Adventure Game News for 08 May 07

SPAG Issue 48

For your edification and delight, this issue of SPAG, the IF e-zine, has interviews with members of the Russian IF community; reviews of The Ebb and the Flow of the Tide, The Elysium Enigma, and The Traveling Swordsman; and an in-depth look at The Elysium Enigma.

Note that there are only three reviews in this issue of SPAG. For all of you who play IF, please consider writing a review for the next issue.

InnovationComp Results

InnovationComp, in which entrants were to describe something you can't easily do with current IF systems, is over. Victor Gijsbers is the winner by virtue of being the sole entrant, but his submission, Coauthorship and Community, is a doozy. It suggests a form of IF in which players are more collaborative, and are able to change the story and the world in non-trivial ways.

Changing this would open up a vast new territory to explore. It would allow completely new ways of interacting with a piece of interactive fiction, new ways which would allow the player to freely use his creativity for the first time, and which would allow the player to be a real co-author for the first time. The player could change the work, add to it, rewrite it, improve it, or accept the voice of the author out of free choice.

Victor also included a short sample game with his entry.

OpenFate Experiments With Collaborative IF

Victor Gijsbers is turning his SpringThing-winning game Fate into an open source game. Anyone who would be interested in expanding and changing the game is invited to tell Victor so. This isn't as radical as what he proposed in his InnovationComp entry, but it's interesting nonetheless.