example of a parser game.
Zork
3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
Stories: the path of destinies
4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
Competition and a decline in production is why she said the IF almost died out the 90’s.
5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Since the game is based on text, the words needs to carefully chosen; the most impact with less words, each words holds weights of vast information to the player, like a poem does to its reader. The example she used had highlighted text, if click gave the payer more information on that related word in the story.
6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
Ambiguity is necessary because IF solely uses text for storytelling so ambiguity lets players imagination tell the story
7. What’s important about complicity?
Complicity lets the player have control on how they the game to continue and end

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
A parser interactive fiction game is a game where the game presents the player with a chunk of text and an option to type in commands. The player can type in a command to tell the game where they want to go next, where they want to explore, what to do next, etc. In response to the player’s commands, the game will tell the player what happens as a result of their command.
On the other hand, choose your path interactive fiction game is a game where the game presents the player with a chunk of text and different choices. The player must choose one of these choices to proceed through the story. Their choice will affect how the story will progress either in a positive direction, negative, or neutral direction.

2. Name an example of a parser game.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy the Game.

3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
The Ace Attorney Series

4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
Interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s because Infocom, the company that makes interactive fiction games, was brought by Activision. Later on, Activision will go on and shut down the Infocom division thus ending interactive fiction.

5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing because in a game where there are only words, poetry helps make these words powerful to give the players a strong image. An example she uses is “with those we love alive.”

6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
Ambiguity is unavoidable because it is not possible to cover every detail. It is left up to the player’s imagination to fill up the missing details. It also can be used deliberately so that the developer can choose which details to omitted and which one to put in. This is decided where you want player imagination to actively fill in the gap. Ambiguity can also be use deliberately so that the player is require to interpret what is currently happen and they have to act on their interpretation.

7. What’s important about complicity?
Complicity is important because it makes both the player and the game interact. The game will present the player with a choice that matters in the game. What the player do in the game will have big consequences later on in the game.

Worksheet for GDV talk by Heather Albano

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
A parser game is more like playing out a story and following a path, with prompts to encourage a player to stay interactive with simple directions such as turn left, open the door, and talk to this person. A Choose your path interactive offers more options for the player, but therefore has a shorter playtime because there are more stories that need to be created. There are more options to go eft or right, which will then change the gameplay and the results of the story to a certain degree. A personality plays more of a role in this type of gameplay.

2. Name an example of a parser game.
Hadean Lands

3. Name an example of a choose your own path game.
Codename Cygus

4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
One of the major companies, Infocom, closed down, therefore leaving the world to fend for itself on the technology needed to create other Interactive fiction games, until other companies opened up, but with different goals in mind. With new technologies came new narratives and the interactive fiction became less about telling a story and more about wowing the audience/players. With the redevelopment of MMORPG and more advanced technologies created less parser and Choose your path games and more complex, action based games.

5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Albano talks about poetry in terms of what the words imply to the audience and what weight they hold. Without making the setting dull, the story must provide details and descriptions of settings in a limited number of words. The poetry leaves the audience room to fill in the blanks with their own imagination, but provides the key elements of the setting for the audience to know where and what they are. Albano uses an excerpt from With Those We Love Alive to prove how only 32 words can create a setting and pull the reader into the game.

6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
Albano says that ambiguity is the tool used to encourage the player to use their imagination. It is easy to tell a story, but to leave a story open to interpretation while at the same time filling in the necessary details takes finesse. Things can be left to be interpreted in their own way by the choices that the player decides to make. The challenge may always be the same, like a boss fight at the end of a chapter, but the person being fought may have a different role: a female vs a male, a jilted lover vs a long-time enemy vs an evil sibling.

7. What’s important about complicity?
Complicity is the tool used to keep a player interactive and immersed in the game. IN a parser game, it is important that the actions feel like choices regardless of the lack of options available. The quote she uses says to make the change of gameplay from ‘it happened to me’ to ‘I did it’. When the freedom of action is available, it makes the player truly feel immersed in the gameplay and care more about the results of the game purely with words alone.

1. In your own words, explain the difference between a parser interactive fiction game and a choose your path interactive fiction game.
The difference between a parser interactive fiction and a choose your own path inter active game is that the parser is the game gives the player a chunk of text which has words that turn in to action. So the player gets to choose from those words what their person will do. While the choose your own path game gives the player different scenarios and you get to choose what scenario you will take.
2. Name an example of a parser game.
An example of a Parser game is Zork 1 and Planetfall.
3. Name an example of a choose your own path game
Sugarcane Island
4. Why does she say interactive fiction virtually died out in the mid-1990s?
She says that because Activision bought Infocom at that time and that led to the decline of production of interactive fiction games. There was also competition in the end it could not keep up with the new market.
5. Why does she say poetry is an important element of interactive fiction writing? What example does she use?
Because in interactive fiction games the writing is what brings the story to life, as the player we are captured by the words that used to tell the story and we begin to see the story come to life and that’s what makes us want to play. Ms. Heather uses the game With Those We Love Alive as an example of how poetry is used to make these stories more interesting.
6. Why does she say that ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also necessary?
Interactive games rely on text there isn’t enough room for the developers to write everything It’s not possible for everything to be described and that’s where the player’s imagination comes in. The player fills in the spaces that the developers did not.
7. What’s important about complicity?
Complexity allows the player to make the story into whatever they want, they become the developers or the story writers. The game becomes more interactiv