Choice-based interactive fiction

From IFWiki

Choice-based IF (also called choose your own adventure or CYOA) refers to a style of interactive fiction where the game is assembled from a set of story nodes and related choices or hyperlinks. A typical turn in CYOA will begin with a textdump describing the current situation of the game. In some works, the textdump is followed by a short list of explicit options to choose from; in other works, hyperlinks are scattered throughout the text. When the player selects a choice or a hyperlink, the story continues with a new section of the story, which offers new options or hyperlinks. This mode of play, moving from one story node to another, continues until an ending of some sort is reached. Authoring tools for choice-based IF include Twine, Squiffy, Undum, ChoiceScript, and ink, among others.

Origins

From about 1981 to about 1995, Bantam published the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books for young readers (ages 9-12), in which the story was told a page at a time. At the bottom of each page, the reader was offered a choice, along the lines of, "If you decide to stay here and wait for the supply ship, turn to page 12. If you decide to do a little exploring on your own, turn to page 17." Each book offered multiple endings, where the outcome depended upon what the reader wanted to happen next in the linear narrative. There were at least 150 books in the series, as well as spinoffs such as the "Choose Your Own Star Wars™ Adventure" series, and knockoffs from other publishers who used variations on the CYOA slogan.

Raymond Queneau's story "Un conte a votre façon" ("Story as You Like It" or "Yours for the Telling"), and later Julio Cortazar's novel Rayuela (Hopscotch), both from the early 1960s, are the original works in this one-text-multiple-paths form and deserve mention. The idea was first described in Jorge Luis Borges's 1941 story "El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan" ("The Garden of Forking Paths.")

Twine revolution

In the early 2010s, the release of Twine opened up IF development to a huge crowd of creators. Many of these were people from marginalised groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, who use Twine to tell their own stories. Around this time, choice-based IF began to be taken more seriously in the IF Community, with Porpentine's howling dogs taking 11th place in the 2012 IF Comp.

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Commercial revival

Following the Twine Revolution, a number of commercial developers such as Choice of Games and inkle began producing choice-based IF for profit. In 2014, Inkle's 80 Days achieved commercial success and critical acclaim well outside of the IF community, winning the IGF Excellence in Narrative Award, Game Developers' Choice Award and Time's Game of the Year.

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Links

Collaborative CYOA sites

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