Welcome, Peter Pears! 
Itās nice to see you on this forum.
Wow! That looks like a big project. Iām curious: did you already manage to reach the āBā letter 
?
Iām currently on āDā - āDayInTheLifeOfATupperwareSalesmanA.tzxā. 
I also played the new game āBackupā because, well, itās B, and I already did B, so it superceded the Ds. Iām going for filename, BTW, not game name.
Note I didnāt saying Iām ācompleting them allā. Some games are just too bad, or annoyed me too much. I try them all. I play further on the ones I like best. I may be obsessive, but Iām not a masochist. And before you ask, yes, I get to complete a fair share of them. 
But curiously, I tend to leave most AGT, DOS, ADRIFT and Spectrum games unfinished. Draw your own conclusions.
Also, Iām looking forward to playing Trinity, but as you can guess, Iāve a lot to cover until then. Iām closer to Dungeon and Deadline.
Hello everyone!
Iāve been semi-active on the forum recently, but been hesitant to take the plunge as it were and introduce myself formally. The solution, I guess, is to cut back on the formality. So, hi. My name is Bjƶrn, Iām 29 years old, and Iām from Sweden, just as my location text subtly infers. Until quite recently I managed to remain largely unfamiliar with IF games; I was twelve or so when I tried Hitchhikerās Guide, Planetfall and Zork II, and the Infocom parser didnāt quite work for me back then (and still doesnāt, but thatās a different kettle of fish entire). But, being an avid RPG aficionado, Iāve always regarded story as being more important than visuals.
Iām a jack of many trades and have mastered few; I love the English language; Iām decently familiar with the most common forms programming - C++, PhP, JavaScript, Pascal, various Basic dialects, and HTML, which apparently does count if youāre writing a job application. While I already know a few novice tricks in I7 and I6, Iām in the process of broadening my knowledge, and will also be checking out TADS 3 as well (itās only fair, after all).
As a poster, I try to do my best to contribute usefully and maintain a decent content-to-noise ratio. I also believe itās necessary to express the occasional bit of humour - unfortunately, mine is of the freeze-dried variety (I bought British quips on discount and had them shipped over to Sweden). Therefore, if something I said makes no apparent sense, the reason is probably my staunch belief in my own funniness.
I do sometimes tend to harp on about a few subjects. One of these (when discussing IF writing) is general solutions contra specific ones; while coding I tend to jump through an amazing array of contortions just to avoid writing the āinstead of taking the cookie, [ā¦]instead of taking the chocolate cookie, [ā¦] instead of taking the ham, [ā¦ et cetera ad nauseam]ā sort of code. This is deliberate, and comes from seeing far too many (large and time-consuming) projects grow completely incomprehensible due to that tiny bug you missed in one snippet of otherwise redundant code.
Um. Soā¦ yeah. Thatās me. Hi.
shuffles off
hey Bjƶrn, welcome to the forum. I admit all those āinsteadsā bug me too a lot of the time. Sometimes itās good to do whatās fast though, especially when writing IF ā otherwise you may never finish it!
Oliver here: Iāve technically been playing interactive fiction since 2001 or thereabouts, but have started playingāand harboring thoughts of authoringāonly recently. Glad to be here! 
Iām a 25 year old NYC exile living in Central NJ. My favorite fiction authors include Jorge Luis Borges, Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Vernor Vinge, and Umberto Eco.
Recently, Iāve been enthusiastic about trying to author IF. Since I was young, I wanted to be a fiction author, among other things. The concept of story has regained some importance in my life recently, so I hope to find the right spirit soon. I do like puzzles (studied math & computer science when I was in school) but Iām most strongly drawn to the imaginative, storytelling side of IF. I also do some programming (and get paid for it occasionally), so IF seems like a natural meeting place.
Looking forward to learning from all of you!
Welcome to the forum, Oliver!
Browsing over these testimonials it becomes apparent why IF is a small niche: most want to author IF, not play (or pay for) it. Possibly the only literary/game genre with more avid authors than readers/players. 
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Nah. Horror fiction is in about the same situation.
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Thanks!
You probably get a strong selection effect if you look to these forums to get an idea about the audience or reach of IF. I didnāt know it existed until I was interested enough to scrounge around for a whileābasically until I wanted to do more than just play.
I doubt that the set of authors is larger than the set of playersāmost authors Iāve seen review and therefore play many more games than they create. And Iām sure there are many more āaspiringā (read: wannabe) authors like me than actual authors.
But the community is rather tight isnāt it? The structure reminds me somewhat of certain communities of software developers in the open source world. The nice part is the distance from reader to author is very close. The downside is the rest of the world missing out on a great experience!
My guess is that greatly expanding the audience would require some serious, coordinated effort to reach outside the community. Iām interested to see what panels and screening at PAX East does. And yet I think any piece of IF that succeeds for a larger market will probably be different from IF as itās put together (and enjoyed by us) at this moment.
Anyhow, donāt want to push this too OT. Thanks for the welcomes!
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guess so. 
olimay, it was a joke with a tiny bit of truth. and yeah, IF for the masses would be pretty different: graphics instead of text, contextual button pressing instead of text input and story involving either zombies or aliens ready to be blasted away.
I knew it was a joke, but I bit anyway (bullets are tasty and full of nutritious lead!)
I do see some opportunities in reading devices, particularly if more come out that are based on platforms like Android. Mobile phones are another possibility. I imagine something that includes graphics for illustration but still most closely resembles an interactive storybook. The level of quality and coordination and attention to elegance of design (in all aspects) would just need to be on a different scale. And if successful, itād probably have to people who arenāt the usual gamer type. Iām thinking of broad audience of games like Myst (when it first game out) and even The Sims.
Vague, aimless dreaming on my part, not a business plan. Best for another thread.
Hello, just joined, so Iām introducing myself. Just call me Draco. Iām a female college student, and I love to write. This is really my first time getting involved with interactive fiction in any way. A friend of mine made a game in Inform on a whim, and when I asked her about it, she told me what program she was using, and so now Iām giving it a try. I joined here 'cause while I love writing, Iām not so hot at programming, though I have some experience with it, and I could use some help at figuring stuff out. Well, I have plenty of ideas Iād like to create, so Iāll do my best!
Hey, Draco, welcome. Best thing is learning by example. If youāre using Inform 7, it does indeed come with plenty of good examples. The natural language subset it uses may also help you shred that fear of programming.
Hi, Iām Matt Weiner (matt w for short, over on the left), and I just joined because, well, I like to talk about IF. And Iām thinking about writing some, if I ever make the time. Sometimes I post reviews and other stuff about IF at saucersofmud.wordpress.com, as well as other nonsense (but thereās a tag for IF entries, so you should be able to filter that out). Iām a philosophy professor at the University of Vermont, so my interests may tend more toward the theoretical side of things.
Hi Matt! Welcome to the forum!
Hey everyone. I sadly just discovered this āintroducing ourselvesā thread.
My name is Travis, and Iām a writer living in Los Angeles. No, Iām not famous nor am I the guy who created Mad Men (thatās Matt Weinerā¦ is it the same Matt Weiner on this board? Who can say?).
Iāve been following the IF community since 1997. I had just moved to LA and learned that the Infocom Masterpieces disc was on sale for $20. There was only one copy available at an EB Games and I hopped on the highway at night to go get it. Being new to the city I ended up getting totally lost. But - after making it back four hours later - I was able to dive in to some great old text adventures. The competition games on the disk lead me to learn about the IF community, which lead me to failing a writing class because I couldnāt stop playing Graham Nelsonās Jigsaw. Iām a sucker for time travel and that one grabbed me.
Iāve not written a game, but I toy with the idea. Iāve dabbled in TADS and Inform 6 and now Inform 7. But being self-employed and a father, time isnāt abundant. Lately Iāve decided to get a bit more active in the community. Since itās been going strong for the 13 years Iāve been following it - I figure itās going to be around a while. And the events surrounding PAX East and Get Lamp have been pretty inspiring.
Iāve always been fascinated by the possibilities of the medium, and there have been moments in IF games that have hit me in a way that almost no other medium ever has. So I look forward to talking about IF, playing IF, maybe even writing a little - and just doing what is we all do.
Anyway - thatās my story.
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So, I guess this is where all the cool kids hang out these days?
āAaron Reed
Well, thereās only so many troll-jacked posts on RAIF you can read before running for the hills.
Which at the moment, makes this The IF Hills.
(which incidentally would be the worst rated MTV reality series of all timeā¦)
I can!
(whistles tunelessly)
(twiddles thumbs)
(looks innocent)
ā¦OK, no Iām not, though I understand that that guy did major in philosophy among other things.
Greetings. Iām Biophysicist. Iām a pretty good programmer, which is why I got into IF - I even wrote my own IF language before discovering Inform 7. (Itās been lost, along with many other things, to a virus that forced me to format my hard drive. No big loss, though - it was very early in the development process when I lost it.) Iām horrible at puzzle design, though, which is my biggest weakness: I can write very complicated puzzles, but actually making them interesting is a challenge, to say the least. My other biggest weakness is actually finishing anything: Iāve started at least twelve IF projects, many StarCraft projects, three standalone RTS games, and two browser-based games, in addition to the above-mentioned IF language, and finished none of them.
Some random facts about myself, some of which I bring up because they /will/ affect how people deal with me on these forums, and some which I bring up for no good reason:
-Iām psychotic. I have hallucinations and get very angry randomly.
-I have a learning disability, which makes it nearly impossible for me to understand things unless I develop them myself.
-I have memory and processing issues, which frequently cause me to forget things, or misremember them. This, combined with the above two issues, means that Iām usually very hard to get along with.
-Iām 16.
-I am male.
-I am bisexual, though I refuse to accept this as immutable.
-I have a very weird sense of humor, possibly related to my psychosis.
-You may find me moping or trolling about personal issues. When this happens, it is usually best to ignore me, or a flame war will start.
-I am something of a Christian zealot.
So yah. Thatās me. Doacks.