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?