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Interactive Fiction (IF)—a digital form of non‐linear narrative writing—requires readers to respond, to make choices that shape their reading experience. I argue that such choices can be put to use in the classroom, helping teachers to facilitate metalinguistic talk. In this article, I offer a clear conceptualisation of metalinguistic talk, drawing upon existing research to create a useful framework comprised of four characteristics. Using this framework, and with reference to interview data and field notes, I analyse and consider two transcripts of classroom talk in order to explore the extent to which a particular work of IF enabled me to facilitate metalinguistic talk with a class of 16–17‐year‐old English Literature students. The lesson in question formed part of an action research project exploring the possibilities for IF in the secondary school English classroom. I argue that the choices contained within A Great Gatsby, a work of IF which I designed via a process of critical‐creative textual intervention and using Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as my source material, can help to scaffold metalinguistic talk—conversations about language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early in the history of the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a paradigm known as microworlds emerged in which researchers constructed computer simulations of aspects of the real world from which their nascent AI systems could learn. Although microworlds were ultimately abandoned, AI researchers have recently called for their return, this time borrowing from the literary genre of interactive fiction, whose forms and conventions they might use to represent the world in text for the purpose of teaching machines to speak. This confluence of literary form and scientific method invites a closer examination of the relationship between word and world in AI research. The author argues for a reading of microworlds research and of AI more broadly through the lens of literary realism and through the literary texts that comprise its data sets and from which researchers expect artificially intelligent machines to learn about the world. The question of what kind of knowledge literature represents lies at the heart of AI research and thus presents an opportunity for a deeper engagement between AI research and literary, game, and media studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studied the neoliberal ideas of choice and agency manifested in the structures of two interactive fiction or "choose-your-own-adventure" games, Choices: Stories you Play and Episode—Choose Your Story, and their free-to-play profit system to explore the hegemonic operation of neoliberalism and participatory resistances to it. Neoliberal choice was approached as a strategy that operates by encouraging an actualization of one's best self yet inscribing what it should entail. Despite the rhetoric of agency and fictitious simulation, the "best" choices and endings in the games were visible and accessible only with cultural, economic, and temporal capitals. "Right" choices required legitimate taste which needs savviness in dominant readings or time investment, and the "right est " choices required monetary investment. However, players' subversive choices such as intentionally choosing "(not) rightly" to pursue negotiated readings and collective participation hinted at the potential of tactical practices in creating new strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlight the educational benefits of ludonarrative creation using the digital story game project, Twine. It mentions the creation of interactive fiction by combining various skills such as programming, coding, conceptual design thinking, and narrative writing; the tool is accessible to those without coding ability and operates on most computers, with a strong support system including a creator community for collaboration and sharing.

In the last decades, digital games have become an essential part of young people's culture. Consumers on these platforms have increased noticeably, just like the studies focused on them. The objective of this research is to analyze the user generated content in the mobile games 'Episode: Choose Your Story' and 'Choices: Stories You Play' which have a large number of young users who spread and expand the stories to the most important social media. There were conducted two case studies on the structure of the storytelling of these games and a qualitative methodology was used based on narrative analysis and content analysis. The results indicate that although both games expand the stories on various platforms, the presence of Episode's writing laboratory produces a more defined behavior in the users compared to Choices, which offers a greater possibility of transforming consumers into prosumers. The huge fan's community for these games corroborates the importance of the expanded narratives in different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of digital storytelling on students' communication skills. Topics include how use of digital storytelling can help students regain their voices; the experience of telling stories using a multimodal language that felt authentic to them allowed one student; and the experiment for digital storytelling to enhance students' self-expression and confidence in their own narratives.

The article discusses use of Twine, a tool writing for interactive fiction stories, secondary English language arts class. Topics include use of the tool by students with knowledge of programming languages such as HTML, CSS, or JavaScript; use of the tool to teach, resulting in exciting and interesting projects for students to share and play together; and the role of twine in engaging and interactive storytelling experiences.

The literacy practices enacted in secondary school English classrooms can be influenced by the pressures acting upon teachers and students. Attention can be diverted away from the process of meaning-making when more emphasis is placed upon performance outcomes than on reading processes. This paper argues that digital forms of Interactive Fiction (IF) hold the potential to help teachers and students attend more closely to the process of meaning-making. It also argues that IF's component parts – passages, choices and links – render it a useful resource for the scaffolding of classroom dialogue. By considering the different ways that IF could influence the choices that individuals make in the classroom, this paper suggests that works of IF could enable teachers and students to engage with texts differently, improving the literacy practices of the students involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, from which many intertexts in fine arts, drama, literature and audiovisual works derive, has crossed ages, languages and media in its potencies of meaning. Marked by themes as the love between creator and creature, the demiurgic power of artistic creation, and the motive power of desire, the story of the artist who falls in love with a sculpture to the point of giving it life is a recurrent motif in horror, sci-fi and in other genres that involve art and technology. Among other actualizations of this myth, special attention should be given to the electronic work of interactive fiction Galatea, by Emily Short (2000), as a computer program in which the reader/user interacts with a textual interface to converse with a character that stands for Pygmalion's beloved one. In that process, each new input typed by the reader/user triggers an unexpected reply or action by the digital interlocutor. Thereby the statue comes progressively alive in this dialogue, as the desire to read the text also becomes the desire to see her move, answer, take stances. Considering this piece of interactive fiction, a genre of electronic literature that has still been little studied by scholars in Brazil, this paper aims to analyze the demiurgic power taken by natural language and programming code when, together, they give life to Galatea through dialogue. To do so, we herein use references on the relations between human and machinal semiosis (Hayles, 2005), on interactive fiction as a genre within electronic literature (Montfort, 2005), and on the role of natural and artificial languages in the creation of golems and other automata (Nazario & Nascimento, 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses several articles published within issue on topics including use of the online tool twine to create interactive fiction, digital storytelling unit that helped students develop a sense of authorship, and importance of emotional learning.

The new bets in the electronic narrative are structured under hypertext paths that link a wide variety of resources, such as a static image, a video, an audio, in which the plot is framed. That is the case with the electronic fiction Tatuaje (2015) by Rodolfo Jiménez Morales. The narrative has a detective structure, which allows the hypertextual design for the reader-user to follow, from the perspective of Rolo Martínez, the investigator, his experience in solving the case. Although Martinez is not obliged to solve all the cases or have absolute knowledge as Holmes, he is to fit the clues in during or after the case. These clues come from different resources along the narrative: audios, emails, phone calls, text messages that are not resolved in the explanation of the case. This essay aims to show from the interactivity frame, the level of exposure and detective-reader involvement with the clues in relation to his coding-decoding process of the world-case. The user witnesses, in a challenging manner, his ability to solve the case, to structure the sequence of events and to explain himself his role in a hypertext world. For this, the essay reviews, first the concept of hypertext, hypermedia, and hyperlink; second, the levels of interactivity; and third the analysis of the electronic fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In answer to calls for a 21st century reconsideration of traditional procedures of classroom writing, I offer student-created interactive fiction (IF) as a classroom exercise that blends digital literacy, games-based pedagogy, and writing practice. I find walking simulators like Firewatch and The Stanley Parable serve as effective models of IF games. The walking simulator genre shows that by promoting a sense of immersion, exploration, and letting players take their time, a game can reveal advanced narrativity and literariness, as well as a range of rhetorical possibilities. By workshopping IF platforms such as Twine or Ink Script, students can learn to create their own textual walking simulators. In this way, they can engage in an accessible, text-based form of worldbuilding and learn to craft explorable, unfolding narratives that represent their research, point of view, or argument. This article explores the pedagogical potential of interactive fiction, discusses some of the literary possibilities found within walking simulators, offers some ideas about leading a composition classroom in reading and analyzing these games, and provides a brief overview of getting started with worldbuilding in Twine or Ink. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the unique philosophical challenges that video games pose as forms of interactive fiction and examines the different types of fictional truth which they present in order to lay the groundwork for further discussion of video games as fictions not only by generating useful vocabulary and an ontological framework to aid continued study but also by using the fictional truths found in video games to challenge one of the most influential models of fictional truth: that of Kendall Walton. I argue that Walton's definition of fictional truth cannot account for all of the fictional content presented by video games and use video games to provide two counterexamples to his claims. By shedding light on these challenges, this article establishes video games as an interesting and unique form of narrative art worthy of the attention of philosophers not only for the fictional content which they present but also for the way in which they present it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nothing has had so much impact on our daily lives in the past two decades as the revolution in technologies of communication. Across the resulting debate in industry and academia the notion of 'storytelling' has come into prominence. It is a term in need of conceptual placement and theoretical framing. Publishers may feel that they have first call on storytelling as primary producers of the written text. When oral traditions documented by scribes gave way to authorship of the written text, the dissemination of knowledge became by way of print. But since the invention and adoption of other media—film, radio, internet, web, book apps, interactive mobile media—storytelling has been the exclusive domain of none. This paper provides a definition of 'story', 'storytelling', and 'storyteller' based on contemporary examples and historical usage, and traces how the affordances of new technologies have opened up pathways in storytelling by looking at examples from the origins of media convergence in the early 20th century to today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author retells the origin story of Sierra On-Line and its historic first product, the graphical adventure game Mystery House. She reviews the academic and journalistic writing that placed the story almost exclusively inside a narrative about early computer games, treating it as a saga of the competition between the graphic adventures Sierra On-Line produced and the literary games developed by companies like Infocom and dubbed interactive fiction. The author argues that such video game history proved both inaccurate and obfuscating, the she uses archival documentation and a counter-historical methodology to describe a different kind origin for Sierra On-Line and to deride the obviousness of presumptive beginnings within the discipline of game history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘mobilities turn’ has reinvigorated the social critique on the automobility system. Theorizing its profound reconfigurations of social life, relationist commitments invite a certain silence regarding the associated social pathologies, however. This article explores a critical-theoretical interpretation of the mobilities paradigm. It proposes the ‘interactive metal fatigue’ (IMF) concept, which theorizes the emergence of ‘interpassive’ social relations as socio-technical dialectics. Taking into account the contradictions that surround the critical-theoretical project, IMF paves the way for balanced critiques of mobilities. This will be shown through the case of Shared Space, an attempt to free public space from traffic management colonization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay argues that the second-person address of the interactive adventure gamebook generates a mode of identification between reader (player) and character that functions not through immersion or presence but through an estranging logic that arises from the particular affordances of the print form. It begins by situating the gamebook, an influential but short-lived genre that enjoyed its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s, in relation to other forms of second-person narrative as well as Interactive Fiction and video games, before turning to a consideration of the points at which the forms diverge. Taking Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982) as its example, the essay then examines the ways in which the gamebook's highly-demanding print form undermines notions of transparency, arguing that identification with the gamebook you is specific to, and reliant upon, the material properties of the print text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article explores the nature and theoretical import of a hitherto neglected class of fictions which we term 'self-involving interactive fictions' (SIIFs). SIIFs are interactive fictions, but they differ from standard examples of interactive fictions by being, in some important sense, about those who consume them. In order to better understand the nature of SIIFs, and the ways in which they differ from other fictions, we focus primarily on the most prominent example of the category: video-game fictions. We argue that appreciating the self-involving nature of video-game fictions is key to understanding various otherwise puzzling phenomena concerning the ways in which consumers respond to them. Video-game fictions are, however, far from being the only extant example of this class; and we suggest that the recent philosophical interest in video games would be better focused on the wider class of self-involving interactive fictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make-believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the educational application of "Inanimate Alice," a transmedia online novel and storytelling project developed by author Kate Pullinger, digital artist Chris Joseph and producer Ian Harper, that is being used as a literacy tool. Topics include the use of the series as a literacy and thematic tool and tips for aligning the novel with learning standards in the U.S. including the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and the Common Core State Standards.

In this study, we explore how users' personalities affect their responses to interactive narratives. In particular, we analyze the relationship between personality traits and relevant variables in narrative reception: identification with characters, enjoyment, self-perceived physiological sensations, emotional experience and content. Experimental participants (N=310) answered the NEOFFI personality questionnaire and watched a movie in one of four experimental conditions that combined modality (interactive vs. linear) and content (happy vs. tragic end). Results suggest that personality traits influence users' responses to fiction and interactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper surveys the ontological and aesthetic character of puzzles in worlds with storytelling potential, storiable worlds (potential storyworlds). These puzzles are termed fiction puzzles. The focus is on the fiction puzzles of videogames, which are accommodated to John Dewey's pragmatist framework of aesthetics to be examined as art products capable of producing aesthetic experiences. This leads to an establishing of analytical criteria for estimating the value of fiction puzzles in the pragmatist framework of aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a dual-process model of media entertainment representing 2 psychological appraisal processes, and examines how these processes evoke appreciation or enjoyment as a function of the presence/absence of cognitive conflict. The first process (which characterizes experiences of appreciation) is deliberative and slow, and results from cognitive conflict. The second process (which characterizes experiences of enjoyment) is automatic and fast, and occurs when cognitive conflict is inconsequential. Both appraisal processes result from the same underlying framework of intuitive preferences. 2 studies vary narrative conflict among sets of intuitive moral domains to test dual-process predictions regarding slow/fast response times and the association of the presence/absence of conflict with self-reported experiences of appreciation/enjoyment. Discussion examines theoretical implications for entertainment research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Qualitative analysis of exchanges (2001–2004) between authors of interactive fiction. [•] These online exchanges are source of sociability, creativity, knowledge of the genre. [•] Communities of digital literature authors reinstall historical, literary traditions. [•] For example, they emphasize on craftsmanship rather than on professionalization. [•] They also perform traditional institutional functions (e.g., evaluation, distribution). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article proposes a new approach to literary hypertext, which foregrounds the notion of interrupting rather than that of linking. It also claims that, given the dialectic relationship of literature in print and digital-born literature, it may be useful to reread contemporary hypertext in light of a specific type of literature in print that equally foregrounds aspects of segmentation and discontinuity: serialized literature (i.e. texts published in installment form). Finally, it discusses the shift from spatial form to temporal form in postmodern writing as well as the basic difference between segment and fragment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of language teaching approaches and advances in technology have brought with them changes in how and where languages are learned. One way in which language can be practised in a highly empowering and engaging way is through digital game-based learning (DGBL). Interactive Fiction (IF) is a text-based genre of video game which blends literature and puzzle-solving in a simulated world where the player becomes the protagonist of a narrative and controls her actions, seeing the world through her eyes. IF games respond to natural language input in a meaningful way, making them a unique form of non-linear participatory story-telling. Being both a digital game and a form of electronic literature, playing/reading IF can provide an extremely motivating, engaging and creative language learning experience, implementing all four language skills and many cognitive processes -- both in and beyond the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss the design, creation and implementation of an instructional game for use in a high school poetry class following a commitment to an educational game design principle of alignment. We studied groups of instructional designers and an interactive fiction computer game they built. The game was implemented in a 9th grade English classroom to see if the designed alignments were realized in the classroom. Results from observations and collected design artifacts suggest the alignment theory created extra challenges and rewards for the game designers. They encountered tensions between creating an exciting game-like atmosphere with inventive programming techniques while remaining loyal to the narrative structure and instructional goals. Game-play transcripts and interviews with middle school participants offered additional insights into the successes and failures of intentional efforts to bring about educational game alignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing research community is working toward employing drama management components in story-based games. These components gently guide the story toward a narrative arc that improves the player's gaming experience. In this article we evaluate a novel drama management approach deployed in an interactive fiction game called Anchorhead. This approach uses player's feedback as the basis for guiding the personalization of the interaction. The results indicate that adding our Case-based Drama manaGer (C-DraGer) to the game guides the players through the interaction and provides a better overall player experience. Unlike previous approaches to drama management, this article focuses on exhibiting the success of our approach by evaluating results using human players in a real game implementation. Based on this work, we report several insights on drama management which were possible only due to an evaluation with real players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genarrator is a practice-based and pedagogy-driven project researching ways of enabling creative writers and designers to enter the world of interactive fiction. The overall aim of the project is to develop a software platform (also called Genarrator) for students who want to create interactive digital fiction, but who do not have the web-design skills to use professional-level tools such as Flash. Funded by The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) at BU, James Pope is extending his empirical studies of readers' responses to interactive fiction, and expanding his teaching of new-media writing, by designing, developing and testing Genarrator. This paper reports on the empirical research which has led to Genarrator, outlines the role of the CETL in supporting the project, and explains the features and value of the Genarrator platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay reports on a mixed-methods study using an interactive fiction (IF) game to teach German vocabulary, reading, and culture to university students. The study measured knowledge retention and transfer, and evaluated the attitudes of students toward the game. The results tentatively indicate that contextualized, immersive role play may have helped students to learn. Nevertheless, most students were apprehensive about the game as a learning platform given the departure from traditional instruction. New research findings related to the software design and development process, and student involvement in this process, are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which analyzes the written and visual text of three elementary male students. It points out how postmodern picturebooks influenced the narrative competence of the three students. It also examines the how the children applied their knowledge of the illustrative interactive devices and literary in the picturebooks to produce their own print texts.

The article discusses moral and philosophical aspects of the first-person-shooter video game Bioshock. The game incorporates elements of objectivism from the work of author Ayn Rand into its story of scientists and artists who isolate themselves in a city called Rapture. The author discusses moral choices faced by game players and how the game's story reflects the concept of an unreliable narrator. He characterizes video games as a form of interactive fiction.

This article investigates previous research that used game-tree search to optimize drama-manager actions in interactive stories. A drama manager is a system that watches the story as it progresses. Declarative optimization-based drama management is known to guide the player by projecting possible future stories and reconfiguring the story world based on projections. The drama manager has also a set of actions that would guide the player character toward the story. In fact, the actions of the drama manager are known to take place in an abstract model.

This article focuses on the application of narrative intelligence in the creation of interactive narrative systems. Linear and branching narratives have been the two fundamental narratives used in computer games and educational and training applications. Linear narrative is a traditional narrative form in which a sequence of events is narrated from beginning to ending without variation or possibility of a user altering how the story unfolds or ends. On the other hand, branching narrative exists in the story at which a user action or decision alters the way a narrative unfolds or ends.

The phenomenon of literary hypertext was greeted in literary scholarship with claims for new concepts of authorship, textuality and readership. A view on hypertext readership based on cognitive theory directs the focus of attention to the procedural differences between reading print and hypertext narratives. Using concepts provided by cognitive psychology, in which reading is viewed as information processing, these differences can be described more satisfactorily than by relying on descriptions of the textual properties of hypertext. This article concentrates on the questions of interactivity and non-linearity, as well as the potential disorientation of the hypertext reader through lack of coherence, from the standpoint of cognitive theory.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of video game players in the creation of interactive fiction. Video games are considered as interactive fiction because players are involved in an active engagement with the problem spaces or kinetic narratives of the gameplay. Physical action with joysticks and keyboards is one of the videogame interaction that allows players to explore and interpret such games. The interaction of appreciators with video games differs with reading books because fictive prop is malleable and responsive.

Examines the problem of how to design a coherent plot in interactive fiction. Properties of digital medium in making applications; Usability of PAINT research and teaching program; Kinds of work needed to foster procedural authorship.

Asserts the role of artistic and technical premises in contemplating the possibility of interactive story systems. Significance of striving for an interactive story experience; Initiation of story systems around interactive characters; Principles of harnessing the interactive characters. INSET: Principles for character-based interactive story..

Discusses several open issues pertaining to the creation of interactive-fiction system. Influence of personal computers in the growth of interactive-entertainment; Definition of interactive fiction; Key component for an interactive-fiction system.

This article discusses the selection of an emergent narrative concept in presenting a restrictive consideration of the user with respect to story articulation. In an emergent narrative, narrative unfolding and its significance are integrated threads of a single process. It replaces the artifact-based view of narrative with a process-based view. Thus, the articulation of a process-based narrative model suggests a greater value for multiple-character based experiences over less scalable plot and tree-type approaches.

This article focuses on the interactive narrative, a special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and application. Interactive narrative is an area of research known to bring together technical fields such as artificial intelligence and computer graphics as well as the humanities. The central challenge of interactive narrative is how to deal with the conflict between story and interactivity. Modern computer games have explored a number of solutions to the story and interactivity conflict. To date, there are three approaches presented to resolve the conflict between story and interactivity.