From Infocom to 80 Days: An oral history of text games and interactive fiction

Enlarge / Zork running on an Amiga at the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin, Germany. (credit: Marcin Wichary (CC by 2.0 Deed))

You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building.

That simple sentence first appeared on a PDP-10 mainframe in the 1970s, and the words marked the beginning of what we now know as interactive fiction.

From the bare-bones text adventures of the 1980s to the heartfelt hypertext works of Twine creators, interactive fiction is an art form that continues to inspire a loyal audience. The community for interactive fiction, or IF, attracts readers and players alongside developers and creators. It champions an open source ethos and a punk-like individuality.