This is very relatable. But what about the Towers of Hanoi puzzle in Z0? Is that then not IF?
Texture would like a word 
(/jk I know you drag words, and it’s like selecting it)
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There are some fascinating points of view in this thread. I also found that people get upset over talk about definitions.
So, without making any specific definitions, I’d like to suggest two things that might be true even with fuzzy definitions.
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Not all IF are games.
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IF involves some sort of narrative (not necessarily text based).
I’m interested to see if people agree.
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Yeah, I agree with that.
I guess I think that there are 2 parts to any “game”-- the author output and the player input. If either of these is primarily textual and there’s some sort of narrative, then I think it counts as IF. Take Gent Stickman, for example. It was a parser game, but all the author output was graphical. Yet it was IF because of the standard typed player input. I don’t even think it was an edge case. For choice games, the player is just clicking as they might do in any graphical video game. Yet the author output is textual (mostly).
An edge case would be something like a graphical video game in which dialogue bubbles told a story.
Someone here once defined IF this way: if you remove the text elements, can you still play, understand, and enjoy the game as the author intended? If not, it’s IF.
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‘>put piece in puzzle’
‘Which piece do you mean, the red piece or the blue piece or the green piece?’
‘>red piece’
‘You put the red piece in the puzzle. A hollow voice rings out, “You must complete the puzzle to stand a chance!”’
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Moon Logic
A literal mess by Onno Brouwer
:
Childcare
You see a puzzle on the table. The puzzle is missing three pieces.
> i
You carry a red square, a green circle, and a blue triangle.
> put piece in puzzle
Which piece do you mean, the red square, the green circle, or the blue triangle?
> red square
Which hole do you mean, the square hole, the circle hole, or the triangle hole?
> square hole
You cannot fit a red circle into the square hole!
> huh WTF
That's not a verb I recognise.
> i
I apologize. I should stop listening to ChatGPT.
You carry a red circle, a green triangle, and a blue square.
> put red circle in circle hole
There is no hole.
> AAAAAAAAAAAA
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Yes, i like to add graphics to my IF, but I also do not want to reduce the text, because i feel that the text is the main driver of the “narrative”. Now, of course, there can be other ways to deliver the narrative, such as voice, but i feel that text delivers the narrative very well.
It’s why I don’t want to be reduced to speech bubbles because that’s suddenly a different kind of game. This isn’t the thread for this, but it’s also why I’ve been struggling with the thing I call “the text and picture problem”. Which is how to best use available space for both text and pictures with the least compromise. A lot of graphical games wind up with a, somewhat small, text output box, that contains maybe three lines of 8 words. I find this too small to properly deliver a narrative without the player having to click “more” over and over like a monkey.
Anyway;
So my main point on this thread is considering what is necessary for IF rather than what is sufficient. ie what are the salient properties of IF rather than what exactly characterises it.
Interaction is obviously one such property, and I do think there must be some kind of narrative delivered too.
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I love Chapbook! I’ve started several stories in it and it meets most of my needs for media with great audio controls. If it had modal window pop-ups, I’d put a ring on it. Chris Klimas mentioned either in the docs or a blog about it that it was intended as a happy medium for IF authors who are text-focused rather than text-effects focused where Harlowe’s default presentation isn’t as attractive for pure text.
I’d personally classify the later experimental Infocom games as “IF with extra features” or “mini games”.
I apologize for suggesting people get “upset over talk about definitions” since I come at this with the history from a moderation perspective. It’s not definitions per se that are the problem, it’s specifically in our context of IF community when people use those definitions to pigeonhole or stereotype specific game types and by extension people or groups and then want to use those in an exclusionary manner.
It’s difficult to pin down because subjective definitions of game get even wilder, and “game” is sometimes used as a reductive catch-all term for anything interactive that people “do” on a computer that isn’t “work”.
I was frequently frustrated when my mom would complain about all the time I spent “playing on my computer” when a large bulk of it included working with her insurance, ordering groceries, banking, doing taxes, etc…that wasn’t just play.
I try in most cases to avoid “game” if possible in reference to IF and use “narrative” instead. I also tend to prefer you “read” IF rather than “play” it in most cases. Again difficult since Inform 7 uses the term “player” specifically even in a narrative piece some might not call a ‘game’.
It’s like people who argue you aren’t “reading” if you’re listening to an audio book. (The book is still being read, the delivery mechanism is different but the experience is still mostly 1:1 as when you read the text yourself - of course disregarding that some audio books have readers who act…)
It’s like the term “walking simulator”. I would choose something like “museum narrative” which could apply to IF also - you walk around freely (is walking interaction if you don’t manipulate objects?) and you might push a button to hear audio about a diorama, but you’re not otherwise “interacting” with the dinosaurs in the tableau.
So here’s where we encounter the hair-splitting problems from which disagreements and fights can arise in less coolheaded discussion:
- If you just mean “interactive fiction” lower case as a generic definition of “fictional thing that is interactive” sure.
- I disagree if you mean “IF” capitalized as an acronym in the sense of our community niche as my personal base definition is “all game elements and interactions involve words” (I say “words” rather than text to allow space to include text-to-speech accessibility or audio-choice narratives.) If by “text” you mean words relayed to the player, it makes a line for things like MYST which is narrative and includes spoken dialogue and occasional text on screen but is primarily physical in regard to navigation and environmental storytelling. As a specific detail: At one point in MYST you open a trunk and visibly see bones/human remains which allows the player to draw an inference about a character which is never conveyed via words (neither text nor spoken dialogue.) I categorize MYST as “interactive” and “fiction” and “narrative” but not “IF” (capital acronym as our local subgenre of experiences.) I counter that IF must involve text (whether printed or narrated by a reader since there does exist narrative that doesn’t involve words that someone (the player, a voice actor, or a computer) must read.)
I personally consider the “telephone test” or “remote audio podcast let’s-play test”: Could someone play this game if they cannot see the screen and it is read to them over the telephone verbatim without the reader going off-script to describe something happening that the author did not write.
Again, IF might include graphical features or mini games that are graphical not involving words, but to me that means it’s a hybrid-genre that doesn’t sit completely encompassed in the IF Venn-diagram.
So I guess my reductive definition is “words are necessary to play and experience the entire game”. Other games of course use words, but pure IF is words only (presentation, interaction) and may include media such as sound and images, but if that picture includes a clue that isn’t narrated, it’s not pure IF.
“Narration” also can be a slippery thing. A game can be “narrative” without “narration” or a “narrator” or a disconnected “parser voice” 
Wow, no wonder people fight about this!
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Stuff like this is actually one of the main reasons I’ve never played Zork Zero. Just doesn’t scratch my interests.
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But you have played Towers of Hanoi games. I have proof.
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I understand what you mean. I’m so glad I’d never actually TRIED to finish Towers of Hanoi, nor Peggle Solitaire, nor most of the other puzzles ever before playing Z0.
(I meant that genuinely, not sarcastically! It felt super fun and interesting (except Peggleboz) because they mostly new concepts. As in, I’d HEARD of all them, but never tried to solve them.) Which is likely why I gave it so high!
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I love the concept of Texture and the fact that selecting a choice to associate with potentially multiple phrases in the text increases agency and interaction possibilities in a fascinating way than does just clicking a choice. I wish there were more development options. I know Texture is intended to be simple to use and the “perform the action - now explain what should happen” - “code by playing” is phenomenal, but that simplicity makes me disappointed it can’t let me do more things that concept imaginatively inspires. And because every single interaction must be individually coded and set up, it doesn’t lend itself to bigger stories.
- It’s awesome that dragging an action to a noun can do a Harlowe-esque text replacement. I want to be able to also further interact with the replaced text.
- I would love to be able to tag a an action/phrase combo so it’s “standardized” - if you’ve got a generic “Examine Bob” response, I want to be able to add “examine bob” to a sort of glossary where whenever Bob is mentioned in the text, it automatically adds an “examine” draggable for it (and whatever else is set up to be examinable). Of course you might want to vary the response based on plot/location/demeanor but this is the kind of thing I’m used to that Texture doesn’t doesn’t do.
- I would like an option to set “standard” actions so you could basically set up the nine SCUMM verbs and they would appear on every passage whether they actually cause an interaction in that passage or not.
Essentially I would want to write a Texture story kind of in reverse of the way it’s done. You write the “glossary” of standard actions that will appear. Each action gets a list of words and their synonyms that can apply to it.
Then you write the story. In my glossary I have EXAMINE and TALK TO verbs, and they can both apply to “Bob” and each have a default response. When I mention Bob in the story, the game text-matches and knows what things can be done with that phrase and adds EXAMINE and TALK TO to the tray of draggable actions in any passage mentioning Bob. There can also be an override for places you don’t want it - say if a character mentions a “fishing bob” the author can disallow TALK TO in this instance since the tackle box equipment probably isn’t sentient.
In the glossary, I’ve also got an EXAMINE BOB page where I can call out passages by name or number where the EXAMINE BOB behavior is different from the default I’ve set up. Similarly TALK TO BOB lists different things he will say depending on whether he’s having lunch or snorkeling underwater at that point in the story.
Of course I’m not a programmer and that’s likely exceedingly difficult to make happen.
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Thanks for your explanations here. Interestingly, I meant the same thing about being “not necessarily text” in that it could be speech, but would always essentially be words.
So you said it a lot better. I think “words” is a good term here to use.
I can’t say I disagree with any of your points, although one curiosity is that I don’t really have any difference between “IF” and “interactive fiction”. So I guess I would accept Myst as an IF. But then we’re just talking different terminology rather than actual different things.
And “IF” means something much more specific than “interactive fiction” to many people.
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I’ve always generally defined Interactive Fiction as “playing a novel/shortstory” and a spiritual descendant of paoer-and-pencil role-playing games. CYOA is a fuzzy in-between, but I’d count it, particularly given that such books were published under the Infocom label.
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I really, really like this point and it makes me wonder: is awareness of other works considered IF, and a desire to be in dialogue with those works, what functionally defines IF? I tend to think yes, though I know this is more restrictive than some would like. It makes it harder to “claim” works such as Disco Elysium (though I actually don’t know enough about how it was created, maybe it was intended to be an IF work) and runs into the pitfalls of trying to infer author’s intent. But I think there’s a lot of juice to thinking about IF as defined by intertextuality. It’s definitely what makes me interested in it.
Editing to clarify: I don’t engage with the question of “what is IF?” because I have any desire to argue that some works shouldn’t be allowed in comps or forum discussions etc. Personally, I’ve only had to think about this at all when I started a postgraduate degree under a supervisor who (not wanting to give too many details here, but) does lots of work in the field of Game Studies. She’s been very resistant to me writing anything about IF because she equates it to “interactive narratives” which, as Game Studies people will be aware of with a heavy sigh, very much “aren’t games”. She also equates IF with other forms of electronic literature and, since I’m not in a Literature department, finds it too unrelated to other things that are researched in my department. All this to say that I do have a personal interest in this debate and it doesn’t come from wanting to gatekeep from within the IF community, which I believe is doing very well as it is, but wanting to talk about IF in other gatekept communities where definitions are important, specifically academia.
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Some twisted twigs for the fire:
I personally consider the term “IF” (capitalized and acronym’ed) as the name for our specific genre of games we discuss here - parser and choice text narratives that you control and experience via words - and I think some people just say IF when they mean “interactive fiction” as the sprawling encompassing definition of “fiction that is somehow interactive” which pretty much any genre of computer game with a story is.
For example a book of mysteries you read and try to solve before turning to the solution/explanation could definitely be considered an “interactive fiction”. You’re meant to “interact” with the “fiction” and draw conclusions and there’s technically a variable whether you’re right, wrong, or “close”.
I think games like Disco Elysium aren’t “IF” but are definitely works that contain both fiction and interactivity. The creators might not have intended to make IF - and likely might even avoid that term for marketing purposes - but you can tell they were influenced by classic IF and RPGs in the manner that the player can affect the story/plot/presentation based on their choices. It could even be in the “Choice Narrative With A Very Fancy Interface” pile that 80 Days resides on.
Another cool classification I like is ergodic literature - usually a printed book that requires some type of reader engagement other than reading and turning pages in order. The contemporary Uber-example is House of Leaves. Others are Christopher Manson’s Maze, and even something like Griffin and Sabine where every page has a physical envelope you remove a letter from and hold in your hands while you read. Also S which is a physical book stuffed with feelies and including a meta-narrative in the margins. In these cases, you definitely “interact” with the book, but it is not IF as the reader doesn’t actually affect nor change the story in the way that CYOA-branded physical books can.
Hilariously, there are similar edge-cases. Through the Looking Glass contains the “Jabberwocky” poem printed in reverse so you can hold it up to a mirror to read. That’s an ergodic interaction, but does that classify Carroll’s work as an “ergodic novel”? Works can draw elements from multiple genres. At least that’s what Beyoncé tells me!
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I think this distinction is useful. It’s worth pointing out that although Disco Elysium does have an IFDB entry, it only has 9 ratings, while the entry for Zozzled, the winner of the 2019 IFComp (the year Disco Elysium was released), has 45 ratings, depite being much, much, much less well-known as a game. Similarly, there is an entry for afternoon, a story - the most written-about work of electronic literature, and a commonly cited example of computer-based ergodic literature - but it has no ratings, whilst Photopia, which also fits the definition of ergodic literature but is very much recognised as an IF work, has 552 ratings.
I’m not sure what to get from all this, other than a too-broad or too-prescriptive definition of IF seems useless, and the community element seems much more important than anything else. The discussion then becomes about why certain works get broadly recognised as IF. And I do think it’s just because they are made with an awareness of other IF works, get submitted to comps or shared in forums etc. I’m actually not aware of any counter-examples to this - a work that was made and shared outside of IF circles first, but was still widely discussed in the community and not just as a “fringe case”. Can anyone think of any?
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I think this is right – IF is primarily a community of discourse, and everything else is secondary to that. Visual novel that gets entered into a Comp? There’ll be reviews and discussion (even if some of that is “I don’t really like visual novels, they’re too far afield from what I enjoy”). Commercial visual novel, or amateur one released independently? We won’t even know it exists.
Heck, even IF games that get released outside of one of the main competitions or jams often have a hard time getting noticed, because so many of the community norms of playing, reviewing, and discussing are based around event-based releases.
As for your last question, there are examples – like the Inkle games, or Her Story, or Fallen London, say – but it’s notable that very frequently the authors/designers of those games are folks who cut their teeth in IF and have therefore been grandfathered in.
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so you have a written thing and it’s not true. it didn’t happen. and when someone sees it they read it, but they also poke it in whatever way and it reacts. if you add more fiction to it, that’s fine. if you give it more ways to react that’s also good. anything else and uh oh buddy like if you wanted to add graphics i’d have to point out that graphics are neither fictional nor interactive in an inherent way. the more things you add that aren’t purely words or reactions the less it remains the thing it started out as, and now it might irritate people by not reacting enough to their pokes proportionate to the amount of graphics or UI or whatever nonsense. technically adding true words that really happened also waters it down but people don’t seem to mind this so much. so yeah in summary you have a morsel of IF as soon as you have a little bit of fiction that’s the slightest bit interactive, and then adding anything that’s not either fiction or interactivity gradually turns it into no-longer-IF, and thats when the screaming starts
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anything else and uh oh buddy like if you wanted to add graphics i’d have to point out that graphics are neither fictional nor interactive in an inherent way
What are video games if not interactive graphics (and for the most part fictional)?