Interactive Fiction

A type of born-digital electronic literature where users navigate narrative and ludic elements by inputting textual commands or making choices
Claire Carroll 2025-09-24

Explication

Interactive Fiction has been intertwined with the history of early video games, and the form persists with a dedicated—and growing—community of readers and writers. Interactive Fiction uses text as the primary mode of reader engagement, and, while some now use multi-media effects, language is the primary vehicle for both narrative and ludic elements, such as puzzles. Works are often non-linear, and experiences of an interactive fiction vary from reader to reader. Authors, readers, and scholars mostly refer to Interactive Fiction by the initialism IF (pronounced /aɪ - ef/).

The first IF was Adventure by Will Crowther, which was written in Fortran in 1975 and distributed on ARPANET (Montfort, Twisty Little Passages 91). It was updated and expanded into Colossal Cave Adventure by Don Woods the following year. Players explored magical caves by typing in two-word commands, such as ‘GO EAST’ or ‘TAKE LAMP’, and the system responded by describing the new or updated environment. Adventure inspired a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop Zork (1977), which is considered the first commercially successful video game. Interactive Fiction companies, such as Infocom, sprang up to commercialize the form but eventually faded in popularity as improvements in graphics and memory enabled more multimedia games.

Historically, Interactive Fiction was synonymous with ‘text adventure games’, but now the form refers to a broader group of text-based narrative games. Earlier definitions of Interactive Fiction were rooted specifically in the mechanics of interaction; the use of a text parser and command-line interface were what made something IF (Douglass 129; Short). Nick Montfort distinguishes IF from other parser-based programs as one where player input is analyzed and to some extent understood; the work does not reproduce the same sequence of texts or a random sequence regardless of player input (Montfort, Twisty Little Passages viii; Montfort, ‘Toward a Theory’ 34). Even as late as the early 2010s, graphical and choice-based games were broadly excluded from being understood as IF (Plotkin 66). However, current definitions include both parser-based and choice-based IFs like Depression Quest (2013) (The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation). Choice-based IF can either refer to hypertext narratives or multiple-choice narratives and may include fewer puzzles or map-based logics as parser-based IFs.

Community is central to IF, and it has cohered around both parser and choice-based projects. [Authoring software] and development systems like Inform by Graham Nelson and [Twine] by Chris Klimas are free to use and offer robust (Anglophone) documentation and community support for new writers. Historically, the community used the newsgroup rec.arts.int-fiction to communicate, but now there is the intfiction.org forum, which offers hints, tips, conversation, and advice for readers and writers alike in English, Spanish, Italian, and French (The Interactive Fiction Community Forum). New work is often shared via regular competitions or ‘Jams,’ which are predominantly run by popular vote. The biggest competition is the Interactive Fiction Competition, which has been running annually since 1995.

Many popular IF tools and their documentation are developed in English, but non-Anglophone IF communities thrive as well. There are distinct community fora and annual competitions, such as Rayuela de Arena (Spanish), ЗОК (Russian), Grand Prix (German), and Concours Annuel de Fiction Interactive Francophone (French). Some Sinophone IF is shared on traditional databases like IFDB; however, Sinophone electronic literature tends to be more forum-based and is also underrepresented in these databases (Guo).

IF is a relatively accessible form of electronic literature, since it is regularly accompanied by walkthroughs and can often be smoothly transferred to an audio experience via screen readers for the blind and partially sighted. While there is a burgeoning trend towards commercialization in IF for well-known writers, via funding platforms like Kickstarter or Patreon, or where completed projects are available for purchase on Steam, the majority of new works are available to play for free.

In terms of thematic focus, Interactive Fiction often explores questions of choice, freedom, and agency. According to Hartmut Koenitz, recent Twine projects in particular have focused very thoroughly on issues such as ‘cultural desolation, personal identity, alienation’, perhaps because the writing process is more accessible than parser-based systems (Koenitz xii). Some smaller competitions will suggest specific creative constraints, such as projects that are based on a song or games that take place at a zoo (Chen et al.; The Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction). However, there are no topic limitations or restrictions inherent to the form.

See Also

• Electronic Literature (e-lit) - Variety of born-digital genres and formats that engage the capabilities of computing, often investigating the materiality of our everyday interactions with digital media
• Literary Game - Media artifact that contains both ludic and literary elements
• Hypertext - Type of document comprised of interrelated textual nodes that are connected via associative links, facilitating non-linear traversal and reading
• Twine - Open-source tool for creating interactive, non-linear stories and games, widely used in the digital literature community for its simplicity, versatility, and accessibility to non-programmers
• Player Agency - Degree to which users or players can influence the direction or outcome of a story or game, highlighting the interactive aspect of digital media

Works Cited

Chen, Autumn, et al. ‘ShuffleComp 2023’. Itch.Io, 2 Dec. 2023, https://itch.io/jam/shufflecomp-2023.

Douglass, Jeremy. Enlightening Interactive Fiction: Andrew Plotkin’s Shade › Electronic Book Review. 31 Jan. 2012, https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/enlightening-interactive-fiction-andrew-plotkins-shade/.

Guo, Jinghua. ‘Electronic Literature in China’. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 16, no. 5, 2014.

Koenitz, Hartmut, editor. Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory and Practice. Routledge, 2017.

Montfort, Nick. ‘Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction’. IF Theory Reader, edited by Jackson-Mead, Kevin and J. Robinson Wheeler, Transcript On Press, 2011, pp. 25–58.

Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. New Edition, MIT Press, 2005.

Plotkin, Andrew. ‘Characterizing, If Not Defining, Interactive Fiction’. IF Theory Reader, edited by Kevin Jackson-Mead and J. Robinson Wheeler, Transcript On Press, 2011, pp. 59–66.

Short, Emily. ‘Interactive Fiction’. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzY2MjI0M19fQU41?sid=79385f8b-4ef1-4e42-99ef-b103910dcd92@redis&vid=0&format=EB&rid=1. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025.

The Interactive Fiction Community Forum. Intfiction, https://intfiction.org/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2024.

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. Frequently Asked Questions About Interactive Fiction. https://iftechfoundation.org/frequently-asked-questions/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.

The Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction. https://rcveeder.net/expo/. Accessed 2 Jan. 2024.

Further Reading

Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. UK ed. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.Ensslin, Astrid. Literary Gaming. Illustrated edition, MIT Press, 2014.

Larsen, Deena. “Better with the Purpose In: or, the Focus of Writing to Reach All of Your Audience”, Electronic Book Review, December 5, 2021, https://doi.org/10.7273/q3be-ve45.

Nelson, Graham. A Bill of Players’ Rights. 1993, https://groups.google.com/g/rec.arts.int-fiction/c/F_gosVUpdTM.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Short, Emily. Emily Short’s Interactive Storytelling. 22 Nov. 2023, https://emshort.blog/.

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