Prof. discusses text-based games
By Robert Szypko
Published on Thursday, February 12, 2009
MIT professor Nick Montfort discussed interactive, text-based video games in his Wednesday lecture.
Computer programmers can enhance the experiences of players of text-based video games by experimenting with different writing styles, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nick Montfort said in a lecture on Wednesday afternoon in Carson Hall. Montfort's research focuses on interactive fiction video games, in which players control their characters' actions through typed commands.
Montfort works with all-text interactive fiction games, in which players interact with a computer program through a "dialogue system." In this system, the computer program uses text to presents players with different situations, and then players type in commands describing their characters' actions. The game then responds with a text description of new circumstances, Montfort said.
Montfort used one of his interactive fiction games, "Book and Volume," to demonstrate this process to an audience of approximately 30 students and faculty members. The audience suggested commands to be typed into the program, laughing at user inputs that did not work.
Montfort's current project experiments with the ability to simulate and control narrative style in these games. The program alters the writing style of the narration depending on players' responses, including changing the order and speed with which it presents events.
Montfort used "Lost One," an interactive fiction game he created, to demonstrate these changes. In the game, the player controls a character situated in a large plaza and is tasked with finding another character. Players can choose in which direction, if any, their character searches. As the character moves, the program's narration can switch from present to past tense, or even from second to third person.
"The reason for this is that we want to create distance," Montfort said. "As you wander [around the plaza], the effect that's being put on is to make the narration more distant."
Eventually, the computer assumes control of the character, he said.
"It's meant to play with the expectation that you have control of the character," Montfort said.
Montfort said similar changes in narrative styles are occurring in other media, including cinema and comic books.
"Many of the concepts behind this are not specific to text," Montfort said, citing the way in which the film "Memento" (2000) presented its events out of order.
Montfort said he hopes to expand the basic concept of interactive fiction gaming into a literary art. Interactive fiction has a form of aesthetic expression that allows for commentary on society and life, Montfort said.
"I know how to manipulate the physical world [of a video game]," Montfort said. "What I am interested in is how might we add a particular literary quality."
The program that allows the alteration of narrative style in interactive video games is more intricate than the program used in traditional interactive fiction games that do not feature such alterations, Montfort said.
This added intricacy, however, does not make creating such a game significantly more difficult, he said.
Montfort said these changes will allow interactive fiction gaming to expand to new audiences.
Montfort's lecture was sponsored by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, which also endowed the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professorship in the Digital Humanities.
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