"Interactive fiction" itself sounds like the oxymoron.  How can
something be interactive for the user, and be fiction...isn't it fact?
The player did this, and that, under a set of constraints (an imaginary
world).  There is no story in that, but the factual one that the user
actually experiences. 

What about a sort of interactive non-fiction?  You could conceivably
create a game where the experiences of the player(s) are recorded and
easily reproduced, even allowing a sort of top down navigation of those
experiences.  From that, an interesting non-fictional (or fictionalized)
tale could be written, augmented with clips, or scenes from the actual
events.  

It would be an multi-media tale about fictional or non-fictional events
in an imaginary world.  The question is, would something like that be
entertaining to people?

- Stephen

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-admin at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Andrew C. Greenberg
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 3:51 PM
> To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction and Squeak
> 
> 
> My remarks hold, but moreso, with respect to graphic games 
> purporting to 
> be IF.  To me, the problem isn't puzzle-sense or game-sense (all that 
> goes to the smoke-and-mirrors to which I referred), the problem is 
> gamemaster control of storytelling versus player control of the 
> simulation.  You can't have the first without compromising 
> the latter, 
> and vice-versa.
> 
> Many interesting solutions have been posited in many formats. 
>  Infocom 
> narrowly circumscribed simulation for storytelling, but compromised 
> quite a bit.  Wizardry narrowly circumscribed stroytelling for 
> simulation, but compromised quite a bit.  First person 
> shooters, well, 
> you know where they sit.  Graphics adventures don't really 
> address the 
> question at all.
> 
> My personal favorite (albeit my critically best-received and 
> commercially worst-received) deliverable after Wizardry was 
> Star Saga, a 
> storytelling single-platform multi-player game which used 
> off-line books 
> of text and a game board -- a sort of a play-your-own-adventure book 
> with computer-managed state.  What I liked about the product is that 
> players reported a strong sense of simulation experience in a 
> game that 
> actually dramatically controlled the story-telling.  
> Moreover, the game 
> had puzzles and boundaries but no dead ends.  It was my first product 
> built on the "IF oxymoron" thesis, and I think it was 
> critically great 
> for that reason alone.
> 
> Despite its virtues, and the perceptions to the contrary, 
> Star Saga was 
> not, of course, "interactive fiction."  For reasons 
> previously stated, 
> there's no such thing.
> 
> On Monday, July 30, 2001, at 03:11 PM, Kevin Fisher wrote:
> 
> > You might be interested in the interview with Dave Lebling:
> >
> > 
> http://www.adventurecollective.com/articles/interview-davelebling.htm
> >
> > He talks quite a bit about the limits of text adventures, 
> both in the 
> > past and today.
> >
> > He also has some comments on the early work and object oriented 
> > coding.
> >
> > It's interesting that even Infocom has some remote influence from
> > Spacewar.
> > :)
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:33:40AM -0400, Roger Kenyon wrote:
> >> No question. I was pointing out the limits of current IF authoring 
> >> environments in favor of something, as you say, entirely 
> >> Squeak-based.
> >>
> >>> More interesting would be an entirely Squeak-based IF system that 
> >>> could offer something new (which couldn't really be said for a 
> >>> z-code implementation in Squeak or compiling Squeak to 
> z-code).  An 
> >>> etoy-like or etoy-based graphical adventure construction 
> kit could 
> >>> fit the bill, as I think it would be the first widely 
> cross-platform 
> >>> compatible such system, and one of the few providing access to a 
> >>> complete and flexible underlying system.
> >>
> >> On the other hand, my reference to Game Maker
> >> (http://www.cs.ruu.nl/people/markov/gmaker/index.html) was 
> to suggest
> >> not
> >> limiting the tool to text-based adventures. Take a look at 
> the Game 
> >> Maker
> >> documentation (that's about all us Mac folk can do with it). Now 
> >> imagine
> >> something like this for the omniuser -- a step up from 
> eToy tiles; a 
> >> set
> >> down from actuall Smalltalk code.
> >>
> >> Frankly, I think kids would eat it up. Judging from how active the 
> >> Game Maker forum is, I am sure they would.
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> R. Kenyon
> >>
> >> |T|h|i|n|k|L|i|n|k: http://www.riverwoodpub.com/educatio.htm
> >> Not everything is black & white: some things have to be read.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> 
>