Choosing the right IF game to use in a lesson for the first time is a very important decision – the students’ first impression can make or break the idea of using IF as a pleasurable and useful learning tool in and outside of the classroom. One of the main reasons I use IF with my students is to promote their use as an autonomous tool for practicing reading fluency. Most of my students do not read books in English at home (and many not even in their native tongue). If by using IF in a lesson I can get 1 student interested enough to try it at home afterwards, then I have succeeded in my mission (and this is usually the case).

However, in order to instill this sense of wonder in students (remember, this is very likely the first time many of them have ever seen anything like IF – imagine being shown a book for the very first time, or YouTube), then we have to tailor their first IF experience to be fun and memorable – while at the same time fitting in with the context of the group and setting. There will always be those students who are just happy to get out the usual classroom situation and won’t think too much of the game you’ve chosen in any case. Other’s might actually believe their precious class time is being wasted and would prefer to do some exam practice from the course book (this has actually happened to me with one of my students!). However, if we can captivate them with the first game they play, chances are they will want to try another – on their own or as part of a lesson.

Like using any other kind of media with learners, it is very difficult to match the tastes of everybody in the class. We all have stories of that great song or film we brought into class, hoping that our students would love it – but for some reason, incredibly, some just didn’t appreciate your good taste. This happened to me the other day – I decided to show one of my favourite films – ‘Scott Pilgrim VS The World’ as it is incredibly funny and innovative both in story and cinematic presentation. I thought that it would appeal to MOST of the students as it is deals with topics that the majority of young people are interested in: relationships and music. Mix it with a concept of ‘gamification’ beyond anything McGonigal (2011) could ever hope for and you have a very original and entertaining movie. And I think it is precisely here that the film fails to captivate many students – it flows in-between reality and fantasy too smoothly and many of today’s younger generation are just not imaginative enough to process this. In the first class I showed it to – on a Friday night with some very imagination-challenged students, only about a third of the them enjoyed it. In the second, a Saturday morning class, mostly made up of very motivated and open-minded students, only a third didn’t seem to be overly-enthusiastic about it. To sum up, every student and every class is different. Even the day of the week or the time of the class can have an impact on how students react to an activity.

Guidelines for considering IF to use with learners

When considering IF games to use with learners (and indeed, even to play yourself), I suggest thinking about the following 10 points:

•  1. Genre/theme – While the genre associated with most early text-adventure games is standard dungeon & dragons/Tolkien inspired fantasy, Infocom released classic games in the genres of detective, mystery, horror, and science fiction, amongst others. Taking this much further, modern IF has been created in every conceivable genre steeped with literary innovation, from Lovecraftian horror and futuristic spy thrillers to real-world drama involving the death of a loved one, writing a dissertation or conversing with a statue. To sum up, there are as many genres of story in IF as there are in books and choosing one that appeals to all your learners is a difficult task. However, in my experience, I have found that games somewhat grounded in reality are better to introduce IF game-play mechanics. Because students will likely have the schema of how to act in common situations and are familiar with most real-world objects and how they may be used, they have an easier time solving puzzles and progressing in the game. I would suggest using a game with a familiar theme with students the first time around, and then move on to a more fantastical setting afterwards, so they get a idea of the flexibility of IF and how it caters to different tastes.

•  2. Plot – The vast majority of early text adventures had very little plot to speak of besides collecting a certain number of treasures or escaping from one’s current location. Modern IF can have plots as complex as a Christopher Nolan movie, with surprises around every corner. Based on experience, I would suggest using a game with a specific (supposed) goal – for example, getting to work or finding a lost pig. Of course, being examples of good literature, the twists and turns the story will take before allowing the player to reach that goal are what make it a worthy reading/paying experience.

•  3. Length – Much of the pre-modern era IF could take weeks, months and even years to complete because of a badly implemented parser or fiendishly difficult puzzles and the lack of easily accessible hints or walkthroughs. I often tell the story of how it took me 15 years to finish Zork. In the days before the ubiquity of the World Wide Web, when a player got stuck in a game, he would have to write to a specialty magazine and ask for help or hope that someone else would submit clues. Because of this reliance on hints in magazines, I was only able to get past one of the puzzles in Zork many years after giving up and moving on to other games. There are still difficult and geographically vast IF games created today, but most of what is released is promoted through the various annual IF competitions, which require that submissions be short enough to be finished in 2 hours. Being able to do this, may of course depend on the player’s prior familiarity with IF and puzzle-solving ability. However, thanks to the Internet and numerous IF communities, a hint or walkthrough is never out of reach. Many games have been written which can be played in under 30 minutes or 1 hour. I strongly recommend introducing IF with a game which can be completed in the time available in a given lesson (for ex, a 45 minute computer room slot). If it proves a success, then longer games can be attempted over a series of lessons (using the SAVE command, which functions as a bookmark).

•  4. Geographical Size – In IF, locations are called ‘rooms’, even if the ‘room’ represents an outdoor space such as a garden or the interior of a vehicle. The rooms in IF are what constitute the game world and movement within these rooms is what immerses the player in the narrative by giving her a sense of spatial orientation. Older text adventures would boast hundreds of rooms to explore as a selling point (and many of these were often mazes – now considered to be taboo in good IF). This of course led to the need for ‘mapping’- drawing little boxes to represent locations and listing the object found within them and all possible exits. Mapping is still an important skill to have when playing IF and can certainly add to the enjoyment when playing certain geographically complex games. These days, most writers prefer having a good story and innovative puzzles compared to numerous rooms which serve no purpose but to confuse the player. This is evidenced by the numerous single-room games that have been created in the modern era of IF. However, I would not recommend using a 1-room game to introduce IF with students. Firstly, because we want to introduce IF as a simulated WORLD, not a simulated room. Students might get the wrong impression that all IF takes place in a single location. Secondly, my own students have shown a preference for multi-room stories because of the sense of movement and exploration they entail. This is in line with the theory of spatial immersion mentioned earlier. Commanding the player-character in ‘Bronze’ to move West into The Great Dining Hall is like the reader herself moving there as well and the flooding memories of Beauty, likewise become the memories of the reader. Until students become experienced with how to communicate with IF and what is expected of them, I would advise not using a multiple-location game that is too vast or too confusing (ie. with many UPs and DOWNs, and NEs and SWs, for ex.). Adding the need to map the game as they play while they are still grappling with basic IF mechanics may lead to cognitive overload.

•  5. Puzzle or no puzzle – IF games are often categorized as being ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’, related to the level of difficulty and importance given to puzzles in the game. Text adventures, by definition, are narratives with logical puzzles which need to solved in order for the story to progress. Indeed, the earliest text adventures were basically a series of puzzles with the barest of narrative to string them together. One of the innovations of modern IF was for the puzzle aspect to take a back-seat to the storytelling. This has led to the creation of ‘puzzle-less’ games where the player still interacts with the story (albeit, in a perhaps less-immersive manner). With regards to puzzles, for an introductory IF game, because it is important to give learners a general idea of what IF is, I would recommend a game WITH puzzles – but which are not too difficult, nor numerous in quantity. Puzzle-less games, although satisfying on a literary level, are usually not as well-received by students because of the large quantity of uninterrupted text and because reduced input removes the interactive element of IF, making it solely a reading experience and not a reading/playing experience. It is also important that you, as the teacher, know how to solve the puzzles yourself so that you can guide students towards a solution, if needed. In IF, getting stuck at a puzzle can lead to frustration and without some support, this can lead to giving up. Some learners like problem solving and are good at it, and others don’t. Again, like choosing a genre, predicting how well students will be able to solve a game’s puzzles is difficult.

•   6. Quality of parser – A game that understands a wide range of input and which provides more varied responses will be more pleasurable to play and able to captivate players for a longer time. In general, modern IF games will have better implemented parsers than older games, especially pre-Infocom and 2-word parser games, which should mostly be avoided.

•  7. Humour – Many games have humorous text (especially in responses) or involve humorous situations. I personally think that using humour is a great way to introduce anything, as it makes things more memorable. Introducing IF with game with a humorous slant might make it a more enjoyable and memorable experience.

• 8. Hint system – As you, the teacher, will be there to offer the learners support, a built-in hint system, available in many of the better-quality modern IF games is not strictly necessary. However, it does offer the learners a chance to be more autonomous while they play. Of course, the system can also be abused, but if told that their enjoyment of the game will suffer from using hints, most students will persevere until they are really stuck. Games with hint systems are ideal for autonomous learning scenarios.

•  9. Replay value – One of the unique aspects of IF is the ability to go back to a point in the game and make different choices and take different roads. Despite this, most games still have only one true ending which players will be guided to by overcoming the various obstacles set in their way. However, some IF games require multiple playings in order to reach various different endings or to see a more complete picture of the narrative.

• 10. Language difficulty – Because the whole reason we are talking about IF is to use it for language learning, some consideration needs to be given to the difficulty of the language presented in the game. Almost all IF games are examples of authentic language, they haven’t been scripted for language learners. There are a few works of IF which were created especially for language learning, but as with any ‘educational’ game, something gets lost while making them educational and many of the ‘fun’ elements of the game are no longer present. It is said that we should ‘grade the task, not the language’. This may be especially difficult given the fact that the whole text is authentic and often above the language proficiency level of most non-native speakers and that the task at hand is reading that text and progressing until the end of the game. Despite this, playing IF entails focusing on the process, not the product. Fluency and comprehension are stressed above linguistic analysis. By pre-teaching the vocabulary you deem to be more difficult, learners will be better prepared to interact with the text and students will additionally be forced to infer meaning from context. It is of course, necessary to go through a game yourself first and decide if the language is appropriate and at a level where your learners, with support, will be able to understand the text.

This last point is very important: play through the game beforehand so you know what vocabulary to pre-teach, the solution to puzzles and whether there may be certain paths worth taking in order to produce interesting narrative results. To help you with this, hints, maps and walkthroughs are for the most part, readily available on Internet.

Games and walkthroughs can be found here and here and can be searched using the above criteria on the user-created lists and polls.

My recommended game as an introduction to IF ?

9:05 by Adam Cadre

Based on the guidelines above, 9:05 is the perfect introduction to IF for the following reasons:

1. Genre/theme – the game is real-world based and the world model is easily assimilated by newcomers. It starts off with a basic everyday problem.

2. Plot – having one of the best twist ending in IF, the plot seems to be to get to work ASAP!

3. Length – this is a very short game- it can be completed in 20 minutes, leaving time for further replays.

4. Geographical size – although it takes place in 2 separate locations, with a car-drive in between, the number of rooms is very small and mapping is unnecessary.

5. Puzzle or puzzle-less – the only ‘puzzles’ involve the simple manipulation of every-day objects.

6. Quality of parser – the parser, while not a poor one, is the weakest element of the game.

7. Humour – an excellent example of dark humor, only to be discovered at the end.

8. Hint system – there is no hint system, but then again it is not necessary as there are no difficult puzzles.

9. Replay value – there is immense replay value as there are 2 different endings (a ‘good’ one and a ‘bad’ one) and students should be encouraged to go back and find evidence to corroborate the ending.

10- Language difficulty – the level of language is not too difficult and by pre-teaching 20-25 words, it can be easily completed by upper-intermediate students.

9:05 is an award-winning work of IF and rightly so – it deftly places you in the story and then yanks the floor out from under you! Devised as an experimental piece of IF, it plays on standard IF tropes and demands replay in order to prove the narrator wrong. I always discuss the ending(s) with my students afterwards and mention how this type of story would be impossible to do in a traditional book. It is usually an enormous hit with students and they remember the ending long after playing it. As I don’t want to give anything away, you will really need to play through it first in order to decide if the content is suitable for your learners – it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a MUST-play for anybody curious about IF.