The first text adventure game by pioneering software company Radarsoft (John Vanderaart). Players had to make their way through the storyworld by typing in commands on their keyboards.
Nijmeegs Avontuur (aka Nijmegen Avontuur) by Couwenberg Software and Courbois Software was released in the early 1980s. The original version was released for the Commodore PET, the recorded version shown here was the remake for the Commodore 64. This Dutch text adventure is considered as one of the first official video games released in The Netherlands. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision even included it as the first title in the Dutch Games Canon, that was published in 2018.
Nijmeegs Avontuur (ook bekend als Nijmegen Avontuur) van Couwenberg Software en Courbois Software is uitgebracht aan het begin van de jaren 80, dus rond 1980. De originele versie werd uitgebracht voor de Commodore PET, de opgenomen versie hier was een hernieuwde versie voor de Commodore 64. Dit Nederlandse tekstadventure wordt gezien als één van de eerste officiële computerspellen in Nederland. Het Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid in Hilversum nam het spel zelfs als eerste titel op in de Nederlandse Games Canon, die in 2018 werd gepubliceerd
The world of game development is heavily male dominated and sexism is notoriously endemic in online gaming and videogames. In this context, as a feminist woman and sole writer, developer and designer of an interactive digital narrative, I am something of a rarity. Doing it all myself may seem perverse, especially in a field where collaboration is common, but the ability to author code myself is empowering and, crucially, gives me independence - a development environment of one's own - a classic feminist goal. In this presentation, I will discuss how these factors are reflected in the interplay of genre, narrative, discourse, gameplay, game logic, character development and thematic content in my interactive digital narrative, Stitched Up (currently a work-in-progress).
In an extremely rare inversion of the 'Damsel in Distress' trope, a common plot device in video games, the central male character in Stitched Up is a 'dude in distress' (Sarkeesian 2013). A powerful female antagonist has trapped Joel in a perilous situation and he must be rescued by his wife, Sarah (both Joel and Sarah are player characters). However, rather than action adventure, I describe Stitched Up as a psychological thriller. Moreover, its feminist narrative themes, problematizing the idea of home, significant others, working women, parenthood and masculinity, suggest similarities with the emerging literary sub-genre of Domestic Noir.
To create an interactive narrative that is capable of exploring these issues, I am drawing together concepts from second-order cybernetics with Possible Worlds theory from narratology. Combining these abstractions provides me with a framework for not only thinking about character-driven playable narratives, but also a methodology for authoring and designing them. I am drawn to Possible Worlds theory because, unlike structuralism, it does not regard fictional characters as purely semiotic constructs but regards them as make-believe life-like persons, able to arouse emotions in the reader. Influenced by cybernetics, along with the concept of feedback and 'the art of steering' (cybernetics' etymological root), I am exploring the idea of the fictional character as a Black Box in order to simulate psychological depth.
An observer can only infer what is going on inside a Black Box from its inputs and outputs. Stitched Up is text-driven but highly visual and I am coupling my dialogue-based game engine with a responsive abstract visualisation system for the characters' internal emotional data to deliver subtextual layers of meaning. These combined outputs will affect the choices that reader-players make, the inputs. This stimulus-response model, which is my core gameplay loop, functions as a kind of rudder for the reader-player to steer a course through Stitched Up's narrative universe of Possible Worlds. How the reader-player chooses to interpret the characters' behaviour will determine the kind of story they experience and its outcome. The 'Damsel in Distress' trope invariably decrees a revenge-driven story, Stitched Up's 'dude in distress' device challenges that edict.
I am drawing together concepts from second-order cybernetics with Possible Worlds theory from narratology. Combining these abstractions provides me with a framework for not only thinking about character-driven playable narratives, but also a methodology for authoring and designing them.
Inspired by Mark Z. Danielewki’s z House of Leaves (2000) and Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure (1975), It is Pitch Black renders a mysterious, non-visual environment in the form of a text-based videogame. Although Danielewski’s novel participates in the lusory logic of digital games, functions as a paradigmatic post-digital text, and includes a diverse range of media, the book contains no mention of videogames within its pages. It is Pitch Black imagines a missing appendix or additional chapter (like the four pages of hexadecimal code only included in the original hardcover publication) which takes the form of a text-based adventure game that the Navidson children may have played throughout their ordeal. Inspired by Crowther’s inaugural adventure game yet operating according to the idiom of a 3D navigable space, It is Pitch Black foregrounds the tension between the human experience of play and the microtemporal processes of a computer. Like the scrolling debug log, the speed of the text is directly proportional to the speed of the computer running the game and, as one plays, the text operates as an index or log of game states occurring along with each processor cycle. This usually hidden, nonhuman labor is juxtaposed against the labor and contributions of two other, often invisible figures--the historical Patricia Crowther and the fictional Karen Navidson. It is Pitch Black weaves together a speculative account of these women’s journey, punctuated by the footnotes of a ubiquitous “Will,” a conflation of the figure of Will Navidson with that of Will Crowther. The presentation will include a live performance of these two voices. As if in an echo chamber (or Zampano’s narcissistic architecture), these texts reveberate off one another when read as an electronic duet.
(Source: Author's Abstract)
"The Madeleine Effect" is a digital story project, an artistic look at ways to incorporate a creative text based story in the linear format and language styling of a novel into the game world. I believe that when a primarily text-based fiction story is created in a visual narrative medium, it can be utilized to prompt the user to act as a character. The user therefore may be guided to perform through a narrative. I am interested in looking at interactive fiction from the perspective of a writer aiming to invite meaningful interaction leading towards playful behaviors, or acting, on the part of the player. "The Madeleine Effect" is a fiction story that is experienced through both digital and print media. The story interface aims to be interactive through the player's performance, which is demonstrated by inputting text into the story while playing a defined role. The interactivity in this project is focused at this time so as to more easily observe the ideas I am exploring. My hope is that this project will spur thought and conversation about ideas for increased interactivity and a more intelligent technical structure.
(Source: Author's description, 2008 ELO Conference)