The Leiden philosophy students have started a podcast where they interview a staff member about one of their hobbies. First episode is an interview with me about interactive fiction! I’m talking about IF in general, my own work Turandot, RPGs, and more. Could be of interest to people here. 
I’m agreeing very much with this insight you have; that the reader of a piece of IF is taking part in a performance. So even trivial choices have the effect of creating more immersion.
How nice to hear your dulcet tones Victor. Some interesting discussion here, and I particularly enjoyed the final question (personally, I’d be down the pub with Hume every time).
I really enjoyed listening to this. Thank you for sharing!
Now I know how to pronounce Gijsbers!
I really enjoyed the first quarter where you discussed interactive fiction and the differences between parser-based and choice-based IF and variations in choice-based styles of games (narrative vs CYOA).
The rest of it (opera, D&D, RPG and philosophy) are outside my areas of interest, but your description of the Turandot story makes me want to read it. Google, here I come.
Turandot was 2nd in the 2019 IFComp, so not only is it easy to find, but it comes highly recommended. (I haven’t played it yet, and should given that it’s sat on my hard drive).
I knew how to pronounce it, but only because I knew in advance how to pronounce Vincent Van Gogh!
It’s pretty amazing how well these students (and professors…) speak English. I’m European myself, and I like to think I speak English pretty well for a second language, but I still have much more of an accent than these people.