Interactive Fiction's Use in Education
By Randy Edwards

Do you remember those text adventure games that date back to the early days of microcomputing? You know, the game would describe a scene -- where you were standing, what you were seeing, objects that were nearby, what was to your left, right, etc. -- and then you would give simple commands of "go north" or "pick up lantern" or something similar. The object of the game was to navigate around the dungeon or whatever locale you were in, and to find some secret treasure or similar prize -- unless, of course, your lantern went out and you were eaten by a "grue" or some other hideous creature. Popular games of this genre were the classic "Adventure" game and Infocom's famous Zork trilogy of games.

Take a step back for a moment from the adventure game idea and think about the mechanics of the game. What you really had was a semi-complex flowchart of actions. Move left/west and you saw this. Pick up this object and the flow of logic of the game changed to such-and-such. These games were really a type of memory and logical exercise. They were also a type of interactive story with the plot twisting and turning depending on what actions you took.

Imagine now that we take that basic framework of those games and we were to apply it to writing. What we could create is a type of interactive fiction (IF). If one thinks of the logical framework of these games but dispenses the "adventure game" notion and replaces it with "interactive fiction," a huge world of educational possibilities opens up.

Imagine your typical junior high or high school writing class. My teachers would use all sorts of tricks to spark our imaginations. My favorite was that the teacher would give us a picture and tell us to write up a story about what was in the picture. That worked for me but failed for many of my classmates.

Now imagine that same writing class, only combined with a bit of hands-on computer science. Imagine instead of the teacher challenging her students not just to write a story, but to write an interactive story. The student doesn't just have to pick one ending for their story, but instead can have a whole series of endings (and "middles" too!) for their story.

This can be done in schools today. And even better, it can be done with computer software which is totally free. Unlike the restrictive software license "agreements" which typical commercial software uses, free software has a license agreement which gives freedom! Freedom to copy the software, freedom to modify the software, and, of course, freedom from having to pay for the software. Free software like this is usually licensed under the Free Software Foundation's General Public License (GPL; also known as the "copyleft" software license) and is developed in a cooperative manner with geographically dispersed programmers collaborating over the Internet.

This new software model and GPL software license frees schools from budget and software audit worries and is truly "school-friendly" software.

But back to our writing class. Available for the cost of an Internet download are many "game engines" or IF "authoring tools" which allow you to easily create IF. These engines can be used for many things -- the possibilities are limited only by your imagination!

Do you teach history? How about a class where students "rewrite" the outcome of the American revolution? If the British had not been drunk and asleep at the Battle of Trenton, how would history have turned out? With some thought and planning, one can craft out the flow of logic of such a "story" into an IF authoring tool and allow others to "play" the story out -- with multiple outcomes.

And think of the skills your students will be learning! Not only will they be sharpening their story (or history!) skills and indulging in a little creativity, but they'll also learn hard logic and organization skills. To create such interactive fiction they will have to plan out their stories and spend a good amount of time thinking about them. In a way, one can think of creating an IF story as analogous to a form of computer programming. Make no mistake about it, using IF in your classroom will be an interdisciplinary idea -- there will be much computer science programming logic in the beginning to learn the game engine, and the writing will only factor in heavily after the students "own" the basics of using the IF authoring tools.

What is needed to implement this into your classroom? Only three things. The first is easy, the computer software. As stated above, thanks to the programmers contributing free software licensed under the "school-friendly" GPL and other free software licenses, this part is already taken care of and costs you nothing. The second thing that is needed, of course, is a computer. Depending on the game engine you select, the various engines will run on the proprietary Macintosh and Windows operating systems, and of course the engines also run on the free software GNU/Linux operating system.

You could, of course, stop right there. With an IF engine/authoring tool and some of the many stories you can find online, you could just let your students "play" with the many existing games and rest assured that they're at least doing some reading and thinking when using the computer in their spare time instead of them mindlessly browsing the web. But if you want to take this idea to its limit and have your students author IF, you're going to need a vital third ingredient.

The last thing that's needed is the trickiest: you. You have to get familiar with the game engine/authoring tool you want to use, and you have to train yourself in writing IF and using the authoring tools (A caveat: be careful or you just might wind up with another hobby!). That is going to require some computer and logic skills. Thankfully, there are many web sites on the Internet, mailing lists, and usenet newsgroups for support where you can ask questions and seek advice. The IF community is low-key, but is vibrant and dedicated. You'll also find many stories already written -- stories complete with the "source code" of the story and also in a form ready to read/play for the end user. And since examples are invaluable, this will be a big help.

With those three ingredients, you'll have everything it takes to use this type of IF in your classroom. Rest assured, like many deep classroom assignments this cannot be done in a class or two. My advice would be to treat this as a semester project. If you plan this out and take the time to implement it you'll give your kids a wealth of logic and organizational skills, some practical computer experience, and, if you're lucky, a spark to their imaginations and love of writing that will last them a lifetime!

Below are some resources on the web that will prove invaluable:

http://plover.net/~textfire/raiffaq/FAQ.htm The Usenet newsgroup "rec.arts.int-fiction" Interactive Fiction Authorship Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. This will prove an invaluable source for first getting started.

http://brasslantern.org/ A nicely done site with IF reviews and more.

http://www.tads.org/ Home site of The Adventure Development System (TADS), one of the more popular game engines/authoring tools.

http://www.ifarchive.org/ The Interactive Fiction Archive, a great site for freeware and shareware IF stories/games.

http://ifcomp.org/ Home site of the Annual Interactive Fiction Competition, a web site where anyone can upload IF and judge/critique other IF.

This article is copyright © Randy Edwards 2002 and is licensed under the GFDL.