Now that we’ve settled this question, who wants to discuss whether video games are art? 
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Isn’t art graphics or can it be text?
Discussing this today has made me realize that when people go about attempting to grandly define the genre of “interactive fiction” we tend to focus on what the game displays to the player. What I’ve realized is the solution is the other way around:
How does the player interact with the game?
(This is all my potentially malleable opinion, not a decree, YMMV of course)
For a work to qualify for the genre of IF, the player should be controlling the game primarily via text:
- Typing a command at a prompt
- Selecting from a list of one or more choices expressed via text
Inclusively, the game-world should also be described in a major capacity via text.
- Does the player need to control an on-screen avatar? If so, this is not IF.
- Does the player view the world from a controllable first-person perspective using a gamepad, joystick, or keyboard controls that are button-presses (not typing words)? If so, this is not IF.
And that…kind of takes care of it from what I can consider.
Additionally:
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Can the game be read to someone in most of its entirety and played over the phone or with a non-sighted individual without sacrificing any of the plot or primary gameplay? (Any visual or audio elements are not necessary to understand or play the game, and not just described by the reader - the game needs to furnish text narration) If yes, it is IF.
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I will maintain that Visual Novels are a very specialized form of IF, often with very customized controls.
Since I'm in the middle of watching a video of the Danganronpa VN and its sequel...
I realize those games include a 3D-navigable space in the first, and moving an avatar in the second. However both of these modes of navigation boil down to very elaborate menus, and navigation is skippable via map screens for fast travel which is also a choice menu. A clickable map doesn’t necessarily disqualify something from being IF, and Visual Novels include an enormous amount of text, almost to the point that the graphics may be completely superfluous, and most action is narrated instead of implicitly shown in the visuals. Good god, the game never just shows a door opening; there’s always eight screens of “I reached for the handle and turned it…the door clicked…then it creaked open…I looked through the door to see what was behind it, full of expectation…and I slowly walked through the door…” 
(This series also contains graphical mini games but the primary mode of interaction is selecting words on the screen, even in the non-stop debate segments. Even though the text is moving and potentially evading the player selecting it on a moderate timer, the primary interaction is still selecting choices made from text.
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- Many other genres of games can include elements of IF such as dialog trees, meaningful choices, and plot branching, but that alone does not categorize them strictly in the IF genre.
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VNs are tough because not all of them involve choices of any kind. There are some that fall under the “kinetic novel” form of VNs which means it’s like 30 hours of reading without any user input.
It’s like saying CYOAs are interactive fiction… but what happens if you remove the choices? It’s just straight fiction, right? That’s why I have a difficult time choosing the correct verb for VNs. Am I reading it or playing it? I tend to flip flop back and forth between the two for no real reason.
Removing the choices gives you a non-interactive story, especially if you’re just clicking “continue” or “next page.”
Including choices within the text that aren’t labeled as such, but boil down to “next page” or just display additional non-critical text may put a work into the “dynamic fiction” category, which is a specialized type of IF which removes most player-agency for narrative pacing but is still interactive (if only slightly) in some capacity. I can understand the argument that removing interactivity from interactive fiction seems counterproductive, but what other genre can they be put into? Especially when they frequently rely on text-styling or other tricks that don’t appear in static fiction like cycling choices the player can click on but don’t significantly alter the plot.
Take a look at Babyface from last year’s IFComp, which is completely linear, but the player may select choices that advance the plot in slightly different order, and also involves interacting with photographs.
I’d agree that VNs fall into “kinetic novel” and “interactive fiction” flavors. Some VNs involve maintaining a complicated schedule and relationships that are the bulk of the plot branching.
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Easy.
Video games are art as much as anything else is art.
Sculpture, painting, music, dancing, screeching at random passerbys on a street corner…you know, the classics.
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Today I learned: I become an artist when I’m drunk.
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This had been discussed to death back in the day. I won’t jump into the rabbit hole and scratch up old wounds here. To me personally “text adventure” is a marketing term that goes well when targeting the retro scene. As the person who created two of the most renowned text based adventure games for 8-bit and 16-bit systems in recent years, I can say: it does work, regardless whether the hype surrounding my games is justified.
Why the whole discussion resurfaced straight from 1988 is because there are two scenes who developed differently. There is the retro scene, which grew very strong in recent years, as the download numbers for Hibernated (+5.300) and Rabenstein (+7.500) prove. And then there is the IF scene, who went threw different states of evolution, which is amazing, since the 90s. The problem with the retro scene is that it’s a lot about reliving childhood memories or to even build upon that memories. So the mindset somewhat was frozen in time which results in these old discussions reappearing out of nowhere.
The good news is there are efforts to build bridges, no matter if that happens intentionally. Just have a look at @fredrik and his projects Ozmoo and PunyInform, which brings back decent libraries and interpreters back to old systems. Or @mulehollandaise, who with Tristam Island now created the first game which appeals to both retro and IF scene. I am working on new stuff as well, as you know.
I think instead of looking back and disscet this topic again and again and again, we should look forward to the bright future ahead.
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Right on!
Meaning comes not only from definition but through usage, certainly with the passage of time. Most of us know pretty much what is being discussed when talking about IF, text-adventures, CYOA,… If there’s a misunderstanding, it’s easily clarified in a few extra descriptive words.
Me personally, I intuitively use “IF” as the overarching game-type and “text-adventure” as the more puzzly/exploratory subset of those games. Come to think of it, I also use “IF” as a term for the more narrative literary games. And for choice-games. And “text-adventure” might be a paper-and-ink CYOA-book. And so on and so forth…
It seems it is now time for some light reading to shed some light on matters. Philosophische Untersuchungen by Wittgenstein looks like a good place to start.
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The difference between a text adventure player and an interactive fiction player is that a text adventure player will ruin a piece of interactive fiction by looking under the bed. 
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I am precisely that text-adventure player. I have also been found looking behind the tree.
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No rug is safe from my prying eyes.
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8bitAG, congratulations on writing the greatest sentence ever posted on the Internet!
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I get that reference!
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gives a high-five to the Cap’n Not flying monkeys, but it’ll do.
I assume we’re all thinking of the same classic piece of IF, right? 9:05. Wow, that was a shocker! It so elegantly demonstrated the difference between playing along with the story and playing to exhaustively succeed at a game.