You raise a lot of interesting points, points which, as you say, have been debated quite a bit without resolution. The lack of a clear resolution so far is the bad news. The good news is that there's room for innovation, creativity and experimentation to discover what works and what doesn't. I think it's a fascinating and exciting time, if not also frustrating.
Part of this is the shift from "text adventure" to "interactive fiction". They're just words, just labels, but they influence through their implications. And I think "interactive fiction" puts a lot more responsibility on an author than "text adventure" does. (I almost wrote "game author", but I shy away from the word "game" now. Certainly much of it can still be considered games, and that won't change, I hope. But there are also thrusts along the "fiction" lines, with an emphasis more on "player" driven narrative creation. Unfortunately, while intellectually interesting, some efforts along those lines leave - in my mind - something to be desired. Maybe I should just stick with "game"...)
You use the word "interactive" and try to define it or at least corral it a bit. A book I'd recommend to anyone interested in IF is "Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling". It covers quite a range of topics, all pertinent to IF. His ideal and goal is a "story world", a world (if I can offer my interpretation) in which you interact with "agents" through a rich, wide range of interactions such that the story you experience is unique to you. Rather than being linear or even branching, it's truly an interactive, adapting world where story plays out on various stages, with the course of events determined by what you do. You, the player, create the story, not the author. The author just creates the world where a variety of stories can take place.
In that book, he defines "interactive" as "A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks." That might sound a bit "tech-speak" in the beginning, but it ends on quite a common sense, human note. You have to give some interpretation to what it means for a machine to "listen", "think" and "speak", but it raises the bar a bit on what someone would expect from something truly interactive. I won't get much more into all he has to say, as I could write a book on it - and he already has, thankfully.
There has been great debate about the virtues and evils of the text parser in IF. I don't think a satisfactory alternative has been created yet, and some of the alternatives (e.g. hyperlink / CYOA type games), while playable, lack something. As a game author, I link the convenience of canned hyperlinks. As a game player, I appreciate the knowledge gained having things spelled out gives me, but I feel the loss when being spoon-fed everything.
I have a theory which is probably a bit restricted in its view but which has given me some food for thought.
If you consider some of the best loved games, they all have elements that tap into human psychology. I will admit at this point to a certain number of years under my belt, so if my references seem dated (or lame), please bear with me.
Think about a game like Space Invaders or Asteroids. While simplistic and repetitive, they were quite popular in their time. Why? Because they involve a very human desire to "clean up". We get a certain satisfaction from straightening things up, from putting them in their place, by organizing. In Asteroids, you get that real, though subtle, pleasure of, at the end of the level, clearing the screen.
There are always aspects to successful games that feed our need for something - whatever that something is. I can attest to the thrill of that special sound effect when you get an extra life in a Mario game or the old Williams arcade games (e.g. Defender, Robotron 2084). In the Zelda games, there is that special reward sound when you complete a task or open a new area to explore. I don't know if it's some sort of endorphin release or something less biological. But they tap directly into something in us that makes us want to keep going.
Even a game like Candy Crush - you're just moving little candies around to complete patterns, etc. But you also can create special kinds of candies that do things like take out rows or blow up a certain color or even more. You could be having the worst time on a level, and something like that comes along and, no matter whether it helps or not, you get a boost because you made something a bit cool happen.
I've played both parser-based and hyperlinked games. While I find the hyperlink games easier (since I don't have to fight with the parser), I find myself less satisfied with them. I'm not as engaged.
I think what it is (and here is my theory) is that with textual input that is parsed, just getting the command right gives you some sense of satisfaction. When I start up an IF game, just that first "l" or "look" to see where I am gives me a positive response to what I have typed. I have figured something out - I get a bit of a zing. That zing fades as the game progresses for common commands. Once I've more or less proven to myself that basic looking/taking/putting/navigating work, they lose their allure. I begin to crave new challenges, new problems to figure out, new things to type that do new and wondrous things.
I was playing a Spring Thing game by a Questor here, and though I didn't finish the game, I walked away feeling satisifed with what I did do - because I figured things out.
No matter what the hyperlinks do, just clicking on a hyperlink to see more text is not so satisfying. I'm not figuring things out as such. I am making a choice, and perhaps that's where the challenge comes in as an author. But I have yet to find a CYOA type game that I found really engaging.
Is it possible to structure things such that you can have a hyperlink game and still feel like you've solved problems along the way, still feeling satisfied just by playing? I think it must be. I'd love to work out something like that.
I think your analogy with other types of games is valid only to some extent. For example, I was playing Myst URU Online, which is an immersive, 3D first person, exploratory type game. Given the graphical nature and the incredible worlds and story lines they created, I was often happy just exploring. I did get satisfaction from solving puzzles as well, but I was so immersed, it often didn't matter. Could that be recreated textually? You could try, but we can take in an entire scene with a glance that it would take pages to plod through textually. They are just different media, and different rules apply.
while reading some debate about parser vs hyperlink games, one person said he likes the *illusion* in a parser-based game that you have unlimited choice. Of course, you don't, and that is usually brought home by how much you can't do. But perhaps that comes down to how much an author wants to invest in making a great number of different verbs and inputs work. I can appreciate when that has been done, but I don't have a desire to do it myself.
So how do you create the right balance between enough freedom and control that the player feels satisfaction all along the journey you have for them without giving them so little choice that they feel constrained and so much choice that they don't what to do next? I don't have the answer. Perhaps your scheme of a limited verb set would work. I'm intrigued to see it. One doubt I have is that Chris Crawford postulates that it's the verbs in a story world that make it rich more than the nouns. I'll leave that as food for thought for you. Perhaps if a reduced verb set works for you, if you can create the game you want with it, then it's good enough. I'll be happy to try what you come up with.
(And I'm always game and happy to discuss theory, philosophy, and the grander task and challenge of implementation!)
