Douglass on "Shade"

Pages 126-141 of the 10MB file, "Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media" http://jeremydouglass.com/cv/dissertation.pdf

In either case, there is a gap between vision and the world, between the code as we assumed it was and the code as we discover it must be. (140)

Consider the above comment along with my comment (from the second lecture) that all art is constrained. Looking at the way a text game forces you think a certain way can remind us that all games that seem "natural" to us only seem that way because we already think the way that the game encourages us to think. All games persuade us to jump through hoops, by offering rewards. Not everyone feels the rewards offered by interactive fiction are worth the work required, but the same can be said of every game genre, and beyond games, the same can be said of novels, opera, camping, weight-lifting, and pretty much any human activity that someone, somewhere on the planet, enjoys.