Nick Montfort's interactive vision

Nick Montfort has been doing important work in/on the narrative convergence between traditional and new media for the better part of a decade now. His interactive fiction Book and Volume is nothing short of stellar, both in its writing and gameplay.

Montfort defended his doctoral dissertation on narrative variance in interactive fiction at the UPenn this morning, in which he argues:

My vision is for a fourth era of IF, one in which interactive narrating joins interactive fiction. It wouldn’t preclude other independent IF production, but it would bring IF more fully into the literary life of our world and use computation in new ways to do some of the important work of literature and art. If IF does become a more prominent part of our cultural life, we could expect to see landmarks like these.



I just finished teaching a course on games and literature this past quarter, and we often wondered out loud about a similar convergence/timeline. I'm also curious what us Now-Whatters have to say about Montfort's prognostications.

What say ye?

New Starcherone Sampler

Starcherone Books has posted a pdf sampler of excerpts from its most recent books: see FINALLY, A NEW SAMPLER.

This 87 page wonder features excepts from recent Starcherone titles by Joshua Harmon, Sara Greenslit, Harold Jaffe, & Jeffrey DeShell, as well as from the expanded second edition of my own Endorsed by Jack Chapeau and Nina Shope's selection from the anthology, PP/FF, edited by Peter Conners.

If you like what you see there you can also purchase our books directly from the Starcherone website. As an entirely volunteer-run non-profit, we can sure use the sales revenue!

Now, back to your Baconator haikus!