Interactive Fiction FAQ

"We followed our dreams, for dreams were all we had. In the process our lives became magical." - Siegfried and Roy

Interactive Fiction Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions- Answered by Implementor Howard Sherman

What, exactly, is Interactive Fiction?

Think of an interactive fiction title as an e-book with the added bonus of being able to respond to the story you're reading.

We take e-books to the next level by empowering you. When you begin any of our interactive fiction books you're not just reading the story on your screen; you become a part of the story. You assume the role of the main character. You step into his shoes and take on that persona.

Interactive Fiction is the fusion of fiction books and computer games. Don't let this relatively simple description fool you; Interactive Fiction is greater than the sum of its parts. A work of Interactive Fiction is a book you play and a game you read that calls upon your imagination at every turn. A medium in its own right, Interactive Fiction leverages the power of technology to deliver a deep story with rich, vivid prose that pulls you, the reader, inside the story where you are the main character. As the protagonist, you drive the story ahead yourself every time you tell the game what you want to do.

The New York Times prefers the label "participatory novel" which also describes it nicely.

Interactive Fiction has a rich history. In the late 1970s the genre of the text adventure game was created with Crowther and Wood's Adventure which takes place in The Colossal Caves. This ignited the creativity and ingenuity of a group of students at MIT to create a new gaming platform. This gaming platform became the foundation upon which the late Infocom, Corp. was built. Infocom was famous for such games as the Zork series that sold over a million copies at a time when computers were not nearly as popular or prevalent as they are today. The original Implementers of Infocom propelled the text adventure game into a new art form - Interactive Fiction. Malinche has picked up where Infocom left off.

Interactive Fiction is awesome! I want Malinche to publish my interactive fiction! Where do I send my writing?

Sorry but our lawyers have instructed us to dispose of any and all submissions we receive unopened. And that's exactly what we do. Please don't bother to send us your work because we will have no choice but to throw it out without even looking at it. Save your time and the postage.

Our policy on unsolicited submissions is not meant to be cruel or cold-hearted; it's a business decision made in the best interests of Malinche.

Can you give me some writing tips and/or advice on how to write interactive fiction?

Sorry, but no. I'll borrow a policy from some of the true giants in the fiction book world. Stephen King and JK Rowlings don't give out writing tips and I can't either. There are several reasons behind this but I'll go with the most practical one; there are just so many hours in the day. It would be impossible for me to crunch through my daily workload if I had to stop for one-on-one dialog with every single person who asked me for interactive fiction writing tips. I can already imagine a dozen or so emails a day that would start with "Howard, just one more question..."

That's time I need to spend with Malinche's future and present customers in answering their hint requests and making sure everyone is totally satisfied with their Malinche interactive fiction experience.

What can I expect from a Malinche title that I won't find in a book?

The power of possibility. In a fiction book, the author has set out the story, the characters, the plot and the finish. You, as the reader, can only turn the pages and absorb the story as it has been written.

When you begin a Malinche title and become the main character, you have the power of choice at every turn. From the beginning through to the middle and right to the very end you are in control. Character dialog and even the behavior of some characters will change in response to your own behavior in the story. The plot itself moves forward only when you do.

Ask the other characters in the story any question you want. Go wherever you please. You can pick up an interesting item and study it. It might be useful to you later on in the story or it might be useless. Only you can make that determination. You can smell a nearby flower, rub a statue, see your reflection in a lake, load a shotgun, cast a magic spell or try and smash a valuable treasure. Empowered as you are, the world responds and the story unfolds with every decision you make. Sometimes doing nothing at all is the wrong choice while at other times there are several different actions you can take in response to a single event. Every such action has an impact on the story in some way with the potential of moving the plot forward in a different direction.

When you finish a book you can put it on your shelf and fondly recall the story from start to finish. Once in a while you might revisit that shelf and enjoy the same story once more and know exactly what to expect. A Malinche title may never see your shelf because you can go through the story over and over and be surprised every time by some new plot twist or unexpected event that may come to light in response to what you, as the main character, do.

Malinche is producing text adventure games at a time when graphical games dominate the computer game industry. How does Malinche hope to make any meaningful amount of sales?

Originally, I launched Malinche to cater to the die hard Infocom fan that craved new commercial text adventure games. Since Infocom closed their doors over ten years ago, I envisioned catering to a small niche market. Lofty goals weren't in the equation. I'm happy to say that the market Malinche delivers games to is far larger than I expected it to be.

In response to market demand overall, we're reaching people I never predicted we would. One excellent example of this is the blind; blind people can enjoy my works thanks to screen reading software that recites every word displayed. Naturally, blind people cannot play graphical games but they can fully enjoy my works. Another market that I didn't expect to reach was the greater literary market. Anyone that enjoys a good novel can and does enjoy Interactive Fiction. Several murder mystery fans have been blown away by Greystone precisely because it's interactive; they get to put their own detective skills to the test. Similar fun is to be had with First Light and Endgame. Readers get to do more than just read a naval techno thriller or a fantasy adventure science fiction romp; they BECOME the main character inside the story, essentially entering the fictional world and able to interact in that world at every level.

Most visitors to this website have no idea what you're talking about every time you mention Infocom. Please enlighten us!

Infocom, quite simply, was the world's finest publisher of text adventure games and Interactive Fiction. Their work was so advanced that they actually created the Interactive Fiction medium. All works of Interactive Fiction are text adventure games but not all text adventure games are Interactive Fiction. Interactive Fiction is a more advanced form of the text adventure game, to keep things simple. The games they created are loved twenty and more years after they were written. For anyone wishing to explore the complete history of Infocom and the works they created should visit http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/

At the end of the day, Infocom would probably be around today making the existence of Malinche improbable. Events unfolded as they did only because of a single product Infocom launched that ended up sinking the entire company. That product was Cornerstone. Fans the world over felt deprived ever since.

Why do you think Interactive Fiction still has so much appeal to computer game fans after all these years?

Interactive Fiction offers something that graphical games just can't; possibilities. Marc Blank of Infocom fame once pointed out that the actions one can take in a graphical game are limited to what you can do with your mouse. And he was right. Take Myst for example. I've played Real Myst a bit and I really quite like it. But the game play is limited to what I can roll the mouse over. If my cursor doesn't change then I know that the item or area I'm engaged in is not terribly important. As Marc Blank put it, the command prompt in Interactive Fiction makes everything worth a try. Your imagination presents possibilities that are automatically foreclosed in a graphical game. In Interactive Fiction your imagination is the graphics generator painting the pictures in your mind. One of Infocom's older marketing campaigns said much the same thing. The games I write engage more of the player's imagination.

I can download hundreds of free text adventure games on other websites so why should I pay for yours?

Because quality costs money. Go ahead and download a hundred free text games and see how many of them grab you. Very few, if any, will. And you'll spend hours or even days of your time before you figure this out on your own.

A lot of other people felt the same way when they first discovered what seemed to be a treasure trove of free interactive fiction titles.

However, after trying several free games they felt that those games just didn't spark them and seemed rather boring instead. Then they found out about Malinche and were only too happy to purchase quality text adventure games that could entertain them for weeks on end. We have many testimonials over here that talk about this very thing.

Your games seem to be a bit expensive. Why is that?

As far as pricing goes, our games are a bargain for several reasons. Explore each of the following examples with me:

Relative to computer games:

You can download our games for $24.95 (or just $9.95 if you want to play one of our games on your iPod) which is less than half the price of your average computer game. Our Folio Editions at $34.95 still represent real value compared to the average price of $50 you'll pay for a computer or video game these days.

What's more; every Folio Edition of a Malinche title comes with all the software you need to enjoy your adventure on absolutely any and every computing platform in the world. With other games, you'd need to buy a Windows version, a Pocket PC version, a Macintosh version, etc. if you wanted to enjoy your adventure on different systems. I recently bought a couple of games for one of my Apple iMacs. I was a little miffed when I realized that if I wanted to play that game on one of my Windows computers instead, I'd have no choice but to go back to the store and buy a second copy of the same game for Windows thus forcing me to pay for the same game twice. That never happens when you buy the Folio Edition of a Malinche game; you pay just one price and can enjoy your game on any computer you like.

Relative to books:

With price points of $9.95-$34.95, our titles are in the same price range as the average paperback or hardcover book. You can finish off a book in two or three days in most cases. Our titles cannot be completed nearly as fast no matter how smart you are. Now consider the fact that due to their non-linear nature, you can enjoy the same Malinche title over and over and still be surprised at the twists the story can take. No book can ever do that.

Dollar for dollar, you'll get at least twice as much entertainment from Malinche titles than you would most books.

Relative to Infocom:

Back in their day, the very best Infocom games sold for $50 apiece. Stop and consider this was nearly twenty years ago. Then consider that Malinche's titles are roughly three times larger than the games Infocom were able to produce back then.

Here's a neat formula to contemplate:

$50 (Infocom Price) x 3 (Malinche game size increase) = $150.

Compared to the games Infocom produced when adjusting for inflation and factoring in the free game hints and maps we give you (which Infocom charged extra for), Malinche games should be priced somewhere near $199.95 apiece. But they aren't. A Malinche title can be acquired for just $24.95 - a small fraction of that price!

Now that's a bargain, isn't it?

A closing thought: The average amount of time you'll need to complete a Malinche title is about 40 hours. Any Malinche interactive fiction title or iPod game you buy is under $40. That means you're paying less than $1 per hour for incredible entertainment. Try and have any fun these days for less than $1 per hour!

There is no other form of entertainment that can deliver such value.

That's why we guarantee every single interactive fiction title with a 60 day unconditional money back guarantee. We know our interactive fiction books are some of the best forms of entertainment available -- period. And we back that up with the best satisfaction guarantee in most any industry.

Not even the legendary Infocom offered a money back guarantee on any text adventure game they ever sold. Not even Zork.

Why Can't I Purchase a Folio Edition of Your Interactive Fiction Titles Outside the United States Anymore?

For some unknown reason, more and more international shipments have been ending up lost in the mail. Without any means of tracking the package and international insurance virtually impossible for our customers to make any use of, we have decided to keep folio edition shipments to United States customers only.

We stopped shipping our folio editions to international customers on May 9, 2008

Howard, why do you insist on personally supplying hints to people who enjoy your titles?

Answering all hint requests personally is perfectly sane, actually. Who better than me, the Implementor of these worlds, to help an adventurer out of a tight spot? Moreover, I want to stay in tune with my customers and find out exactly how they react to my games. I am always curious to know which puzzles stump you, which scenarios throw you and which points in any of my titles are particularly challenging. I write for my fans and I want to be sure that what I write is not needlessly tiresome and is engaging up to, but not past, the brink of impossibility. Staying in touch with you directly is the only feasible way to achieve that.

Interactive Fiction sounds interesting but I just can't seem to get the hang of it. A lot of the things I try just won't work. Help!

In much the same way there are constraints on what you can or can't do in your standard video or computer game, there are similar constraints in Interactive Fiction. For example, in a car racing game running on a major video game system you can't drive your car off the road, smash through the glass windows of a building and then drive up the stairs. Similarly, there are some guidelines in playing Interactive Fiction. Our player's guide (available at http://www.malinche.net/playerguide.pdf) does an excellent job acquainting new players with Interactive Fiction.

After you're done with the Player's Guide you can enroll in the Malinche Training Academy and put your new knowledge to the test in this interactive tutorial. You'll also get the chance to sample each of our four titles with full explanations of what you can do, how you can do it and even the reasons why.

Once you're through with the player's guide and the Malinche Training Academy you'll have no problem getting things to happen the way you want them to.

For people really and truly stuck just email our support department and you'll receive an answer to every question you ask. Customers can always call us toll-free at (877)-299-7999 and just about anybody can help as well.

Technical Questions Answered by Engineer Michael Ferrador

Your games won't run. I double-click azteca.z8 (or pfl.z8 or gstone.z8, etc.) and Windows hits me with a window that says: "Click the program you want to use to open <name of game>". (Users of other operating systems will be similarly stymied.) Why doesn't the game just run?

Files such as bofh.z5, azteca.z8, endgame.z8, etc. are story files. Story files don't run on their own; they need to be loaded with an interpreter. Visit our free software section to download the interpreter you need for your computer. Then install and run the interpreter. From there, load your story file and you're off.

Windows Users -- You get a bonus. Once you've installed Windows Frotz, you'll see story files appear as blue icons in your folders. Just double-click the story file and the interpreter will launch and load your game in one simple move.

Why do I need an interpreter to play a Malinche game?

The Z-Machine, upon which all Malinche works are based, is a virtual standard allowing Howard to write a single game that can run on most of today's computers. The interpreter loads the story file. The idea is similar to java in that a single applet can run on any kind of web browser (Mac Netcape, Windows XP Internet Explorer, etc.) assuming you have java installed.

Why don't you just make the games for each system? (Windows, Mac, Palm, etc.)

The original Infocom Implementers realized that to do so would be more than tedious; it would be a serious drain of resources. Back then there were even more different kinds of computers than there are today. Thanks to the efforts of many volunteers, Interpreters exist for every major computing platform in use today. Howard only needs to write one version of his game and it will run on all the different computers in the world thanks to the Z-Machine/interpreter model.