Continuing the discussion about beginner games from Counterfeit Monkey for Beginners and in turn from Upcoming 2024 IFDB Awards (held in 2025) (IFDB poll in response #24) — rather than asking people to opine in the abstract on what games they think are good for beginners, let’s find out objectively by asking the community that we have today what game got them into IF. I and @EJoyce have made claims, respectively here and here, to the effect that the games that have been objectively successful at getting beginners interested in IF have very little relation to our theories about what ought to be good for beginners. I want to gather data to test this.
There’s already First IF that you have ever played - an IFDB Poll, and it clearly supports our hypothesis. However, it was created ten years ago, so I anticipate objections that the responses are weighted toward the experiences of old-timers, many of whom aren’t still active, and no longer reflect what appeals to Kids These Days. So let’s get a new poll started to address that objection.
To further separate old-timers from more recent entrants, I propose creating three separate polls, with instructions to vote in only one of them depending on when you got into IF (not on the publication date of the game that got you into it). I think the natural cutoff dates are 1995 and 2013. 1995 is the year of the first IFComp and roughly separates the commercial era from the hobbyist era. I’d entertain arguments for pushing this back to 1993 (the year Curses was published). 2013 roughly marks the ascendancy of choice-based games.
Proposed wording:
What game first got you interested in interactive fiction? This may, or may not, be the first IF game you ever played. Respond to this poll only if you first played the game (in 1994 or earlier | between 1995 and 2012 | in 2013 or later). Otherwise, vote in (link) or (link) instead. Select which poll to vote in based on when you played the game you’re voting for, not on when the game was first published.
I was going through the Infocom classics for historical research purposes, so my answers will be relegated to modern games:
Toby’s Nose introduced me to the possibilities of modern parser games. I liked the ability to imagine the world through smell and text. It was groundbreaking to see how you can do so much with so little through text input, and I wanted more.
With Those We Love Alive got me into hypertext fiction and developing IF. Porpentine’s minimalist yet evocative writing was so enchanting, and because she did so little to achieve that, I wanted to try it out.
The first text-only computer game I ever tried was a short, simple, unassuming little choice game that someone I knew had made in BASIC. It wouldn’t be on IFDB, because it was never published. I don’t know if I even knew there had been a commercial scene. (It’s very possible I’d read some Choose Your Own Adventure books, though.)
I had played games with graphics before. A huge part of the appeal of this game was that someone I knew had made it, and that now someone was going to show me how to make one, too!
In 2009 it would have been controversial to refer to the neopets games as IF but according to today’s standards I don’t see why it should be controversial at all. You should create an IFDB entry and then vote for it in the poll when I post it later today! Or just vote for 9:05 if you don’t feel like bothering.
I’d say vote in one or the other and take your best guess. That there’s a hard date cutoff between one poll and the other is an artifact of trying to simplify an underlying reality that doesn’t work that way. I picked two years in which the scene was changing more quickly than usual, but it’s not as if something magic happened at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2013.
I’d love to participate, but, uhm… am I supposed to drop my answers here? From the original post I expected to vote/contribute on an IFDB poll, but I’ve been checking IFDB for 'New Polls" and I don’t see anything there.
I can understand the reason for splitting chronologically. But it feels somewhat complicated for me as someone going to vote into the poll. It will probably work out fine in the end and all. But just putting that thought out there.
And though I think we’re meant to vote in the final polls not here, my answer will be the first IF game I ever played in 1980, Colossal Cave. An oldie but a goodie!
Agree that “what would be a good beginner game” and “what games get people into IF” are different questions. IMO an important consideration is the starting point — how did the person hear about / decide to get into IF in the first place? Did they play Infocom games as a kid and now want to explore the modern scene? Big fan of visual novels? Fan of exploration/puzzle games in general? Are people deliberately searching for recommended-for-beginners game lists, or is there a specific game or subgenre that they’re interested in?
The game that got me into IF was Stay? by E. Jade Lomax, it was also the first IF game I played. I’m definitely on the younger end of this forum and was only vaguely aware of IF as a concept before then, but I was a fan of the author’s other writing, so when they announced they wrote a free game I was willing to give it a try. I was hooked by just, the concept of gorgeous prose in combination with careful puzzle-solving, the surprised delight as new options kept popping up as I gained more information. (mild spoilers) Legit cackled out loud when I got the option to ignore the main plot and fuck off into the wilderness for a while.
Recently I recommended Cannery Vale to an online friend who likes horror/mystery and they really enjoyed it. They’re currently playing Anchorhead. I got a cousin interested in IF because they love murder mystery games and I mentioned there’s many excellent and free ones in the IF space.