Determining literariness in interactive fiction

Abstract

The authors of interactive fiction are beginning to demonstrate a concern for the literariness of their product. Literariness, as defined by Shklovskij and the Russian Formalists, is the quality of "making strange" that which is linguistically familiar, a quality Shklovskij termed ostranenie. By applying the principle of ostranenie, as well as other wellknown literary principles, to the most serious interactive fictions, we can determine if this new genre exhibits the features of literariness. A study of Mindwheel, Brimstone, Breakers, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Portal, and Trinity suggest that the literariness of interactive fiction comes out of its concern both for "making strange" what is familiar and for "making familiar" what is strange.

Ludic Mechanics, Psychic Mechanisms and Explorations of “Inner Space” in Mindwheel and Psychonauts

“…A longer piece in the following issue of the same magazine heralds “interactive fiction” as a “new literary genre,” posting Mindwheel as an example of literature which is informed by computers, rather than of a new genre of gaming informed by literature (Costanzo 1986, p.31). In a special issue of the New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly the following year, Pinsky himself was joined by P. Michael Campbell in describing Mindwheel as “interactive fiction” (Pinksy 1987, p. 65; Campbell 1987, p. 76), and this categorization is perpetuated in other contemporaneous journals (Marcus 1988, p. 15; Randall 1988, 186–188). 2 Marcus's essay introduces the term “hypertext”—referring to the socio-technological context which permits the development of interactive fiction—to critical discussions of Mindwheel (Marcus 1988, pp.10–1), setting a trend for critics in the next decade (Davis 1995, p.79; Moulthrop 1995, p.61).…”

Game or Supernovel? Playing and Reading Massive Game Novels

“…The question of whether single-player text games are or should be considered Literature is an old one, and in fact it was asked more frequently in the 1980s than it is today. Before hypertext fiction took over as the most successful form of experimental, digital literature in the late 1980s, with the work of Michael Joyce (1987) in particular, text adventure games were at the centre of attention of literary scholars who investigated the new artistic computer genre, looking for literary value or literariness (Niesz and Holland 1984; Buckles 1985; Randall 1988; Lanestedt 1989). These scholars all agreed and even championed that text adventures were a form of literature; they were text, using verbal messages for poetic effect (which is the hallmark of being literature) as well as for other, more instrumental communicational functions such as controlling a text-based avatar and operating the software itself.…”