Twisty Little Passages: an Approach to Interactive Fiction Free

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The MIT Press. Cloth: ISBN: See the interactive fiction section of nickm. Interactive fiction — the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure — has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, and interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragonsand follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that created by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little Passages Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration. This book not only made me reconsider the importance of interactive fiction as a genre within hypermedia, it also Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction me devote a hefty portion of my graduate courses to IF — and Twisty Little Passages. Hell, after reading it, I even went out and bought every Infocom title I could lay my hands on. It's that good. Reading it makes me itch to fire up that old DEC and start writing interactive fiction again! Just as groundbreaking studies of romance and the gothic novel have broadened our idea of literary fiction, so Montfort makes a powerful case for recognition of this extraordinary new form of art: of the poetry that must live within the machine. Newcomers will find all that they need here, while those who are already aficionados will be constantly informed and surprised. I don't mean that it's a book without flaw But it's clearly the right book by the right person at the right time Throughout the text, Montfort triangulates between an IF work's tripartite status as narrative, game, and computer program; and it is the riddle which emerges as the Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction to bind all Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction together. It never fails to be informative, and frequently succeeds at being sharply insightful about the literary elements of IF. However, Twisty Little Passages is quite suitable Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction readers outside the ivory tower as well. Though the book is clearly aimed at an academic audience, Montfort's prose is blessedly jargon-free, clear, and effective, with generous doses of humor thrown in for good measure. Even in its most theoretical moments, the book manages to balance impressive rigor with unfailing clarity, a feat all too rare in literary theory. Consequently, it's an entertaining read for general audiences and English professors alike. If you're an IF aficionado like me, you'll find Twisty Little Passages enlightening and fun, and if there's anyone in your life who genuinely wants to know what interactive fiction is and why they should care, hand them this book. How much better, then, to have a single book that does all three and is even a pleasure to read. Nick Montfort's book provides both overview and new insight, and is important enough that I expect it to be a canonical reference for years to come. Like any good travel guide it points out the roadside attractions, but it also teaches you to appreciate their often bizarre beauty. We are so used to the eye-candy that our graphics cards spew forth so abundantly, that the experience of interactive fiction threatens to be disorienting at first — but once our eyes have adjusted to the dark screen with its scarce spattering of bright alphanumerics, we are likely to feel like we are returning to a place we haven't Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction really left. The effect is exciting and soothing at the same time — like the wave of remembrance that washes over Marcel as he dips the Madeleine into his tea — and Montfort deserves praise for reviving this lost world for us. Here is a thorough history of interactive fiction as an outgrowth of the computer's capacity for text management. At only pages, Twisty Little Passages is a small, accessible book that addresses a deep and complex subject. The author's stated intention is to bring us the first book-length consideration of interactive fiction IF as a legitimate literary field, and he has certainly succeeded. His enthusiasm as an observer of the modern IF scene is infectious. I can wholeheartedly recommend Twisty Little Passages not only to IF fans and amateur historians, but to anyone serious about the foundations and culture of computer gaming. The text is also surprisingly readable for an academic work, with occasional dry humour and mercifully little jargon. Because it's a good history and contains a number of worthwhile insights, I strongly recommend this book for any current or former IF fan. Fortunately, Nick Montfort keeps the tone light and short on obtuse literary-theory jargon, and tells an entertaining and Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction story of how interactive fiction made the leap from geek pastime to commercial success, and how it ultimately evolved into the tremendously varied forms in which it manifests today. Such a book is timely, much needed, and greatly appreciated by this reviewer for its depth and scope. Historical and explorative as its orientation is, the book's main concern is scanning the multitude of characteristics that turn interactive texts like 'Mindwheel' into a meaningful cultural experience, and in doing so, making the necessary and often difficult first steps towards a fully functional Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Montfort is not afraid of taking risks, and spends a lot of effort discussing topics that have largely been neglected in the academic community In Twisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort not only outlines the history of interactive fiction through its commercial primetime and its community-based explosion but also provides a vocabulary and an approach with which to understand the genre. Montfort's discussion of riddles as the primary literary ancestor of interactive fiction is a novel and valuable insight that will be of value in the larger debate of seeing not only electronic literature but also games in terms of literature and literary theory. This is a book that you should read not only to find out about a genre, but also to see an alternative way that a genre can develop: past commercialism and through a Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. This is also a book you should read to see alternative ways of theorising games, seeing them as literary but as more than merely narrative. It is a book you should read to find ways in which Janet Murray's dreams of Hamlet on the Holodeck narratives starring you as the protagonist have been tried out in practice Twisty Little Passages is an ideal introduction to a little known genre, not only describing the genre but also presenting interpretations and summarising previous readings and discussions of works. I worked at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science at the time that Zork was Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, so I'm familiar with the technology and knew the people who created it. Being an avid player, I wrote a book on the subject. But after Infocom fell and text games gave way to graphic games, I thought the field had dwindled to a few isolated efforts and then died. It wasn't until I read Montfort's book that I learned that interactive fiction IF is still being created, even though there's no longer a commercial market for it. Anyone who wonders what's been happening since Zork will find a lot of interesting information in this book. Though other authors and scholars have treated text adventures and "interactive fiction" before, Twisty Little Passages TLP has set the bar for any such work to follow. TLP is a highly detailed and well-researched book that should provide grist for many an article. Club " Montfort's book provides an indispensable guide for a journey into the past of computer literature. Kuchling "This book is [a] new major academic treatment of Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction type of storytelling as a form of literature. Twisty Little Passages | The MIT Press

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. Interactive fiction--the best-known form of which is the text game or text adventure--has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronic literature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in A critical approach to interactive fiction, as literature and game. Twisty Little Passages the title refers to a maze in Adventurethe first interactive fiction is the first book-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. Nick Montfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a way to approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience of it. Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragonsand follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little PassagesNick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 2. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Twisty Little Passagesplease sign up. Be the first to ask a question about Twisty Little Passages. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction 15, Aneel rated it did not like it. Sadly, I found this rather dull. It's literary criticism about Infocom-style text adventure games. Because this is a pretty new field the games have been around for decades, but apparently nobody has given them a serious critical readingthe author spends a good deal of time just defining terms and providing a history of the genre. Montfort spends an early chapter arguing that text adventure games are descendants of riddles, a more established literary form. This seems to be the meaty idea in Sadly, I found this rather dull. This seems to be the meaty idea in the book, but I felt it wasn't very well-developed. Perhaps I'm just not used to reading criticism, but it seemed like he was constantly telling the reader about the point he was about to make, rather than making the point. I'm tempted to play a bunch of the recent works he describes. I didn't get much more out of the book than that, though. May 06, Paul Bond rated it liked it Shelves: reviewed. A well-researched book on a fascinating topic, "Twisty Little Passages" is still surprisingly leaden. I Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction the issue is organization. Telling the history of interactive gaming mainly as a historical development, with some academic overlay, obscures the reasons this form should be of more general interest. Aug 19, Phil rated it it was ok. The subtitle to this book is "An approach to interactive fiction. Maybe some suggestions as to how best navigate a work. Or maybe some suggestion on how to approach interactive fiction from the point of writing a work best practices, common pitfalls, etc. Either way, I would have been interested and appreciative. Instead, what this book really is is a very comprehensive histor The subtitle to this book is "An approach to interactive fiction. Instead, what this book really is is a very comprehensive history of the form. As a historical lesson, this book is spot on. But I didn't need to read page after page after page of the author proving that interactive fiction is actually a new form of the riddle. While learning the history was nice, Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction not what I was looking for, and the book read at times like a dry history book. For those looking for the history of interactive fiction, this book is for you. For those looking for some insight on how to actually use interactive fiction, as either a player or a designer, this one misses the mark. Mar 17, Steve Losh Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction it did not like it. I got about a quarter of the way into this and had to stop. It's just awful. I tried to give this one a fair shot. I really did. One of this author's other books, Racing the Beam, has enough technical content to make it worth wading through all the countless "I am smart so let me use lots of big- sounding words" pages. But this book never seems to evolve past the "let' I got about a quarter of the way into this and had to stop. But this book never seems to evolve past the "let's define lots of impressive soundings words by referring to other impressive sounding words" stage. I had to stop. I couldn't take it. I'm sorry. Feb 27, Ken rated it it was ok Shelves: nonfic-topic. A well-researched history of interactive fiction, but with problems holding my interest. There's little investigation into the substantive technical details of the IF platforms, and the insight into IF stories and their various elements is only skin-deep and that bit vastly over-analyzed. The one redeeming part is the chapter on Infocom's history and games. If that strikes your interest then skim it, otherwise skip it and try Jimmy Maher's book about the Amiga instead: The Future Was Here: The C A well-researched history of interactive fiction, but with problems holding my interest. Dec 20, Olivia Dunlap rated it liked it Shelves: owned. There is some really good information here, but I feel like it gets a bit lost in its own Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction passages. The sections seem to ramble, and a larger portion of the book simply presented history of the form than I expected. Overall, I do recommend it to anyone Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction in interactive fiction at all, but to those who are already familiar with the format and its history, only a few chapters will be of much interest. Personally, I learned a lot and have many of pages bookmarked for future referenc There is some really good information here, but I feel like it gets a bit lost in its own twisty passages. Oct 15, DeadWeight rated it it was ok. Jul 17, S G-W rated it liked it. A good resource, but the writing structure just totally breaks down in the final third. Aug 30, Patrick Kennedy rated it really liked it Shelves: dungeons-and-dragons. Great book about interactive fiction and text-based adventure games as an outgrowth of early rpgs. A little dry, yeah, but honestly for anyone who grew up with an Atari or a TRS 80 this stuff is catnip. Great bit of pop culture history. Nothing else really like it. IF worlds are reflected in, but not equivalent Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, maps, object trees, and descriptive texts. The IF world is no less than the content plane of interactive Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, just as the story is the content plane of a narrative. The arrangement of challenges and the way in which the IF world can be experienced can be discussed with reference to the riddle. An Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction such as architecture, which considers that people may take different courses through a space, also has advantages in considering this aspect. To understand how language functions in interactive fiction and what the literary aspects of interactive fiction are, the best comparison seems to be not to the novel but to the form of poetry Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction here, the riddle. The riddle, like an IF work, must express itself clearly enough to be solved, obliquely enough to be challenging, and beautifully enough to be compelling. Colossal Cave Adventure - Wikipedia

Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook. Eight chapters, arranged in roughly-chronological order, detail the lineage of interactive fiction from its origins in Delphic riddles to its newest and most intriguing forms. Passion and precision Among Montfort's first statements is one that demonstrates a commitment to careful scholarship that recurs throughout the book: " Text adventure and interactive fiction do not mean exactly the same thing. These titles, among others, demonstrate that IF isn't just a delivery vehicle for the stereotyped themes of juvenile fiction with which it's often associated. Montfort proceeds to explain why he found it necessary to write Twisty Little Passages :. Naming the game Assuming the art of interactive fiction began with the riddle, what constitutes a work of IF today? After a brief excerpt from LookingGlass Technologies veteran Dan Schmidt 's For A Change gives us an example of description, interaction and puzzle-solving, Montfort goes on to establish four requisite aspects of IF:. A text-accepting, text-generating computer program ; A potential narrative a system that produces narrative during interaction ; A Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction of an environment or world ; and A structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game. Works which do not include each of these elements are deliberately excluded, among them "hypertext fiction," most graphical computer games, and numerous experimental titles. In this respect, Montfort perhaps misses an opportunity to reflect upon the true extent of IF's influence over the rest of the entertainment software world. With a reported 30, lines of text in Deus Ex 2 - more than any Infocom game ever boasted - I'd argue Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction the historical text-only criterion is becoming more questionable all the time. The rise of the smart machines Much more than a theoretical treatise on IF, Twisty Little Passages is also the most complete chronicle of important IF titles, authors, and publishers assembled to date. Its middle four chapters focus largely on academic and commercial efforts at crafting and publishing interactive fiction. Chapter 3 begins with an introduction of the concept of generative literary machines "ergodic literature". Montfort cites the Turing Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction nature of the I Chingfollowed by a mention of Jonathan Swift's satirical machine from Gulliver's Travels, "made of equal parts of irony, sarcasm, and mockery, that would automatically write books on all the arts and sciences. The mother of all computer games, in Montfort's view, was Spanish engineer Leonardo Quevedo's chess-playing robot. Devised to attack a particular endgame problem on a vertically-oriented chessboard, Quevedo's machine was unique in that it represented the first so-called "chess automaton" that operated by legitimate electromechanical means rather than by fraudulently-concealed midgets. A subsequent refinement of Quevedo's machine would later catch the eye of famed computer scientist and AI researcher Norbert Wiener, achieving recognition as the first genuine attempt at artificial intelligence. Mechanical curiosities aside, no discussion of human-computer interaction would be complete without inviting Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA to the party. As the first convincing conversation "bot", ELIZA accepted plain-English input from a human interlocutor, transforming it albeit with no semantic understanding into a sympathetic textual murmur Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction to elicit further input:. Crowther is a contemporary of Zork co-author Dave Leblingwho, coincidentally, was a member of the same Dungeons and Dragons group in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In one Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction Montfort's many personal communications with IF luminaries, Lebling says:. Zork 's innovations over the state of the art established by Adventure are too numerous to count, although Montfort explicitly avoids the common mistake of canonizing Zork and Infocom games in general while giving short shrift to other important IF efforts. Alas, poor Infocom. In Montfort's words, Infocomwhich was founded June 22, by Lebling, Blank, Anderson, and seven other MIT alumni, "began work on the foundation of IF while the plot of ground that it was to be built upon had not been completely surveyed. Chapter 6 "Different Visions Worldwide" opens with a quick drive-by tour of Roberta Williams 's Mystery Houserecognized as the first graphical adventure game. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction histories of British IF publishers Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls round out the chapter, along with an even-briefer mention of Legend Entertainmentwritten Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction Legend's shutdown in early The latter constitutes one of the few weak spots in Twisty Little Passages 's coverage of the classics. Legend's integration of music, artwork, graphical navigation, and other interface enhancements in the Spellcasting series went far beyond Infocom's efforts to modernize their own IF engines, and the company deserves more than a single paragraph. At the end of Chapter 6, Montfort recounts the failure of former Infocom author Mike Berlyn 's Cascade Mountain Publishingone of the last commercial publishers of pure text-based IF. He proceeds to draw a sheet over the commercial market for Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction fiction in general, pronouncing it as dead as Graham Chapman's parrot:. Fortunately, as the last two chapters reveal, a healthy independent IF community has sprung up to take the place of the commercial publishers who are no longer with us. IF's independent authors: the once and future scene In Aprilat the culmination of a long reverse-engineering effort by "a group of programmers called the InfoTaskForce" pageGraham Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction released an object- oriented programming language capable of creating story files for the Infocom Z-machine interpreter. Two tentacles up I can wholeheartedly recommend Twisty Little Passages not only to IF fans and amateur historians, but to anyone serious about the foundations and culture of computer gaming. Infocom and Legend Entertainment auteur Steve Meretzky's back-cover blurb says it all: " Twisty Little Passages is a thoroughly-researched history of interactive fiction, as well as a brilliant analysis Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction the genre. Reading it makes me itch to fire up that old DEC and start writing interactive fiction again! As a fan of the IF art form as a whole, I'm indeed lucky to have run across Nick Montfort's excellent book. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelinesthen visit the submission page. It's a damn good thing I wasn't drinking anything right then, or I would be demanding compensation for my keyboard. To answer your very amusing question, though - yes. In fact, it's one of the best book reviews I've ever seen on slashdot. Perhaps a tad lengthy, but you can't have everything. There is also a command that can be used to make Zippy mode converse with doctor mode, but I can't find it after a few moments of searching. It is really more interesting to think about than to see it run All of the reviews I've seen, including my own [brasslantern. You can see some of those reviews listed on the author's page about Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction books [nickm. It's an extremely accessible book, which isn't easy to do, and the highest praise I can give it is that I wish I'd written it. Obviously, some of these games are better than others But, trying to rank them alongside legitimate literature seems mighty presumptuous. Legitimate authors struggle to perfect their reader's experience, and would never deliberately abandon it to dice-throws. If it happens that some interactive game is found to harbor a deep and worthwhile intellectual point, then a "real" author, rather than writing that game, will tell the story Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction a character who plays it. And frankly, I think the elitist insistence that the reader is not the author mirrors the chestnut that a bad reader is worse than no reader at all. The question is not, "who is a legitimate author? Instead, the questions are, "who is a legitimate reader? If you boil down all our readings to your ideas about literary forms and formats and ignore us, it'. It's been many years since I played Sorcerer, though -- I could be mis-remembering it entirely. You post a long-winded rant that calls interactive fiction the 'worst episode evar! You feel the might of thousands of negative comments weighing you down and the heat of flames licking your feet. You have fallen prey to the vicious Homonym! It's too late. The bloodthirsty Slashdotters have beaten you to -1 Troll, and the vicious Homonym has picked your bones clean! You're banned for the day! I discovered this game inand it took me until to get by the snake. I'm still not done. I load it up every few years and play actively for a month or two. What better technology than that between your ears? Alas, I tried showing some of my old text adventure games to some young cousins of mine, and of course, they just did NOT "get it. To continue your saved game, choose your game and type 'restore' after it starts. Wow, really? Good point! It's a shame no one seems to have noticed that error, except the reviewer and the author and most everyone else:. At least four of these six statements are clearly false, and the remaining two are misleading. Donald E. It won't stop you from winning the game, since that's not an essential object. Time went by about 8 years and I changed jobs a couple of times. One day, I was talking with a daughter site in Boston, and somehow the subject of Adventure came up. He was trying to do something with it, and happened to mention the name of the userid that created it. Modern AI is pretty much based on Winograd's work. They were the basis of the great commercial AI scare of the s, into which many zillions Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction venture capital was poured, and from which sprang, well, not much. The game was unmistakably written for an old-fashioned CRT: Most of the room descriptions were two or three lines long, but when you first came to the "Volcano View" the screen flooded with text, a description exactly 80 chars wide by 23 lines long, leaving just one line at the bottom of t. A more absurd account can hardly be imagined. The universe, it seems, was created by "Implementers" who directed the running of great engines. These engines produced this world and others, strange and wondrous, as a test or puzzle for others of their kind. It goes on to sta. One particularly funny story I would like to relate was my mastering of the adventure game included with GNU emacs yes, there is one among other things. I managed to make. There may be more comments Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead. Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. Space is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen to you. Slashdot Apparel is back! Do you develop on GitHub? You can keep using GitHub but automatically sync your GitHub releases to SourceForge quickly and easily Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction this tool and take advantage of SourceForge's massive reach. Follow Slashdot on LinkedIn. John Miles writes "It's been almost thirty years since young Laura and Sandy Crowther sat down at a Teletype and took their first steps into the mysterious subterranean world their father, Will, created for them. Now, if Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction is any indication, Crowther and Woods's pioneering computer game Adventure and its descendants are finally beginning to garner the critical recognition they deserve. At only pages, Twisty Little Passages is a small, accessible book that addresses a deep and complex subject. The author's stated intention is to bring us the first book-length consideration of interactive fiction IF as a legitimate literary field, and he has certainly succeeded. To see why a solid treatment of IF needs to be written, one need only consider this selection from the single page that mentions IF in Ilana Snyder's.