Literary Gaming by Astrid Ensslin

Author:Astrid Ensslin [Ensslin, Astrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: game studies, new media, social studies, video games, electronic games
ISBN: 9780262027151
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2014-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

7 Of Windsighs and Wayfaring: Blue Lacuna, an Epic Interactive Fiction

7.1 Introduction

In the previous chapter, we saw how ludic-mechanic elements can operate in digital fictions to a greater or lesser extent without diminishing their readerly agenda. Conversely, this chapter will venture further into ludic territory and focus on perhaps the most hybrid of all literary-ludic genres in the digital sphere. Interactive fictions consist almost exclusively of text in the sense of typescript, and they “must succeed as literature and as game at once to be effective” (Montfort and Moulthrop 2003, 1). In other words, they functionalize close reading in such a way as to make textual understanding a prerequisite of successful gameplay. Reading the text both literally and between the lines is important for lateral thinking and progress in IFs. By the same token, the reader-player’s own linguistic and narrative creativity is required to crack the most difficult puzzles posed by the text.1

IFs are largely an independent sector phenomenon: they tend to be freely downloadable, often come with their source code attached, and are accompanied by a creative and receptive culture that consists mostly of aficionados, experimental writers, and indie game designers. IFs are descendents of the commercially traded 1980s Infocom text adventures in that they follow their basic format of a text window displaying chunks of narrative and ludic information, as well as having a prompt follow each chunk.2 Players have to enter simple text commands after these prompts, such as “GO NORTH” (abbreviated “N” or “NORTH”), “OPEN LETTER,” or “SAVE” (to save the game played up to a certain point). This will trigger narrative chunks conveying essential information about the avatar’s situation and (possible) actions, such as “You can only return home from here.” Interestingly, and to repeat a major concern of the previous chapter, here again we can see how deeply rooted textual you is in game culture, as the second-person pronoun and directive utterances are used extensively in IF to construct the storyworld via RP address and commands. While classic text adventures do not have any literary aspirations to speak of, however, most literarily minded IF writers place a strong emphasis on novelistic features such as impressionistic and emotive descriptions of situations, landscapes, and events; the relationship between the reader’s avatar and other characters; and linguistic playfulness and other types of literary experimentalism.

This chapter will zoom in on perhaps the most extensive, lyrically ambitious, and narratologically complex IF currently in existence: Aaron A. Reed’s sci-fi fantasy epic Blue Lacuna: An Interactive Novel in Ten Chapters (2008). Following a general introduction to IF as a digital verbal art genre, I will offer a ludostylistic reading of Blue Lacuna (BL). It will focus in particular on the IF’s unique ways of developing character based on the RP’s decisions; on ways in which it facilitates play-reading (an effect I refer to as reverse ergodicity); and on the way it functionalizes aspects of prose language to enable and structure gameplay. The final section will then provide

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