I never encountered it, but that doesn’t mean much. A lot was before my time.
Hi, I’m new here…my nickname online and off is Sparky, so call me that please. I first started using my real-life nick online when I got harassed and stalked because people knew I was female. That stopped when I started going by Sparky, then and now people tend to think I’m a teenaged boy. 
But I’m actually a 33 year old woman. I have never been part of or followed any sort of “IF community” so I don’t really know any of the websites or influential persons. I have asked a few questions on the newsgroup but that’s it. Anyways my brother and I grew up on the Infocom games, and we always wanted to write IFs together, but never did it (he’s into computer programming and I have a degree in Creative Writing from USC). I finally authored my first IF in 2006, and finished another short one this year. I’m currently working on a longer one, that my brother helped with. (And I will be asking for help on here very soon I think, lol.) So far my games have been based on cartoons - my first is a She-Ra game, and the last one and the one I’m doing now are for Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends. I run the largest fansite for Foster’s home (at fosters-home.com) so I thought I’d write some games for my site. However what I have discovered is even the older fans, who might appreciate IFs more than the youngin’s who won’t touch a homebrew game if it isn’t an mmorpg, don’t give a damn. Same for my She-Ra game, really. So no one ever plays my games and I never get any feedback. 
I do plan on, once my current game is done, to work on something not based on something copyrighted, so I can hopefully do something more with it, at least get the IF community to play it…I’ll never know if I’m any good or improving until I can get someone to play my games after all.
Welcome to the forum Sparky. Sometimes it seems like you have to look hard to find people who like playing IF! . However at other times I’m surprised by the positive reception it gets in pretty mainstream places. So I think there’s still hope.
Hello intfiction.org!
I’m Mark, though online and to most friends I’m known as Ragz. I come from the southwest of England. I’m 18 and in my third year college studying some filler (but still interesting) subjects before I go on to a Computer Science course at the University of Bristol.
I don’t really have a history of interactive fiction. I recall seeing my brother playing one, when I was young, and wanting to do so too, but at that age I found it too difficult to understand. I did, however, get interested in adventure games. I played King’s Quest 7, Broken Swords 1 & 2 many times over, and utterly failed to get anywhere in The Last Express. Quite recently I picked up Myst and started playing, and went on to try out most of the series. From there I played two series of flash games, Submachine and Daymare which inspired me to want to make my own adventure game. At some point after this I got into a discussion about text based games and decided that Interactive Fiction might be a more interesting form to make my daymare/myst inspired game.
I’m currently working on that game now, in Inform 7. It’s a small starting chapter of a bigger idea I haven’t fully worked out. I’m not actually very good at English, as may be apparent. I failed both English Language and Literature at GCSE and had to take a condensed year-long course of GCSE at college. I passed that with a C grade. My prose may not be up to standard, but I hope with enough constant revision I’ll be alright. Maybe I’ll pick up some of the skills from this forum and other IF too .
I came here from the Brass Lantern, looking for a community for interactive fiction that I could try and join in with. I find Mailing lists and MUD a bit difficult to grasp, I have more experience using forums.
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Welcome to the forum, Ragzouken, and good luck for your game! 
You can always team up with someone else Ragz. I have a degree in English but am pokey at doing all the coding myself, for example.
Hello to you too, Mark! And welcome …
If you haven’t discovered it already, there is also a newsgroup for IF authors called rec.arts.int-fiction; the archives are here:
ifwiki.org/index.php/Past_raif_topics
… and a collection of quotes from past IF competition reviews here (aimed at future IF authors):
jacl.game-host.org:8080/dfisher/ifgems/gems.html
David Fisher
I guess I’ll do this now.
My nick online and off is Shae. I’m female, 40 yrs old, living in rural Southeastern Indiana, USA after moving from Indianapolis earlier this year.
I played the Scott Adams games when I was a kid and have enjoyed IF ever since, though I am not as experienced a player as many here. I just finished a computer science degree and have worked for years as a web developer.
I created my first IF game in December with copious amounts of help from the people on this forum, in the Inform 7 section. While I think I did alright, it’s probably too embarrassing to share. I hope to write another soon that avoids the newbie pitfalls I fell into with the first, and I’m sure that one will be brilliant. 
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Hi Shae 
I actually know a guy named Shae Erisson, no joke. He got his legal name changed from something a lot more mundane.
Hey there, everybody.
My name is Imortis Inglorian. Long time fan of IF games and have tried many of the IF authoring systems. Inform 6 & 7, TADS 2 & 3, Alan 3, Adrift, RAGS, Quest, and even tried to develop my own once (I’m a programmer by trade). I have never released anything because I don’t have the writing skill I feel I need.
I look forward to getting help, and helping out here on these forums.
I don’t really want to introduce the real me, so I’ll just introduce my online persona.
Online:
I am Schilcote, a twenty-trillion year old supercomputer built by an unknown race. I fly around in a spaceship shaped like a Chevrolet truck, which is larger on the inside than the outside. My interests are shooting sparks, emmiting blue smoke, and building empires.
Hello. My name is Kenneth. I am interested in IF (Just finished Violet and Everybody Dies), and am wanting to start trying to make my own.
Please to meet you all!
Hello,
I also don’t want to introduce my real self. So far all which is known about me is my real name, my age (32) and that I’m the programmer of the Node-X system for CYOA/multiple-choice IF which is permanently under development since 2007. I like IF and classic point&click adventure games (e.g. Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion 1-2, Monkey Island series), but I’m also a huge fan of 3D-shooters with a rich collection of original titles from classic DOOM to F.E.A.R. 2 - Project Origin. That’s it.
Emilian
Hello Sailor.
The long and short of it is I’d found inform7 last week, kinda been fiddling around there. been interested in IF since middle school (right before the big upgrade in '96-'97 several of our computers had the DOS versions of the zork trilogy). Looked, with little success, for AGT due to not knowing of anything else. Forgot about IF games for a long while, instead focused on MU* games to get my text fix. I forget what got my attention centered on inform, probably a random wiki crawl. Anyway, as I’ve found no other forum on the matter of text gaming (I’m not terribly comfortable with news groups for some reason) here I am.
Welcome to the forums Jeric. If you haven’t already, check out the google groups interface for Usenet, it’s not that much different from reading a forum and is an accessible way of reading rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction (and a lot of other newsgroups of course).
Also, when you say no other forums on text gaming, do you mean IF specifically or text gaming in general?
Well mainly IF, but it seems that most of my googling showed specific topics rather than whole forums dedicated to the problems and perks of IF writing.
Hello, I’m Terry. It’s a real pleasure to find a dedicated IF forum, I feel at home here already. I much prefer a forum format to Usenet and newsgroups, nothing against rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction, I guess it’s just me. It would be useful to know the places online to visit to keep up with what’s going on in IF…
suggestions welcome!
A bit about me. I’ve been interested in IF (text adventures back in the day!) since the early 80’s, I used to meet up with other computer adventure game enthusiasts playing what were then cutting edge text games, we often ended up play testing the games. Playing a text adventure with a group of friends in teams for an evening of friendly competition was highly entertaining and so much fun! Does group playing / team competitions still go on these days or is IF only a single player solitary pursuit?
I’m currently writing my first game using Inform 7, I started it a couple of years ago but had to put it on hold partly due to a lack of free time but mainly due to finding the manual hard to get to grips with. As luck would have it, just when I was back itching to get writing I came across Jim Aikin’s Inform 7 Handbook, a godsend! For anyone wanting to get writing their first game it can’t be recommended highly enough.
That’s it, enough about me, I’m off to get back to writing my game!
Hello Terry,
If you know anything about muds, there’s one dedicated to IF here. Primarily used as a chat server for IF enthusiasts, there’s a bot on the site called Floyd which allows people on the server to play IF games collectively. There is a group called ClubFloyd which gets together weekly to do just that. Here’s a recent thread on raif discussing a change in meeting times. Also, here’s a link to the IFWiki entry about IfMUD and one about ClubFloyd here. Welcome to the community!
Welcome!
IFDB is a database of information on IF games - the most comprehensive we have. Handy for download links and reviews. It aims to help people find new games that they’ll like, so it also has recommended lists, polls, and “If you liked this game…” links. Anyone with an account can add or edit entries, so if you notice a game is missing or has incorrect or incomplete information, please join up and help keep things up to date!
IFWiki aims to be a sort of Wikipedia of IF-related stuff. It’s got information on people, authoring systems, games, competitions past and present… Also check out the lists of craft and theory articles and the links to old discussions on r.a.i-f and r.g.i-f.
Planet IF is a blog aggregator for various IF-related blogs. You can subscribe to it directly, or just poke through the list of blogs on the sidebar.
Emily Short’s website is full of good stuff: as well as her blog, it has links to articles she’s written on the craft of IF and “making of” articles for some of her games.
Brass Lantern has a Twitter feed with IF and adventure game-related news. It also has articles on these topics and reviews of various games.
There’s a lot of other stuff out there, and probably other people will chime in with suggestions, but I hope that will give you somewhere to start.
ClubFloyd meets once a week on IFmud to play a game cooperatively. I don’t know of any competitive play, though.
You might also be interested in Guncho, which is an Inform 7-based system for creating multiplayer IF. Not much has been done with it since its release, but hopefully GunchoComp will bring some games out.
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Welcome to the forum, ShaeSays, ImortisInglorian, Schilcote, Superstar Kenneth, EK_Dev, Jeric, and Terry!
Emerald’s links are very good; I’d like to add the SPAG webzine.
For competitive play in real life, if you’re in the UK (or if you’re willing to travel there just for IF!), there’s the Adventure Convention once a year, with the Megapoints competition. It seems to be rather about “old-school” puzzle games, though – but I guess it’s appropriate for a competition for players!