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Start Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Interactive Fiction (IF), particularly that published by Infocom, originated computer games as we know them and helped to put personal computers (PCs) in our homes, yet its commercial heyday was short. In both popular and academic discourse, IF's rise and relative fall has been blamed primarily on the advent of graphic computer games, and secondarily on poor business decisions. Looking at the historical context of IF, and the wider context of computing, I argue in this paper that a significant contributor toward the dissolution of the most prominent IF creator, Infocom, is the more thorny and complex element of exclusion: its innate assumption that the default IF programmer, writer, narrator, and consumer must be white, cis/het, and male. Infocom arose in the hyper-masculinized world of computing, which had been largely formed by women before being aggressively colonized by men. An almost entirely male company creating IF exclusively for male audiences neglected the majority of the market’s “heavy readers”, and made risky business decisions based on aggressive expansion and risky investment into an area of software where they weren’t known and had little experience, and they were reluctant to alter their course in the face of contrary evidence—extreme choices that are far more likely to be made by men than women. Commercial IF was a victim of the computing—and now the games—industry’s rigidly defended culture of aggressive masculine colonization.
Misogyny Killed the Infocom Star
Interactive Fiction (IF), particularly that published by Infocom, originated computer games as we know them and helped to put personal computers (PCs) in our homes, yet its commercial heyday was short. In both popular and academic discourse, IF's rise and relative fall has been blamed primarily on the advent of graphic computer games, and secondarily on poor business decisions. Looking at the historical context of IF, and the wider context of computing, I argue in this paper that a significant contributor toward the dissolution of the most prominent IF creator, Infocom, is the more thorny and complex element of exclusion: its innate assumption that the default IF programmer, writer, narrator, and consumer must be white, cis/het, and male. Infocom arose in the hyper-masculinized world of computing, which had been largely formed by women before being aggressively colonized by men. An almost entirely male company creating IF exclusively for male audiences neglected the majority of the market’s “heavy readers”, and made risky business decisions based on aggressive expansion and risky investment into an area of software where they weren’t known and had little experience, and they were reluctant to alter their course in the face of contrary evidence—extreme choices that are far more likely to be made by men than women. Commercial IF was a victim of the computing—and now the games—industry’s rigidly defended culture of aggressive masculine colonization.
Bio
Dr. Lyle Skains researches interactive digital narratives for health and science communication, conducting practice-based research into writing, reading/playing, and publishing digital and transmedia narratives. She is also the co-organiser of the New Media Writing Prize. Her recent digital fiction includes No World 4 Tomorrow for the You & CO2 project, and Only, Always, Never for the Infectious Storytelling project; both works were designed to effect social change. Her latest book, Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health and Science Education, details these projects’ pilots, as well as offering insights into the creation of these works, and working in widely interdisciplinary teams. Her digital fiction can be found at lyleskains.com; articles in Convergence, Digital Creativity, and Computers and Composition; and monograph on Digital Authorship (Cambridge UP). She is currently a Principal Academic in Health and Science Communication at Bournemouth University.