As per usual, I’m a little behind everyone else, but, I wanted to make sure I devoted a blog entry to Dennis Jerz‘s excellent “Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther’s Original ‘Adventure’ in Code and in Kentucky”, recently published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, v1n2.

How can a paper about the first text adventure game (written somewhere in the range of 1974-1976) still be groundbreaking? Well, as Jerz showed, via a multi-methodological approach looking at the game’s original source code (long thought lost and recently recovered), along with interviews with the author’s family, and a first-hand exploration of the cave(s) that the original “Colossal Cave” game (a.k.a. Adventure or ADVENT) was based upon. To wit:

This is sure to be a classic in interactive fiction (IF) research, and is one of the best analyses and histories of any genre of game I’ve ever seen. Thanks, Dr. Jerz, for reminding me why I love studying this stuff. Please note the link to his blog in the first paragraph — it’s highly recommended for those interested in interactive fiction and literacy.

Oh, and Jerz is also the author of interactive fiction himself. He wrote “Fine Tuned“, a game which Emily Short described as “A light-hearted melodrama set ca. 1910 about a heroic manly autoist, his sidekick, and a beautiful young opera singer.” I haven’t tried it yet, but just downloaded it and might give it a whirl soon.

There seems to be a slow bubbling resurgence in academic interest in interactive fiction these days, and I’m finding myself increasingly interested in the literacy and learning implications of this medium. First of all, entirely text-based games are holding a new allure for those interested in creating interactive reading experiences. But, most importantly, in the day and age of large development teams and larger development times for videogames, a free, easy-to-use, and powerful programming environment such as Inform 7 is appealing for those of us who’d like to experiment a little.

I’m working this term (in a course taught by Kurt Squire) on developing a small IF piece (in Inform 7) which I’d like to use to foster critical literacy skills in teenagers — the idea being that IF allows us to play off of the ambiguity of text itself (moreso than graphical games), and might that ambiguity be used to help us understand the reasons why different people interpret common texts differently?

I don’t want to say too much about a game that I’ve barely developed just yet, but I’m angling to have the game written by late October, and actually run it in a classroom (or afterschool) exercise with kids before Thanksgiving. Text-based games don’t seem too hard a sell for teachers and school administrations (as the link to reading and literacy seems obvious), but will kids react well to these games now? Part of me thinks they’ll react negatively (e.g., “Aww, you mean I gotta READ?”), but part of me is also hopeful that the “Harry Potter effect” might entice some kids to actually get engaged in a text-based gaming experience — after all, it’s been two decades since this was a viable commercial game genre, perhaps it will look new and interesting again.

We’ll see, I guess. I’ll update more as my game develops.