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Electronic Fiction 101
Are computer games like Witness and Amazon literature? Not quite yet, according to Dr. Peter Jordan, an associate professor of English at Tennessee State University, who chaired a seminar that attempted to answer this question at a recently-held conference of the Popular Culture Association in Louisville, KY.
"The novelist creates the illusion of complex worlds," explains Dr. Jordan. "In the so-called interactive novels that I've seen, scenes are described in complex language, but the possibilities of worlds is limited by the interaction. Two questions should be asked: What is the artistic quality of the novels themselves and how effective is the interaction? In my opinion, parsers are still way too dumb. What we see right now is the awkward, crude rumblings of a new art form."
In programs such as Fahrenheit 451 and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. Jordan sees little improvement over the original Adventure by Crothers and Wood. "The adventure version of Hitchhiker's does a fair job only because Hitchhiker's is not much of a book," he says. "And I'm not sure that Pac-Man as a game isn't better than Witness." Though Dr. Jordan has yet to "read" Synapse's Mindwheel, he contends that "doubling the size of the parser is still quantum leaps below the effects of reading a novel. I really think it's a long way off before [electronic novels] become a form of literature."
Next year's Pop Culture conference will discuss various aspects of computer entertainment. Proposals for papers should be sent to Dr. Jordan's attention at Tennesses St. U., Dept. of English, College of Arts & Sciences, Downtown Campus, 10th & Charlotte, Nashville, TN 37203.
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