I grew up in the 1980s and loved reading “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) stories. From time to time, as an advocate of “Playing with Media” and “Show What You Know with Media” pedagogy and learning, I’ve created my own CYOA stories and helped others create them too.
Today I learned about the “Interactive Fiction Database” via the ArsTechnica article, “Microsoft Makes Zork I, II, and III Open Source Under MIT License.” In this context, “IF” stands for “Interactive Fiction.” According to the IFD’s tips page:
IFDB has three main functions.
First, it’s a comprehensive catalog of IF, past and present. IFDB is a collaborative, community project – it’s a little like a Wiki for IF bibliography. Members can edit the game listings in the catalog, and even add new listings, so you never have to wait for the site’s administrators to get around to adding the latest releases or fixing errors in existing listings. If something’s missing, you can add it; if something’s wrong, you can fix it.
Second, IFDB is a place to share recommendations. The site offers several tools for giving and getting personalized recommendations about games to play. The key word is personalized. IFDB isn’t just a “Top 10” scoreboard that boils everything down to an average of what everyone likes (although it can do that, too). IFDB’s recommendation tools are based on the idea that tastes vary, so the goal is to help you find games that match your individual style. One way we do this is by giving you lots of ways to sift through the database, and another is by helping you find other people with tastes in IF similar to your own.
Third, IFDB makes it easier to get started at playing these games. Modern IF games usually require “interpreter” programs, so it can be time consuming, and sometimes frustrating, for new players to track down everything they need. IFDB’s “Play Online” button is designed to fix this. Just click the button and you can start playing right away in your web browser. No downloads required!
This reminded me of the “Treasure or Trap? A Choose Your Own Adventure Video” project I facilitated back in the summer of 2017 at the Create, Make and Learn conference organized by Lucie deLaBruere. I wrote more background about this project and workshop on my post, “Choose Your Own Adventure YouTube Video: Lessons Learned,” from August 2017.
Now that I’m exploring different ways to use AI in vibe coding projects, I’m wondering how CYOA games can and will merge with AI platforms, perhaps using or building on open source software programs like Twine?
So many exciting possibilities!
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