Some students who were willing to give interactive fiction a chance felt frustrated by the postmodern structure of Photopia. Others who reported being extremely frustrated by IF nevertheless put in significant effort trying to solve the game.
For the next exercise, students were asked to choose four games, play each for just fifteen minutes, choose one of those games to play for another hour, and write a reflection on each game. Because I gave them permission to give up on games that didn’t meet their expectations, overall I think even the students who disliked IF went into the exercise knowing there was a time limit, which led them to respond better than I expected. —Dennis G. Jerz —Interactive Fiction Review Sampler
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I wonder if they can do brain-scans of people who like interative fiction, and figure out what’s different about people who like it and hate it. My wife can’t stand IF, and every time I introduce it to a class, a significant number of students report a similar reaction. This year, it seems we had more neutral-to-positive — that is, people who did the homework dutifully, writing detailed reactions to the games, but who professed no particular interest in interactive fiction. Maybe Seton Hill students are just different (more dutiful) than the students I used to teach… or maybe I’m getting better at introducting the games to a wary audience. Who knows.
Great idea, especially since “choice” is the keyword in IF. I myself found that my initial resistance to IF brought about by Photopia (when even “cry” couldn’t get me out) was broken down when I went to the website http://www.ifiction.org/ and soon found myself downloading many of the games and gleefully working through them.