├── pic ├── new-header.jpg ├── issue-61 │ ├── 61-dannii.jpg │ ├── eurydice.jpg │ ├── 61-jim-munroe.jpeg │ ├── SPAG-Cover-61.jpg │ ├── deadline-cover.jpg │ ├── eurydice-thumb.jpg │ ├── makeitgood-cover.jpg │ ├── 61-andromeda-covers.png │ ├── 61-gy_cover_340x340.gif │ ├── 61-marco-innocenti.jpg │ ├── 61-kerkerkruip-tentacle.jpg │ └── 61-andromeda-apocalyse-thumb.jpg ├── issue-64 │ ├── 64-HOPA1.jpg │ ├── 64-HOPA2.jpg │ ├── 64-HOPA3.jpg │ ├── bloom-cover.png │ └── birdland-cover.jpg ├── issue-61-5 │ ├── the-hours.jpg │ ├── the-hours-thumb.jpg │ └── Ode to Daniel Stelzer.gblorb └── issue-62 │ ├── 62-ownpath-1.jpg │ ├── 62-ownpath-2.jpg │ ├── SPAG-Cover-62.jpg │ ├── SPAG-Cover-alt-62.jpg │ ├── 62-ownpath-1-thumb.jpg │ ├── 62-ownpath-2-thumb.jpg │ ├── 62-ownpath-in-context.jpg │ └── 62-ownpath-in-context-thumb.jpg ├── htdocs ├── archives │ ├── backissues │ │ ├── .htaccess │ │ ├── images │ │ │ ├── 1893.jpg │ │ │ ├── beyond.jpg │ │ │ ├── cities.jpg │ │ │ ├── handyman.jpg │ │ │ ├── king_map.png │ │ │ ├── beyond_zork.png │ │ │ ├── ghosttown.png │ │ │ ├── lacuna_map.png │ │ │ ├── moonwatch.PNG │ │ │ ├── speedif_pax.jpg │ │ │ ├── trinity_map.png │ │ │ ├── zork1_map.png │ │ │ ├── zork1_maze.png │ │ │ ├── cover_ed_2011_04.jpg │ │ │ ├── heliopause-actions.png │ │ │ ├── awareness_panel_pax.jpg │ │ │ └── storytelling_panel_pax.jpg │ │ ├── index.html │ │ ├── call55.html │ │ ├── call58.html │ │ ├── call57.html │ │ ├── call56.html │ │ ├── call59.html │ │ ├── call60.html │ │ └── call60a.html │ ├── spag.png │ ├── spagt.jpg │ ├── xyzzy.gif │ ├── banner3.jpg │ ├── letters │ │ ├── a.gif │ │ ├── b.gif │ │ ├── c.gif │ │ ├── d.gif │ │ ├── e.gif │ │ ├── f.gif │ │ ├── g.gif │ │ ├── h.gif │ │ ├── i.gif │ │ ├── j.gif │ │ ├── k.gif │ │ ├── l.gif │ │ ├── m.gif │ │ ├── n.gif │ │ ├── o.gif │ │ ├── p.gif │ │ ├── q.gif │ │ ├── r.gif │ │ ├── s.gif │ │ ├── t.gif │ │ ├── u.gif │ │ ├── v.gif │ │ ├── w.gif │ │ ├── x.gif │ │ ├── y.gif │ │ └── z.gif │ ├── style │ │ ├── bluball.gif │ │ ├── spagbg.png │ │ ├── spagbg-orig.png │ │ └── spag.css │ ├── .htaccess │ ├── x.html │ ├── reviews.txt │ ├── index-2011.html │ ├── index-2006.html │ ├── reviews.html │ ├── frame.html │ ├── noframe.html │ ├── links.html │ ├── index.html │ └── backissues.html ├── reviews │ └── index.html ├── issue-61-5 │ ├── spag-valentines │ │ └── index.html │ └── the-year-that-was │ │ └── index.html ├── issue-63 │ └── issue-63-letter-from-the-editor │ │ └── index.html ├── about │ └── index.html ├── issue-64 │ └── issue-64-letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions │ │ └── index.html └── issue-61 │ └── editorial │ └── index.html ├── README.md ├── templates ├── archives.html ├── article.html ├── issue.html ├── reviews.html ├── page.html ├── front.html └── about.html ├── css ├── font.css └── style.css ├── comsnarf.py ├── articles ├── issue-61-5 │ ├── spag-valentines │ ├── the-year-that-was │ └── issue-61-5-letter-from-the-editor-masthead-and-call-for-submissions ├── issue-63 │ └── issue-63-letter-from-the-editor ├── issue-64 │ ├── issue-64-letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions │ └── spag-specifics-caelyn-sandels-bloom ├── issue-61 │ └── editorial └── issue-62 │ ├── the-writer-will-do-something-matthew-burns-review │ ├── poetry-is-what-gets-lost-in-translation-notes-on-translating-patanoir-and-sunday-morning │ ├── letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions │ └── active-fiction-project-vancouver └── massage.py /pic/new-header.jpg: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iftechfoundation/spagmag/main/pic/new-header.jpg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/.htaccess: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | ForceType text/plain;charset="UTF-8" 3 | 4 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/spag.png: 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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iftechfoundation/spagmag/main/htdocs/archives/backissues/images/storytelling_panel_pax.jpg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/.htaccess: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | RewriteEngine On 2 | 3 | RewriteRule ^backissues/index.html$ /archives/ [L,R=301] 4 | RewriteRule ^backissues/?$ /archives/ [L,R=301] 5 | #Rewriterule ^rss.xml$ http://www.spagmag.org/feed/ [L,R=301] 6 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # SPAG Magazine web site repository 2 | 3 | - Web site: https://spagmag.org/ 4 | 5 | This repository holds the files and scripts I used in updating the SPAG files for their new web host. 6 | 7 | This repo will probably not be used again, unless I have reason to change the site format or page footer. I'm just stashing it on Github because it's easy to do. 8 | 9 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/archives.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | {% extends "page.html" %} 2 | 3 | {% block content %} 4 | 5 |

SPAG Issue Index

6 | 7 | 15 | 16 | {% endblock %} 17 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Index of issues 5 | 6 |
7 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 8 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 9 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 10 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 11 |

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13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /css/font.css: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | @font-face { 3 | font-family: "Open Sans"; 4 | font-style: normal; 5 | src: url("/font/OpenSans-Regular.ttf") format("truetype"); 6 | } 7 | 8 | @font-face { 9 | font-family: "Open Sans"; 10 | font-style: italic; 11 | src: url("/font/OpenSans-Italic.ttf") format("truetype"); 12 | } 13 | 14 | @font-face { 15 | font-family: "Open Sans"; 16 | font-style: normal; 17 | font-weight: bold; 18 | src: url("/font/OpenSans-Bold.ttf") format("truetype"); 19 | } 20 | 21 | @font-face { 22 | font-family: "Open Sans"; 23 | font-style: italic; 24 | font-weight: bold; 25 | src: url("/font/OpenSans-BoldItalic.ttf") format("truetype"); 26 | } 27 | 28 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/style/spag.css: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | body { 2 | Background-color: #ffffff; 3 | Background-image: url(spagbg.png); 4 | /*Background-attachment: fixed;*/ 5 | Color: #000000; 6 | Margin-left: 10%; 7 | Margin-right: 10%; 8 | } 9 | 10 | h1 { 11 | Font-width: bold; 12 | Text-align: center; 13 | Font-family: Courier New, monospace; 14 | } 15 | 16 | h1 #title { 17 | Font-size: 2em; 18 | Color: #0000ff; 19 | } 20 | 21 | h1 #subtitle { 22 | Font-size: 1.2em; 23 | Color: #000000; 24 | } 25 | 26 | h2 { 27 | Font-width: bold; 28 | Font-size: 1.2em; 29 | } 30 | 31 | div { 32 | Border: 1px solid black; 33 | Background-color: #ffffff; 34 | Margin: 1em; 35 | Padding: 0.5em; 36 | } 37 | 38 | ul { 39 | List-style-image: url(bluball.gif); 40 | Margin-left: 0; 41 | Margin-right: 0; 42 | Padding-left: 2em; 43 | } 44 | 45 | #oldfooter { 46 | clear: both 47 | } 48 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/article.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | {% extends "page.html" %} 2 | 3 | {% block content %} 4 | 5 |

Issue {{ issue.showindex }}: 6 | {% autoescape false -%} 7 | {% if art.alttitle %}{{ art.alttitle }}{% else %}{{ art.showtitle }}{% endif %} 8 | {%- endautoescape -%} 9 |

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44 | {% endif %} 45 | 46 | {% endblock %} 47 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/x.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Game Reviews X - SPAG 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |

15 | SPAG 16 |
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Sorry, there are no reviews of games beginning with X!

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Go to the next page of reviews (Y)

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SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 33 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 34 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 35 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 36 |

37 |
38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/reviews.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | Hi, folks... 2 | 3 | SPAG Issue #50 is drawing near. I don't have any great celebrations planned for this milestone, but I do have a couple of very nice features already in the hopper. What I don't have, though, is reviews. That's where I was hoping you might help me out. 4 | 5 | This issue will be coming out just AFTER the Competition concludes, which means the Comp games will be fair game. If you have something to say about anything you played this year, or feel the urge to flesh out some of your capsule reviews into longer pieces, please think about submitting your work to SPAG. 6 | 7 | There are also lots and lots of games from earlier this year needing attention. Here's a list to give you some ideas: 8 | 9 | Suburst Contamination 10 | Spring Thing 2007 games (any, some, or all) 11 | Adventurer Consumer's Guide 12 | IF Art Show 2007 games (any, some, or all) 13 | Lovecraft Commonplace Book Project games (any, some, or all) 14 | Blighted Isle 15 | Ghost Town: The Lost Treasure 16 | IntroComp 2007 games (any, some, or all) 17 | Crystal and Stone and Beetle and Bone 18 | Lydia's Heart 19 | Weishaupt Scholars 20 | The Beast of Torrack Moor (Inform 7 version) 21 | 22 | There's been a lot of activity this year, and SPAG is way behind in keeping track of it. Please think about helping out. 23 | 24 | The deadline for submissions will be November 20, 2007. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/issue.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | {% extends "page.html" %} 2 | 3 | {% block content %} 4 | 5 |
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Issue {{ issue.showindex }}

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SPAG Review Index

6 | 7 |

8 | This index covers issues 1 through 60. For the contents of issues 9 | 61-64, see the front page. 10 |

11 | 12 |

13 | You can browse through SPAG game reviews by 14 | game author, 15 | reviewer, 16 | or game title (starting with): 17 |

18 | 19 |

20 |  A  21 |  B  22 |  C  23 |  D  24 |  E  25 |  F  26 |  G  27 |  H  28 |  I  29 |  J  30 |  K  31 |  L  32 |  M  33 |  N  34 |  O  35 |  P  36 |  Q  37 |  R  38 |  S  39 |  T  40 |  U  41 |  V  42 |  W  43 |  X  44 |  Y  45 |  Z  46 |

47 | 48 | {% endblock %} 49 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/page.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | {%- if not title %}SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine{% else %}SPAG: {{ title }}{% endif -%} 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
18 | 32 |
33 | {% block content %}{% endblock %} 34 |
35 | 49 |
50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /comsnarf.py: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | import sys 2 | import re 3 | 4 | from html_sanitizer import Sanitizer 5 | 6 | pat_headstart = re.compile('
') 7 | pat_head = re.compile('(.*).*') 8 | pat_btag = re.compile(']*>(.*)]*>') 9 | pat_linktag = re.compile(']*>(.*)]*>') 10 | pat_comstart = re.compile('
') 11 | pat_comend = re.compile('') 12 | 13 | sanitizer = Sanitizer({ 'add_nofollow': True }) 14 | 15 | fl = open(sys.argv[1]) 16 | 17 | comments = [] 18 | 19 | dat = None 20 | body = None 21 | 22 | for ln in fl.readlines(): 23 | ln = ln.strip() 24 | if pat_headstart.match(ln): 25 | dat = {} 26 | body = None 27 | continue 28 | match = pat_head.search(ln) 29 | if match: 30 | dat['timestamp'] = match.group(2) 31 | dat['timestr'] = match.group(3) 32 | val = match.group(1).strip() 33 | match = pat_btag.match(val) 34 | if match: 35 | val = match.group(1) 36 | match = pat_linktag.match(val) 37 | if match: 38 | val = match.group(2) 39 | dat['authorurl'] = match.group(1) 40 | dat['author'] = val 41 | continue 42 | match = pat_comstart.match(ln) 43 | if match: 44 | body = [] 45 | continue 46 | match = pat_comend.search(ln) 47 | if match: 48 | body = '\n'.join(body) 49 | body = sanitizer.sanitize(body) 50 | dat['body'] = body 51 | comments.append(dat) 52 | dat = None 53 | body = None 54 | continue 55 | if body is not None: 56 | body.append(ln) 57 | 58 | if comments: 59 | print('\n----') 60 | for dat in comments: 61 | for key, val in dat.items(): 62 | print('%s: %s' % (key, val,)) 63 | print('\n----') 64 | 65 | 66 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/front.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | {% extends "page.html" %} 2 | 3 | {% block content %} 4 | 5 |

Welcome to SPAG, the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games.

6 | 7 |

8 | SPAG was an Internet magazine dedicated to criticism, reviews, and the 9 | preservation and furthering of the art of Interactive Fiction. 10 | Founded in 1994, SPAG was a pillar of the IF community for more than 11 | two decades. 12 |

13 | 14 |

15 | SPAG was founded by G. Kevin Wilson and published regularly through 16 | 2011 by Magnus Olsson, Paul O'Brian, Jimmy Maher, and David Monath. 17 | It was then revived from 2013 to 2016 by Dannii Willis, Matt Carey, 18 | and Katherine Morayati. Since 2016 it has been dormant. 19 |

20 | 21 |

22 | As of 2025, the SPAG web site is maintained by the 23 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 24 | This site is no longer updated. 25 | Some links (to obsolete versions of 26 | IFDB and the 27 | IF Archive) 28 | have been modernized, but many other links are out of date and 29 | do not work. 30 |

31 | 32 |

33 | If you have questions, please contact 34 | info@ifarchive.org 35 | rather than any of the addresses listed in SPAG back issues. 36 |

37 | 38 |

Most recent issues

39 | 40 | {% for issue in issues %} 41 | 42 |
43 | 44 | 45 |

Issue {{ issue.showindex }}

46 | 47 | 60 | 61 | {% endfor %} 62 | 63 |
64 | 65 |

Older Issues (1-60)...

66 | 67 | {% endblock %} 68 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-61-5/spag-valentines: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Yes, that’s right — your Valentines are finally* in! (Love has no season, why’s there gotta be a separate day for it, grumblegrumpexcuse.) Thanks for the response! We have three entries, and befitting the broad nature of modern-day IF, they are all in different forms: one in Twine, one in Inform, and one in text. They are below:

2 | 15 |

Valentines are hosted via Dropbox [ed: now hosted on the SPAG site], except [one] which is in sonnet form, and below:

16 |

Bravo to the scribes of Inform 7:
17 | like Prometheus’ theft of fire,
18 | such a gift could be sent down from heaven —
19 | advent crowed by troubadour and crier.

20 |

Thinking thoughts out loud is all one’s needing
21 | to create a universe uniquely
22 | yours — and all your furtive fruitful seeding
23 | blooms in others’ gamboling obliquely.

24 |

Now must I kowtow upon the floor.  You
25 | gave us all the tools for work and playing
26 | freely and without a catch, therefore: to
27 | Mister Nelson’s crew, here’s much hooraying!

28 |

For a gift, you see, that keeps on giving;
29 | text adventures’ triage back to living.

30 |

Thanks everyone! We hope to see you again next Valentine’s Day, with even more author and developer love.

31 |

* Your editor is clearly the Gretchen Weiners in this scenario.

32 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /css/style.css: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | body { 3 | background: #EEE; 4 | margin: 0px; 5 | font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 6 | } 7 | 8 | #maincol { 9 | background: white; 10 | box-shadow: 0px 0px 8px #00000040; 11 | color: #333; 12 | max-width: 800px; 13 | box-sizing: border-box; 14 | margin: 0px auto; 15 | padding-left: 40px; 16 | padding-right: 40px; 17 | } 18 | 19 | #header { 20 | position: relative; 21 | width: 100%; 22 | padding-top: 40px; 23 | } 24 | 25 | #header .HeaderImage { 26 | width: 100%; 27 | border-radius: 3px; 28 | box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #00000040; 29 | } 30 | 31 | #header #navbar { 32 | margin-top: 20px; 33 | margin-bottom: 40px; 34 | padding-top: 10px; 35 | padding-bottom: 10px; 36 | border-top: 1px solid #DDD; 37 | border-bottom: 1px solid #DDD; 38 | font-size: 80%; 39 | } 40 | 41 | #header .NavItem { 42 | display: inline-block; 43 | margin-left: 20px; 44 | margin-right: 20px; 45 | } 46 | 47 | #header .NavItem:first-child { 48 | margin-left: 0px; 49 | } 50 | 51 | .NavItem a { 52 | color: #555; 53 | } 54 | 55 | #footer { 56 | position: relative; 57 | width: 100%; 58 | border-top: 1px solid #DDD; 59 | padding-bottom: 20px; 60 | font-size: 80%; 61 | } 62 | 63 | h2 { 64 | font-size: 120%; 65 | } 66 | 67 | h3 { 68 | font-size: 100%; 69 | } 70 | 71 | .IssueList { 72 | list-style: none; 73 | padding-left: 20px; 74 | } 75 | 76 | .IssueContents { 77 | list-style: none; 78 | padding-left: 10px; 79 | } 80 | 81 | .IssueItem { 82 | font-weight: bold; 83 | margin-top: 10px; 84 | margin-bottom: 10px; 85 | } 86 | 87 | .IssueComments { 88 | margin-left: 2em; 89 | } 90 | 91 | .CommentHead { 92 | font-weight: bold; 93 | font-size: 90%; 94 | } 95 | 96 | .ArticleComments .CommentHead { 97 | margin-top: 2em; 98 | } 99 | 100 | .CommentDate { 101 | font-size: 80%; 102 | color: #888; 103 | } 104 | 105 | .CommentBody { 106 | font-size: 90%; 107 | } 108 | 109 | .DateLine { 110 | float: right; 111 | display: inline-block; 112 | font-size: 90%; 113 | } 114 | 115 | .ImageCaption { 116 | font-weight: bold; 117 | font-size: 85%; 118 | } 119 | 120 | .AboutAuthor { 121 | font-size: 90%; 122 | } 123 | 124 | hr { 125 | height: 1px; 126 | border: none; 127 | border-top: 1px solid #DDD; 128 | } 129 | 130 | a { 131 | color: #20759A; 132 | text-decoration: none; 133 | } 134 | 135 | a:hover { 136 | text-decoration: underline; 137 | } 138 | 139 | .Center { 140 | text-align: center; 141 | } 142 | 143 | .FloatRight { 144 | float: right; 145 | margin-left: 1em; 146 | } 147 | 148 | .FullWidthImage { 149 | max-width: 100%; 150 | } 151 | 152 | .CenterImage { 153 | max-width: 100%; 154 | object-fit: contain; 155 | } 156 | 157 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/reviews/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 28 |
29 | 30 | 31 |

SPAG Review Index

32 | 33 |

34 | This index covers issues 1 through 60. For the contents of issues 35 | 61-64, see the front page. 36 |

37 | 38 |

39 | You can browse through SPAG game reviews by 40 | game author, 41 | reviewer, 42 | or game title (starting with): 43 |

44 | 45 |

46 |  A  47 |  B  48 |  C  49 |  D  50 |  E  51 |  F  52 |  G  53 |  H  54 |  I  55 |  J  56 |  K  57 |  L  58 |  M  59 |  N  60 |  O  61 |  P  62 |  Q  63 |  R  64 |  S  65 |  T  66 |  U  67 |  V  68 |  W  69 |  X  70 |  Y  71 |  Z  72 |

73 | 74 | 75 |
76 | 84 |
85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/index-2011.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | SPAG - Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games

SPAG
Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games

3 | 4 |

5 | 6 | SPAG is an e-zine covering textual interactive fiction and other types of interactive narrative through reviews, interviews, and articles. It is published on a roughly quarterly basis. If you would like to automatically be notified when a new issue of SPAG is published, feel free to subscribe to our mailing list. The latest issue of SPAG is #60, published on April 25, 2011.

7 | 8 |

9 | SPAG was founded by G. Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, and is currently edited by Dannii Willis. The SPAG website was designed by Felix Pleşoianu.

10 | 11 |

If you'd like to contribute to SPAG, thank you! Check the latest call for submissions for topics we are particularly interested in.

12 | 13 | 35 | 36 | 37 |
38 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 39 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 40 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 41 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 42 |

43 |
44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-63/issue-63-letter-from-the-editor: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Hello! At long last, Issue 63 of SPAG is upon us, at quite a prolific time IF events-wise — the XYZZY Awards just opened first-round voting, and a new crop of quite good IF works are available via Spring Thing. We’ve been at this IF thing for over a decade; we’ve come a long way from a spate of IF content in October then nothing. May it continue to flourish.

2 |

First, a little disclaimer about this issue. As many of you know, I was an entrant in 2015’s comp with Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory2015’s comp also saw an unusual amount of inter-author discussion and collaboration, and I’ve since come to consider many of my fellow entrants friends. Therefore, I’ve made the difficult decision that it would be a conflict of interest for SPAG to review the comp, as has been traditional in previous years. (To my knowledge, this situation has not previously come up for several years, if not a decade.)

3 |

That said! Spring Thing 2016 is now upon us, and CoI-free! Therefore, I’m soliciting reviews of Spring Thing entriesBack Garden and otherwise; as always, extra points for succinct and/or diversionary takes.

4 |

As always, I’m soliciting pitches as well! There’s no formal theme this time around, but always welcome are:

5 |
    6 |
  • SPAG Specifics on stories of your choice. This issue features a Specifics entry on Slammed! by Paolo Chikiamco and Choice Of Games, but be more  (Issue 64, for instance, will feature an entry on interactive film.) (To be clear, this includes IFcomp entries. Except maybe mine. Unless you really want to.)
  • 7 |
  • Interviews and/or reviews of figures in the IF world and/or adjacent to it. I define this broadly; if you’re wondering whether someone counts, it can’t hurt to get in touch!
  • 8 |
  • Live coverage, if you live in an area with a significant live interactive fiction presence. This can range from exhibits, to conference coverage, to performances.
  • 9 |
  • Essays of any kind. The more unexpected, the better.
  • 10 |
  • Basically anything you can think of will be considered!
  • 11 |
12 |

As always, I welcome pitches by and about women, people of color, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented writers.

13 |

Send pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com. There’s no deadline, but I’d love to hear from you! ETA for Issue 64 is late summer to fall.

14 |

In addition, SPAG is also seeking an artist! This primarily entails cover art — you can see past examples in back issues — but if you have something else in mind, I’d love to hear from you about this as well.

15 |

(Payment for all of the above can be negotiated.)

16 |

Thanks for reading as always! I hope you enjoy this issue.

17 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/index-2006.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | SPAG - Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |

SPAG
17 | 18 | Society for the Promotion of Adventure 19 | Games

20 | 21 |
22 |

SPAG is an informative e-zine designed primarily to keep the 23 | gaming 24 | public aware of textual interactive fiction and other types of 25 | interactive 26 | narrative available today. Most of the space is devoted to reviews. A 27 | new edition of SPAG is published each quarter. Generally, you can 28 | expect a new issue in January, April, July, and 29 | October of each year. If you would like to automatically receive each 30 | new issue of SPAG in your email box shortly before it appears on this 31 | site, feel free to subscribe. 32 |  The latest issue of SPAG is 33 | #46, 34 | published on October 17, 2006.

35 | 36 |

SPAG was founded by G. Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, and is 37 | currently edited by Jimmy 38 | Maher. The SPAG website was designed by Felix Plesoianu.

39 | 40 |
41 | 42 |
43 | 58 | 59 | 68 | 69 | 82 | 83 | 93 | 94 |
95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 |
100 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 101 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 102 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 103 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 104 |

105 |
106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-64/issue-64-letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

The IF world, like most artistic fields, is seasonal, and as in music and (to an extent) film, August is a slower month, full of what David Rakoff called “the opposite of hanging out.” If fall and spring are full of new content, awards and the occasional conference or two, late summer is that in-between season, one that looks languid on the surface but conceals a lot of hard work. Dozens of authors, as you read this, are preparing competition entries for the September deadline, or solidifying commercial pitches, or — for those really ahead of schedule — getting their work playtested.

2 |

If you’re like me, you’re taking a lot of breaks from being hard at work for such edifying pursuits as playing Minesweeper ripoffs and looking at online auctions for swing coats. But if you’re not like me, you’re using that time to read Issue 64 of SPAG — one I’m especially proud of!

3 |

For Issue 64, we’re taking an especially broad view of interactive fiction and its connections, both obvious and not, to other fields. This issue features the dubious, beyond-spotty history of interactive film, the evolution of storytelling in hidden-object games, and the applications of parser games to artificial intelligence research. Of course, we’ve got plenty of more traditional coverage as well, including a Specifics entry on Caelyn Sandel’s episodic piece Bloom and an interview with Brendan Patrick Hennessy, whose Birdland flew away with an entire gaggle of XYZZY Awards, as well as other, less forcedly metaphorical praise.

4 |

After you’re done reading, perhaps you’d like to contribute to our next issue? Issue 65, like this one, has no formal theme (as we’ve seen, these things tend to come together organically), but as always, welcome are:

5 |
    6 |
  • SPAG Specifics on stories of your choice. These are less traditional reviews and more in-depth critical pieces on how a particular piece does what it does.
  • 7 |
  • Interviews and/or reviews of figures in the IF world and/or adjacent to it, defined broadly.
  • 8 |
  • Live coverage, if you live in an area with a significant live interactive fiction presence. This can range from exhibitions to conference coverage to performances to whatever the world dreams up. (Free pitch idea: if you’re a reader in the Toronto area attending the 2016 Wordplay Festival in early November who is not me, I’d like to hear from you.)
  • 9 |
  • Essays of any kind. The more unexpected, the better.
  • 10 |
  • Basically anything you can think of related to interactive fiction will be considered!
  • 11 |
12 |

As always, I welcome pitches by and about women, people of color, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented writers. Also: there is payment commensurate with standard online writing rates.

13 |

Send pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com. There’s no deadline, but I’d love to hear from you! In keeping with our rough quarterly schedule, Issue 65 will likely arrive around late fall or winter. (What this means for you: anything related to 2016’s competition entries is probably best suited to #66.)

14 |

Thanks for reading as ever! We hope you enjoy this issue, and send us the makings of another great one.

15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call55.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #55 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 |

SPAG

69 |
70 | 71 |
72 | 73 | 74 | 75 |

Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #55 (Deadline: June 30, 2009)

76 | 77 |

Hi, folks...

78 | 79 |

The time has come to start putting together SPAG Issue #55. As usual, I am eager to receive original articles on just about any aspect of IF craft, theory, culture, or history, in-depth SPAG Specifics analyses of specific games, and even interviews with IF luminaries. In addition, good old reviews are also more than welcome. If you are having trouble choosing a title to review, here are some worthy suggestions:

80 | 81 | Dead Like Ants
82 | La Seine
83 | A Flustered Duck
84 | The Milk of Paradise
85 | Realm of Obsidian
86 | Vague
87 | Make It Good
88 | GDC: The Game
89 | Inside Woman
90 | 91 |

I'd like to have all submissions in by June 30, 2009, for publication very shortly thereafter. You can send your submissions to me at maher@grandecom.net in whatever format suits you best, or you can use the handy form on the home page of the SPAG website.

92 | 93 | Thanks in advance,
94 | Jimmy 95 | 96 |
97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 |
103 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 104 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 105 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 106 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 107 |

108 |
109 | 110 | 111 | 112 | 113 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /templates/about.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | {% extends "page.html" %} 2 | 3 | {% block content %} 4 | 5 |

About SPAG

6 | 7 |

NOTE: This page describes SPAG as of its final issue. 8 | It has not been updated since 2016. Links may be out of date.

9 | 10 |

11 | For more historical index pages, see: 12 | front page circa 2011; 13 | front page circa 2006; 14 | FAQ circa 2008 15 |

16 | 17 |
18 | 19 |

Welcome to SPAG, the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games magazine. Founded in 1994 by G. Kevin Wilson, SPAG has been a pillar of the Interactive Fiction community for almost two decades, and we’re proud to still be doing our part for this vibrant art form.

20 |

Interactive Fiction (IF) is one of the oldest forms of computer entertainment, and every year pushes its boundaries further; although the first IF works were indeed games about adventurers, today most are not, and it makes much more sense to talk about IF stories or works rather than IF games. Instead what binds the community together is a love for words and a curiosity to explore interactivity in a way traditional genres cannot.

21 |

To get started with IF we recommend the People’s Republic of IF playlist, a list of award-winning IF stories, all of which can be played in your web browser. To find further stories, check out the Interactive Fiction Database. Many stories discussed in SPAG cannot be played online, so for them we recommend Gargoyle. To discuss the stories you’re playing, or the one you’re attempting to write yourself, visit the IF Community Forum.

22 |

Issues of SPAG are published on a roughly quarterly basis. Sixty issues of SPAG were published before the shift to this website. Find our older issues at the archives. In the past SPAG had a big focus on reviews, but as there are now many websites hosting reviews (such as the IFDB), we want to focus on articles that analyse and synthesise the ideas of the IF world. If you like the sound of that and would like to write for SPAG, please contact us, we’re always looking for more authors!

23 | 24 |

MASTHEAD (2016)

25 | 26 |

Editor-in-Chief: Katherine Morayati

27 |

Katherine Morayati is an IF author and critic; her credits include Broken Legs (second place, 2009 IF Competition) and a swath of other, smaller works and reviews. In her other life, she’s a music critic who writes as Katherine St. Asaph and helps run a mini-constellation of blogs.

28 |

Managing Editor: Matt Carey

29 |

Matt Carey is a longtime IF follower and the author of a number of acclaimed (pseudonymous) works, both parser and Twine; he’s also the former editor of the science-fiction zine Labyrinth Inhabitant.

30 |

Senior Editor/Webmaster: Dannii Willis

31 |

Dannii Willis is the previous editor of SPAG, the maintainer of Parchment and the developer of Kerkerkruip. He hopes to one day produce a work of IF himself, but for now his creativity is directed toward the ones and zeros of technology.

32 |

Artist: J. Robinson Wheeler

33 |

J. Robinson Wheeler is a freelance author, graphic designer and writer from Austin, Texas, and the author of IF works including Being Andrew PlotkinFour in One and First Things First.

34 | 35 |

EDITORS EMERITUS

36 | 37 |

38 | G. Kevin Wilson, Magnus Olsson, Paul O'Brian, Jimmy Maher, David Monath. 39 |

40 | 41 |

ORIGINAL SITE DESIGNER

42 | 43 |

44 | Felix Pleşoianu. 45 |

46 | 47 | {% endblock %} 48 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call58.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #58 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 |

SPAG

65 |
66 | 67 |
68 | 69 | 70 | 71 |

Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #58 (Deadline: May 21, 2010)

Hi, folks...
72 | 73 |
74 | 75 | The time has come to start pulling together content for the next issue 76 | of SPAG (http://www.sparknet.com/spag), and I could use your help.
77 | 78 |
79 | 80 | In particular, we have a whole lot of games to review from the Jay Is 81 | Games competition (http://jayisgames.com/cgdc7/) -- 30, to be exact. 82 | I'd like to put a team together to tackle these, as I've done with the 83 | big fall Comp the last couple of years. Therefore, if you are willing 84 | and able to review a handful of randomly assigned short, presumably 85 | casual text adventures, please let me know.
86 | 87 |
88 | 89 | And Raising the Flag on Mount Yo Momma, by Juhana Leinonen, needs a 90 | review. Reviews of other games, old or new, are of course also welcome, 91 | as are articles, interviews, and films (that sort of thing being 92 | popular in IF circles these days). Drop me a line if you have a 93 | proposal to discuss.
94 | 95 |
96 | 97 | The deadline for submissions is May 21, 2010.
98 | 99 |
100 | 101 | Thanks in advance,
102 | 103 | Jimmy
104 | 105 |
106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 |
112 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 113 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 114 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 115 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 116 |

117 |
118 | 119 | 120 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/issue-61-5/spag-valentines/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 30 |
31 | 32 | 33 |

Issue 61.5: 34 | SPAG Valentines!

35 | 36 | 37 |

February 2, 2015

38 | 39 | 40 | 41 |

Yes, that’s right — your Valentines are finally* in! (Love has no season, why’s there gotta be a separate day for it, grumblegrumpexcuse.) Thanks for the response! We have three entries, and befitting the broad nature of modern-day IF, they are all in different forms: one in Twine, one in Inform, and one in text. They are below:

42 | 55 |

Valentines are hosted via Dropbox [ed: now hosted on the SPAG site], except [one] which is in sonnet form, and below:

56 |

Bravo to the scribes of Inform 7:
57 | like Prometheus’ theft of fire,
58 | such a gift could be sent down from heaven —
59 | advent crowed by troubadour and crier.

60 |

Thinking thoughts out loud is all one’s needing
61 | to create a universe uniquely
62 | yours — and all your furtive fruitful seeding
63 | blooms in others’ gamboling obliquely.

64 |

Now must I kowtow upon the floor.  You
65 | gave us all the tools for work and playing
66 | freely and without a catch, therefore: to
67 | Mister Nelson’s crew, here’s much hooraying!

68 |

For a gift, you see, that keeps on giving;
69 | text adventures’ triage back to living.

70 |

Thanks everyone! We hope to see you again next Valentine’s Day, with even more author and developer love.

71 |

* Your editor is clearly the Gretchen Weiners in this scenario.

72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 |
80 | 94 |
95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/reviews.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Review index - SPAG 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |

15 | SPAG 16 |
17 | Review index 18 |

19 | 20 |
21 | 22 |

Currently all issues have been indexed.

23 | 24 |

25 | Click on the letter of the 26 | alphabet to see the reviews for games that begin with that letter. 27 |

28 |

29 | A 30 | B 31 | C 32 | D 33 | E 34 | F 35 | G 36 | H 37 | I 38 | J 39 | K 40 | L 41 | M
42 | 43 | N 44 | O 45 | P 46 | Q 47 | R 48 | S 49 | T 50 | U 51 | V 52 | W 53 | X 54 | Y 55 | Z 56 |

57 | 58 |
59 | 60 | 64 | 65 |
66 | 67 |

68 | E-mail the editor, Jimmy Maher 69 | or the SPAG Website maintainer, 70 | Joe DeRouen, 71 | with comments and questions. 72 | 73 |

74 | 75 |

Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive!

76 | 77 |
78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 |
84 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 85 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 86 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 87 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 88 |

89 |
90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /massage.py: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | import sys 2 | import os, os.path 3 | import re 4 | import ftfy 5 | 6 | def scrape_file(bdat, filename): 7 | dat = guess_encoding(bdat) 8 | if filename in ('spag43.html', 'SPAG43'): 9 | dat = ftfy.fix_text(dat, unescape_html=False, uncurl_quotes=False, fix_line_breaks=True) 10 | dat = dat.replace('Ranma ˝', 'Ranma ½') 11 | dat = dat.replace('Muńz', 'Muñiz') 12 | dat = dat.replace('Muñz', 'Muñiz') 13 | else: 14 | dat = dat.replace('\r\n', '\n') 15 | return dat 16 | 17 | def guess_encoding(bdat): 18 | try: 19 | dat = bdat.decode('utf-8') 20 | #print('...utf-8') 21 | return dat 22 | except: 23 | pass 24 | try: 25 | dat = bdat.decode('windows-1252') 26 | #print('...windows-1252') 27 | return dat 28 | except: 29 | pass 30 | raise Exception('decoding failed') 31 | 32 | pat_ftpgmdhead = re.compile('ftp[:]?/+ftp.gmd.de[:]?/') 33 | pat_ftpprefix = re.compile('ftp.(gmd.de|ifarchive.org)[:]?[/]+') 34 | pat_ftpifhead = re.compile('ftp[:]?/+[a-z.]*ifarchive[.]org[:]?/') 35 | pat_altif = re.compile('/(mirror|www).ifarchive.org/') 36 | pat_ifdbhead = re.compile('http[s]?://ifdb.tads.org/') 37 | pat_sparkylink = re.compile('href="http://[a-z.]*sparkynet.com/spag/') 38 | 39 | footer = ''' 40 |
41 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 42 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 43 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 44 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 45 |

46 |
47 | ''' 48 | 49 | def massage_text(dat): 50 | dat = pat_ftpgmdhead.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 51 | dat = pat_ftpifhead.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 52 | dat = pat_ftpprefix.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 53 | dat = pat_altif.sub('/ifarchive.org/', dat) 54 | dat = dat.replace('http://ifarchive.org/', 'https://ifarchive.org/') 55 | dat = pat_ifdbhead.sub('https://ifdb.org/', dat) 56 | return dat 57 | 58 | def massage_html(dat): 59 | dat = dat.replace('', '') 60 | dat = dat.replace('', '') 61 | dat = dat.replace('', '') 62 | dat = dat.replace('', '') 63 | dat = pat_ftpgmdhead.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 64 | dat = pat_ftpifhead.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 65 | dat = pat_ftpprefix.sub('https://ifarchive.org/', dat) 66 | dat = pat_altif.sub('/ifarchive.org/', dat) 67 | dat = dat.replace('http://ifarchive.org/', 'https://ifarchive.org/') 68 | dat = pat_ifdbhead.sub('https://ifdb.org/', dat) 69 | dat = pat_sparkylink.sub('href="/archives/', dat) 70 | dat = dat.replace('', footer+'\n\n') 71 | return dat 72 | 73 | pat_textfile = re.compile('^SPAG[0-9]+$') 74 | 75 | for (dirpath, dirnames, filenames) in os.walk('htdocs/archives-orig'): 76 | for filename in filenames: 77 | path = os.path.join(dirpath, filename) 78 | outpath = os.path.join(dirpath.replace('archives-orig', 'archives'), filename) 79 | if filename.endswith('.html'): 80 | print('html:', path) 81 | with open(path, 'rb') as infl: 82 | bdat = infl.read() 83 | dat = scrape_file(bdat, filename) 84 | dat = massage_html(dat) 85 | with open(outpath, 'wb') as outfl: 86 | bdat = dat.encode(encoding='ascii', errors='xmlcharrefreplace') 87 | outfl.write(bdat) 88 | elif filename.endswith('.txt') or pat_textfile.match(filename): 89 | print('text:', path) 90 | with open(path, 'rb') as infl: 91 | bdat = infl.read() 92 | dat = scrape_file(bdat, filename) 93 | dat = massage_text(dat) 94 | with open(outpath, 'wb') as outfl: 95 | bdat = dat.encode(encoding='utf-8') 96 | outfl.write(bdat) 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call57.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #57 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 |

SPAG

66 |
67 | 68 |
69 | 70 | 71 | 72 |

Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #57 (Deadline: February 15, 2009)

Hi, folks... 73 |
74 |
So, among my New Years Resolutions this year is a resolution to try 75 | like hell to return SPAG to a regular quarterly publication schedule. 76 | You can help me with that by sending some content that is so great I 77 | just can't bear to delay in publishing it. (Perhaps some longtime 78 | readers even have resolutions of their own to help out a bit more. 79 | Well, an editor can dream...) 80 |
81 |
Reviews of any of the following would be hugely appreciated: 82 |
83 |
Awakening 84 |
Love is as Powerful as Death, Jealousy is as Cruel as the Grave 85 |
The Lighthouse 86 |
Shadow in the Cathedral 87 |
Backup 88 |
Walker and Silhouette 89 |
Ghost Town 90 |
91 |
Also welcome are reviews of any other IF, old or new, as well as more 92 | in-depth SPAG Specifics Analyses and feature articles on any aspect of 93 | IF experience, craft, history, or theory. The deadline for content 94 | will be February 15, with the issue following shortly. 95 |
96 |
You can send those submissions straight to me at 97 | maher@filfre.net in any reasonably portable format you desire, or 98 | visit the SPAG website at http://www.sparkynet.com/spag and use the 99 | handy form. And if you have questions or wonder if a particular article 100 | idea is suitable, by all means drop me a line. 101 |
102 |
Thanks in advance! 103 |
Jimmy 104 |
105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 |
111 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 112 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 113 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 114 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 115 |

116 |
117 | 118 | 119 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call56.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #56 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 |

SPAG

69 |
70 | 71 |
72 | 73 | 74 | 75 |

Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #56 (Deadline: November 13, 2009)

76 | 77 |

Hi, folks...

78 | 79 |

I had hoped to get a new issue of SPAG out before this year's Competition, but I just couldn't manage it due to a rather chaotic personal life of late. However, I've already got some good material together, and would love to make it up to you with a big, exciting issue to coincide with the end of the Comp. To do that, though, I need your help. (You saw that coming, didn't you?)

80 | 81 |

I'm particularly looking for reviews of the following recent games:

82 | 83 | Shelter from the Storm
84 | The Bryant Collection
85 | Jack Toresal and The Secret Letter
86 | Sam Fortune -- Private Investigator
87 | Cacophony
88 | The Neamon Lion
89 | Unscientific Fiction
90 | IntroComp 2009 entries (any, some, or all)
91 | Finding the Mouse
92 | 93 |

Reviews or in-depth analyses of other games, old or new, are also always welcome, as are articles on IF craft, theory, history, or personal experiences.

94 | 95 |

For this Comp-focused issue, I'd also like to make a special request. As I did last year, I'd like to put a team of reviewers together to jointly review the games. If you can review some percentage of randomly assigned Comp games, please drop me a line. The more volunteers I can collect, the fewer games each individual volunteer will need to review.

96 | 97 |

Deadline for review and article submissions is November 13, 2009. The issue will follow on November 15. You can send your submissions to me at maher@filfre.net in whatever format suits you best, or you can use the handy form on the home page of the SPAG website (http://www.sparkynet.com/spag).

98 | 99 |

Thanks in advance,
100 | Jimmy

101 | 102 |
103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 |
109 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 110 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 111 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 112 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 113 |

114 |
115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/frame.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | SPAG - Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 |

62 | SPAG 63 |
64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games 73 |

74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 |
85 | 86 |

SPAG is an e-zine designed to keep the gaming 87 | public aware of textual interactive fiction and other types of interactive 88 | narrative available today through reviews, interviews, and articles. It is published on a roughly quarterly basis. If you would like to automatically be notified when a new issue of SPAG is published, feel free to subscribe to our mailing list.  The latest issue of SPAG is #54, published on March 31, 2009. 89 |

90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 |

100 | SPAG was founded by G. Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, and is currently 101 | edited by Jimmy Maher. The SPAG website was designed by Felix Plesoianu. 102 |

103 | 104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 |
112 | 113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 |
122 | 123 | 161 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 227 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 | 234 | 235 | 236 | 274 | 275 | 276 | 277 | 278 | 279 | 280 | 281 | 282 |
283 | 284 | 285 | 286 | 287 | 288 | 289 | 290 | 291 | 292 | 293 | 294 | 295 |
296 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 297 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 298 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 299 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 300 |

301 |
302 | 303 | 304 | 305 | 306 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/noframe.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | SPAG - Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 |

58 | SPAG 59 |
60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games 69 |

70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 |
81 | 82 |

SPAG is an e-zine covering textual interactive fiction and other 83 | types of interactive 84 | narrative through reviews, interviews, and articles. It is published on 85 | a roughly quarterly basis. If you would like to automatically be 86 | notified when a new issue of SPAG is published, feel free to subscribe to our mailing list. The latest issue of SPAG is #58, published on May 29, 2010. 87 |

88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 |

98 | SPAG was founded by G. Kevin "Whizzard" Wilson, and is currently 99 | edited by David Monath and Jimmy Maher. The SPAG website was designed by Felix Plesoianu. 100 |

101 | 102 |

If you'd like to contribute to SPAG, thank you! Check the latest call for submissions for topics we are particularly interested in.
103 |

104 | 105 | 106 | 107 | 108 | 109 | 110 | 111 | 112 |
113 | 114 | 115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 | 121 | 122 |
123 | 124 | 162 | 163 | 164 | 165 | 166 | 167 | 168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 228 | 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 | 234 | 235 | 236 | 237 | 275 | 276 | 277 | 278 | 279 | 280 | 281 | 282 | 283 |
284 | 285 | 286 | 287 | 288 | 289 | 290 | 291 | 292 | 293 | 294 | 295 | 296 |
297 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 298 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 299 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 300 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 301 |

302 |
303 | 304 | 305 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/issue-63/issue-63-letter-from-the-editor/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 30 |
31 | 32 | 33 |

Issue 63: 34 | Letter from the Editor and Call for Submissions

35 | 36 | 37 |

April 11, 2016

38 | 39 | 40 | 41 |

Hello! At long last, Issue 63 of SPAG is upon us, at quite a prolific time IF events-wise — the XYZZY Awards just opened first-round voting, and a new crop of quite good IF works are available via Spring Thing. We’ve been at this IF thing for over a decade; we’ve come a long way from a spate of IF content in October then nothing. May it continue to flourish.

42 |

First, a little disclaimer about this issue. As many of you know, I was an entrant in 2015’s comp with Laid Off from the Synesthesia Factory2015’s comp also saw an unusual amount of inter-author discussion and collaboration, and I’ve since come to consider many of my fellow entrants friends. Therefore, I’ve made the difficult decision that it would be a conflict of interest for SPAG to review the comp, as has been traditional in previous years. (To my knowledge, this situation has not previously come up for several years, if not a decade.)

43 |

That said! Spring Thing 2016 is now upon us, and CoI-free! Therefore, I’m soliciting reviews of Spring Thing entriesBack Garden and otherwise; as always, extra points for succinct and/or diversionary takes.

44 |

As always, I’m soliciting pitches as well! There’s no formal theme this time around, but always welcome are:

45 |
    46 |
  • SPAG Specifics on stories of your choice. This issue features a Specifics entry on Slammed! by Paolo Chikiamco and Choice Of Games, but be more  (Issue 64, for instance, will feature an entry on interactive film.) (To be clear, this includes IFcomp entries. Except maybe mine. Unless you really want to.)
  • 47 |
  • Interviews and/or reviews of figures in the IF world and/or adjacent to it. I define this broadly; if you’re wondering whether someone counts, it can’t hurt to get in touch!
  • 48 |
  • Live coverage, if you live in an area with a significant live interactive fiction presence. This can range from exhibits, to conference coverage, to performances.
  • 49 |
  • Essays of any kind. The more unexpected, the better.
  • 50 |
  • Basically anything you can think of will be considered!
  • 51 |
52 |

As always, I welcome pitches by and about women, people of color, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented writers.

53 |

Send pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com. There’s no deadline, but I’d love to hear from you! ETA for Issue 64 is late summer to fall.

54 |

In addition, SPAG is also seeking an artist! This primarily entails cover art — you can see past examples in back issues — but if you have something else in mind, I’d love to hear from you about this as well.

55 |

(Payment for all of the above can be negotiated.)

56 |

Thanks for reading as always! I hope you enjoy this issue.

57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 |
65 | 79 |
80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/about/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 28 |
29 | 30 | 31 |

About SPAG

32 | 33 |

NOTE: This page describes SPAG as of its final issue. 34 | It has not been updated since 2016. Links may be out of date.

35 | 36 |

37 | For more historical index pages, see: 38 | front page circa 2011; 39 | front page circa 2006; 40 | FAQ circa 2008 41 |

42 | 43 |
44 | 45 |

Welcome to SPAG, the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games magazine. Founded in 1994 by G. Kevin Wilson, SPAG has been a pillar of the Interactive Fiction community for almost two decades, and we’re proud to still be doing our part for this vibrant art form.

46 |

Interactive Fiction (IF) is one of the oldest forms of computer entertainment, and every year pushes its boundaries further; although the first IF works were indeed games about adventurers, today most are not, and it makes much more sense to talk about IF stories or works rather than IF games. Instead what binds the community together is a love for words and a curiosity to explore interactivity in a way traditional genres cannot.

47 |

To get started with IF we recommend the People’s Republic of IF playlist, a list of award-winning IF stories, all of which can be played in your web browser. To find further stories, check out the Interactive Fiction Database. Many stories discussed in SPAG cannot be played online, so for them we recommend Gargoyle. To discuss the stories you’re playing, or the one you’re attempting to write yourself, visit the IF Community Forum.

48 |

Issues of SPAG are published on a roughly quarterly basis. Sixty issues of SPAG were published before the shift to this website. Find our older issues at the archives. In the past SPAG had a big focus on reviews, but as there are now many websites hosting reviews (such as the IFDB), we want to focus on articles that analyse and synthesise the ideas of the IF world. If you like the sound of that and would like to write for SPAG, please contact us, we’re always looking for more authors!

49 | 50 |

MASTHEAD (2016)

51 | 52 |

Editor-in-Chief: Katherine Morayati

53 |

Katherine Morayati is an IF author and critic; her credits include Broken Legs (second place, 2009 IF Competition) and a swath of other, smaller works and reviews. In her other life, she’s a music critic who writes as Katherine St. Asaph and helps run a mini-constellation of blogs.

54 |

Managing Editor: Matt Carey

55 |

Matt Carey is a longtime IF follower and the author of a number of acclaimed (pseudonymous) works, both parser and Twine; he’s also the former editor of the science-fiction zine Labyrinth Inhabitant.

56 |

Senior Editor/Webmaster: Dannii Willis

57 |

Dannii Willis is the previous editor of SPAG, the maintainer of Parchment and the developer of Kerkerkruip. He hopes to one day produce a work of IF himself, but for now his creativity is directed toward the ones and zeros of technology.

58 |

Artist: J. Robinson Wheeler

59 |

J. Robinson Wheeler is a freelance author, graphic designer and writer from Austin, Texas, and the author of IF works including Being Andrew PlotkinFour in One and First Things First.

60 | 61 |

EDITORS EMERITUS

62 | 63 |

64 | G. Kevin Wilson, Magnus Olsson, Paul O'Brian, Jimmy Maher, David Monath. 65 |

66 | 67 |

ORIGINAL SITE DESIGNER

68 | 69 |

70 | Felix Pleşoianu. 71 |

72 | 73 | 74 |
75 | 83 |
84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call59.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #59 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 |

SPAG

66 |
67 | 68 |
69 | 70 | 71 | 72 |

Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #59 (Deadline: November 14, 2010)

Hi, folks...
73 | 74 | 75 |
76 | 77 | 78 | Astute SPAG followers will have noticed that there should have been an 79 | issue around, oh, last month sometime, but it never appeared. My 80 | apologies for that. We're going to try to get things back in track with 81 | a big Competition feature issue for mid-November.
82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 |
88 | 89 | 90 | I say "we" because there are some changes afoot in SPAG's worldwide 91 | headquarters. I'm going to be stepping down as editor following this 92 | issue, passing the torch that was passed to me five years ago to one of 93 | my best and most thoughtful regular contributors: David Monath. You may 94 | not know David as well as you do me, but that will change soon enough. 95 | I'm sure he's going to do a great job, and look forward to seeing how 96 | SPAG evolves under his guidance. David and I will be working on this 97 | next issue together as we make the transition.
98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 |
104 | 105 | 106 | With that said, we need content!
107 | 108 | 109 |
110 | 111 | 112 | We'd like to assemble a team of reviewers again this year to tackle the 113 | upcoming Competition entries. If you can help David and me out, please 114 | email me at maher@filfre.net and/or David at davidm.spag@gmail.com, and tell us how many games you might be able to handle.
115 | 116 | 117 | 118 | 119 | 120 |
121 | 122 | 123 | There are also some other, already extant games that need reviews. To wit:
124 | 125 | 126 |
127 | 128 | 129 | Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home
130 | 131 | 132 | EGC Paper Chase
133 | 134 | 135 | The Art of Fugue
136 | 137 | 138 | 'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus
139 | 140 | 141 | Digital: A Love Story
142 | 143 | 144 | Choice of... games (any, some, or all)
145 | 146 | 147 |
148 | 149 | 150 | And of course article and interview ideas and submissions, as well as 151 | reviews of older games and games I've overlooked here, are welcome and 152 | encouraged. If you have the time, please think about helping to make my 153 | last issue and David's first a special one!
154 | 155 | 156 | 157 | 158 | 159 |
160 | 161 | 162 | Best,
163 | 164 | 165 | Jimmy 166 | 167 |
168 | 169 | 170 | 171 | 172 | 173 |
174 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 175 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 176 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 177 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 178 |

179 |
180 | 181 | 182 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/links.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Text adventure related links - SPAG 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |

15 | SPAG 16 |
17 | Outside Links of Interest 18 |

19 | 20 |
21 |

Interactive Fiction related links

22 | 23 |

24 | The Annual IF Competition has 25 | a website. Rules, prizes, volunteer beta-testers, contest game 26 | locations, a web-based voting apparatus, and so on are here. 27 | Hosted by contest administrator Stephen Granade. 28 |

29 | 30 |

31 | Speaking of Granade, his site 32 | Brass Lantern has weekly 33 | features, special columns, timely links, and recent IF news. 34 | More information than you can stuff in your rucksack. 35 |

36 | 37 |

38 | Baf's Guide to the Interactive 39 | Fiction Archive reviews and indexes the games of the 40 | if-archive by Title, Author, 41 | Date, Date Added to Guide, Development System, Genre, Language, 42 | Platform, and Rating, plus an index of the games of all text 43 | adventure competitions, including the AGT ones. By Carl 44 | Muckenhoupt. 45 |

46 | 47 |

48 | 49 | XYZZYnews 51 | is a magazine similar to this one in focus. It has reviews of 52 | all-text games, Interactive Fiction websites, and lots of fun 53 | articles on all sorts of IF topics. Eileen Mullin's site. 54 |

55 | 56 |

57 | The Unofficial 58 | Infocom Page has everything you ever wanted to know about 59 | Infocom, and then some, you can find on this page. If you're a 60 | fan of Interactive Fiction, you simply have to visit this site. 61 |

62 | 63 |

64 | >VERBOSE 65 | is former SPAG editor Paul O'Brian's own IF page, featuring the 66 | games and reviews he's written, as well as miscellaneous fun 67 | content. 68 |

69 | 70 |

71 | Current SPAG editor Jimmy Maher's page can be found here, featuring most of 73 | his non-SPAG related IF projects. Be sure to check out Let's Tell a Story 75 | Together, an online history of interactive fiction. 76 |

77 | 78 |

79 | The IF Ratings Site 80 | is a place where you can quickly rate and post a capsule review of 81 | any game in the IF archive. 82 |

83 | 84 |
85 | 86 |
87 |

Other game magazines and pages

88 | 89 |

90 | Four Fat Chicks is the 91 | game review site with the funny name. Reviews are long, 92 | thoughtful, and literate, and the focus is on story-oriented 93 | commercial games. 94 |

95 | 96 |

97 | The Escapist is a weekly 98 | online magazine that focuses less on computer games themselves than 99 | on the culture that surrounds them. Essential reading for new media 100 | sociologists.

101 | 102 |

103 | Grand Text Auto is a joint 104 | blog dedicated to computer-based narrative (including IF), computer 105 | art, and electronic writing. Noted IF author and theorist Nick 106 | Montfort is a frequent contributor, as are both authors of the 107 | "computer drama" Facade. 108 |

109 | 110 |

111 | Adventure Gamers provides 112 | timely and unbiased reviews of commercial and amateur graphical 113 | adventure games. 114 |

115 | 116 |
117 | 118 |

119 | Thank you for helping to keep text adventures alive! 120 |

121 | 122 |

123 | 124 | This site hosted by SparkyNet.Com 125 | 126 |

127 | 128 | 129 | 130 |
131 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 132 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 133 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 134 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 135 |

136 |
137 | 138 | 139 | 140 | 141 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-61-5/the-year-that-was: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Sentiment on the Internet seems to be that 2014 was a bad year. Perhaps so. In IF-land, however, 2014 was one of the most exciting years in a decade that’s been full of them. Simply put, IF’s hasn’t had this large an audience and this vibrant a field of creators since the 1980s. A brief rundown of The Year that Was:

2 |

February 14: IndieCade East enters its second year at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. (The author, who lived in Astoria for years, takes a perverse sort of pride in the fact that New York’s IF events these days, largely take place in Manhattan and Queens, and not in Brooklyn.) While not an IF-only event, interactive fiction or IF-adjacent works showcased included Elegy for a Dead World, Ice-Bound and the excellently titled Sext Adventure.

3 |

April 6: The 18th annual XYZZY Awards ceremony was held, as always, on ifMUD! Some facts about the 2013 XYZZYs:

4 |

2013 is the second year in a row, after 2012, in which the majority of XYZZY Award winners were women. Part of this can be attributed to the rise of Twine – but not all; Coloratura and Olly Olly Oxen Free are both traditional parser works.

5 |

2013 is the year of the coolest thing ever: the acceptance speech for Trapped in Time, a PDF CYOA, was also a PDF CYOA. This is a fact. It is in no way opinion.

6 |

2013 has the best out-of-context Best Individual Puzzle, dethroning Violet’s  “disconnecting the Internet” (oh, how puzzling):  “creating the meat monster,” from Coloratura. This also is a fact. Indisputable, cold fact. Nothing about it is opinion.

7 |

May 11: Results came in for Spring Thing, an annual competition traditionally intended for longer, more experimental, critically meaty works – a preview of Aaron Reed’s epic Blue Lacuna lived there, as did Victor Gijsbers’ The Baron. 2014 was no exception: winner The Price of Freedom was polished, expansive in story, and part one of an ambitious trilogy — something surprisingly rare in the IF world. Spring Thing’s returning next year as a festival and showcase; and if you are reading this, there’s still time for you to concoct an idea!

8 |

July 6: Interactive fiction, according to The New York Times, has a moment. As we all know, interactive fiction has had a lot of moments! You’ve read about several here. But this year, IF was so presumably momentous to merit a mention in the Grey Lady; despite a baffling swipe at one author’s prose from a writer who thunk the clunker “Interactive fiction, which once went by the name ‘text adventure’,” it was a hard-won piece of visibility for IF in one of the most prestigious outlets in the world. And it wasn’t the NYT’s only time this year covering IF; the New York Times Magazine ran a full-length piece on Twine in November.

9 |

July 31: 80 Days, a piece by Inkle, is released for iOS (its Android counterpart arrived in December); it’s one of the rare IF works to receive widespread critical acclaim, even being praised by The Telegraph as one of the best novels of the year. (That’s novels. As in, DeFoe, James, Austen stuff.)

10 |

September 13: Boston’s Festival of Independent Games has traditionally been a haven for IF enthusiasts (who tend to be independent and into games); this year featured a live playthrough of IFcomp winner Coloratura and tutorials in Inform and Twine.

11 |

October 30: Hadean Lands, Andrew Plotkin’s five-years-in-the-making magnum opus, is finally released. It’s by far the most expansive piece of interactive fiction the scene’s seen in years, and the sort of alchemy of worldbuilding and puzzlecrafting that’s not just difficult, but Zarfian-difficult, to get this right.

12 |

November 8: WordPlay, run by the Hand Eye Society, enters its second year in Toronto. Every year the IF community has something like a summit, and this year Canada was it; the event featured a live reading of Aisle, premieres of works by Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai and Porpentine, a talk by Plotkin on the aforementioned Hadean Lands and an entire, usually-packed room showcasing IF and IF-adjacent works, of all kinds.

13 |

November 16: The Interactive Fiction Competition announces its winners. 42 authors entered – historically, a high-water mark – and the top five was remarkably diverse: Hunger Daemon, a traditional Lovecraftian-lampoon parser work; Creatures Such as We, a space dating sim using ChoiceScript; Jacqueline, Jungle Queen!, a parser romp made in Quest; AlethiCorp, a surveillance satire with an entire Web interface; and With Those We Love Alive, a multimedia-enhanced Twine piece. They’re all beyond worth your time.

14 |

December 22: Twine 2.0, the long-awaited second release of the hypertext tool, is released. Long in the works – it was previewed at No Show Conference in 2013 – the new system notably adds browser-based support for creating Twine pieces.

15 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-61/editorial: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

SPAG 61 cover art

2 | 3 |

It’s been too long, so welcome back to SPAG! Real life intervened and unfortunately our previous editor David Monath was unable to keep publishing the magazine. Like many of you, for a long time I too was worried that SPAG might not receive the resurrection it deserved. But when I saw that Jimmy Maher, SPAG’s penultimate editor, hoped that someday someone would offer to take over running it, I decided that I could be that someone. I asked, he gave me his blessings (and the passwords for the old website), and here we are today!

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I’ve been involved with the IF community for a few years now, though I wouldn’t consider myself a very important part of it. I’m not a, you know, author. But I guess I have made my mark: although I didn’t create it for the last few years I’ve been the main developer of Parchment, and I consider myself a reasonable Inform 7 hacker. My creative contributions are a few small additions to Kerkerkruip.

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Portrait of Dannii Willis

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Over the last eighteen years the IF Community works has on occasion shifted its hubs of discussion. The old newsgroups are all but dead as people have migrated to the intfiction.org forum and independent blogs, most of which are aggregated at Planet IF. Of relevance to SPAG is that there are now innumerable places to publish reviews, and those who don’t have their own websites can always use the IFDB.

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So this new SPAG is more than a new web address and a shift to using WordPress. No longer will SPAG be the clearing-house of reviews as it once was; it’s been twenty months since Issue 60, and the community had coped well enough posting their reviews elsewhere. So what will the new SPAG be? Well I hope to fill these pages with longer articles: interviews, the art and craft of writing IF, tutorials for working with IF technology. We’ll have discussions of the growing community, and the broadening of what exactly “Interactive Fiction” entails today. But all this will still be grounded in reference to the works of our community, just with more analysis and synthesis than you see in normal reviews; SPAG Specifics will still be a regular feature!

8 |

Issue 61 isn’t a big issue, but I think it’s a good one. To start with we have interviews with the top three winners of IFComp 2012. Joey Jones then brings us a discussion on shared worlds in IF: what has been tried so far and where we might go in the future. And lastly Mark Ricard compares Deadline and Make It Good and how they together have defined the IF detective genre.

9 |

In bringing this issue to publication many thanks are in order: to Jimmy Maher for allowing me to take over as editor and giving me a leg up for the task, to Brandon Invergo for providing web hosting, to Marco Innocenti for his fabulous logo and cover design, to Rob Wheeler for the cover design and proof reading, to the IFComp winners for being willing interviewees, and of course to our writers! Many others have given advice or encouragement, so if that’s you know that I appreciated your help too.

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Now I must finish on a traditional note, and remind you that SPAG is always after more content. So if you have an idea for an article please email me and tell me all about it.

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See you soon!

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About Dannii Willis

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Dannii is the developer of Parchment, the web IF interpreter.

17 | 18 | ---- 19 | timestamp: 2013-01-02T02:27:13+00:00 20 | timestr: January 2, 2013 at 2:27 AM 21 | author: matt w 22 | body:

” I wouldn’t consider myself a very important part of it.... although I didn’t create it for the last few years I’ve been the main developer of Parchment,”

Modesty! Being the main developer of Parchment makes you a very important part of the IF community, even if you never do anything else.

23 | 24 | ---- 25 | timestamp: 2013-01-02T10:34:08+00:00 26 | timestr: January 2, 2013 at 10:34 AM 27 | authorurl: http://www.filfre.net 28 | author: Jimmy Maher 29 | body:

The new format looks great! Congrats on pulling everything together and getting this out. I can hardly express how happy it makes me to know that SPAG is a going concern again.

30 | 31 | ---- 32 | timestamp: 2013-01-02T13:05:16+00:00 33 | timestr: January 2, 2013 at 1:05 PM 34 | author: Robert DeFord 35 | body:

I echo what Jimmy Maher said.

36 | 37 | ---- 38 | timestamp: 2013-01-03T16:24:20+00:00 39 | timestr: January 3, 2013 at 4:24 PM 40 | authorurl: http://superverbose.wordpress.com/ 41 | author: Paul O'Brian 42 | body:

Congratulations on the revival, and on this beautiful new issue! I heartily approve of the new direction, and I can’t wait to read it.

43 | 44 | ---- 45 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/issue-64/issue-64-letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 30 |
31 | 32 | 33 |

Issue 64: 34 | Letter from the Editor and Call for Submissions

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August 9, 2016

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The IF world, like most artistic fields, is seasonal, and as in music and (to an extent) film, August is a slower month, full of what David Rakoff called “the opposite of hanging out.” If fall and spring are full of new content, awards and the occasional conference or two, late summer is that in-between season, one that looks languid on the surface but conceals a lot of hard work. Dozens of authors, as you read this, are preparing competition entries for the September deadline, or solidifying commercial pitches, or — for those really ahead of schedule — getting their work playtested.

42 |

If you’re like me, you’re taking a lot of breaks from being hard at work for such edifying pursuits as playing Minesweeper ripoffs and looking at online auctions for swing coats. But if you’re not like me, you’re using that time to read Issue 64 of SPAG — one I’m especially proud of!

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For Issue 64, we’re taking an especially broad view of interactive fiction and its connections, both obvious and not, to other fields. This issue features the dubious, beyond-spotty history of interactive film, the evolution of storytelling in hidden-object games, and the applications of parser games to artificial intelligence research. Of course, we’ve got plenty of more traditional coverage as well, including a Specifics entry on Caelyn Sandel’s episodic piece Bloom and an interview with Brendan Patrick Hennessy, whose Birdland flew away with an entire gaggle of XYZZY Awards, as well as other, less forcedly metaphorical praise.

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After you’re done reading, perhaps you’d like to contribute to our next issue? Issue 65, like this one, has no formal theme (as we’ve seen, these things tend to come together organically), but as always, welcome are:

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  • SPAG Specifics on stories of your choice. These are less traditional reviews and more in-depth critical pieces on how a particular piece does what it does.
  • 47 |
  • Interviews and/or reviews of figures in the IF world and/or adjacent to it, defined broadly.
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  • Live coverage, if you live in an area with a significant live interactive fiction presence. This can range from exhibitions to conference coverage to performances to whatever the world dreams up. (Free pitch idea: if you’re a reader in the Toronto area attending the 2016 Wordplay Festival in early November who is not me, I’d like to hear from you.)
  • 49 |
  • Essays of any kind. The more unexpected, the better.
  • 50 |
  • Basically anything you can think of related to interactive fiction will be considered!
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As always, I welcome pitches by and about women, people of color, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented writers. Also: there is payment commensurate with standard online writing rates.

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Send pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com. There’s no deadline, but I’d love to hear from you! In keeping with our rough quarterly schedule, Issue 65 will likely arrive around late fall or winter. (What this means for you: anything related to 2016’s competition entries is probably best suited to #66.)

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Thanks for reading as ever! We hope you enjoy this issue, and send us the makings of another great one.

55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 |
63 | 77 |
78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-64/spag-specifics-caelyn-sandels-bloom: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

bloom cover art

2 |

Caelyn Sandel’s Bloom, an episodic semi-autobiographical piece of dynamic fiction about her gender transition, plays with the experience of occupied empathy. It is the story of a specific protagonist, Cordy, and even readers who have experienced dysphoria cannot have the same precise embodied experience that Cordy does. By envisioning Bloom as a series, rather than a single game, and releasing episodes periodically (every couple of months), Sandel creates an experience for her readers in which Cordy’s experience must be grappled with; it cannot be digested in a sitting and then compartmentalized. The game uses first-person pronouns — as opposed to the second-person narration commonplace in IF — to move the reader through Cordy’s experiences rather than effectively ceding them to the person beyond the screen. In so doing, Sandel reminds players that Cordy is her own person with her own agency, and that while a player can experience her story, it fundamentally is not theirs to control.

3 |

The episodic nature of Bloom requires readers to sit with painful experiences that Cordy experiences — for original readers, to sit with them for months — and the story refuses to resolve them neatly or quickly. In the early episodes, a coworker, Dane, makes transphobic remarks the player can later cite as one of the incidents that tipped Cordy off that she might be trans. In a later episode, Dane tries to confront Cordy about it, but a player is only given the option to refuse to talk to him, in increasingly creative ways. Later, at the very end, Dane apologizes for his behavior, and due to the episodic nature of the series, Dane’s apology felt more genuine to me, rather than a plot point; I can see him educating himself or trying to apologize to Cordy before this final conversation.

4 |

There is an option that suggests Cordy’s internal monologue during Dane’s initial confrontation; it is crossed out. Later on, certain options remain greyed out, inaccessible to Cordy based on how much she trusts Dane and their work relationship. Where Cordy was originally powerless to prevent Dane’s comments, it is now the reader who is powerless to change her experiences. Readers might have access to how she feels, but they cannot force her to say something that would compromise her safety or her sense of self. A great deal of Bloom, in fact, deals with what the player can and can’t control. The introductory epigraphs are unskimmable; they appear, phrase by phrase, with time delays. At several moments in Bloom, the player can try to “make” Cordy take a particular action, only to be told several times it’s not possible for her; if pushed too far, she snaps at the player — a reminder that while you have agency over the story’s pacing, you don’t have agency over the story itself; the reader becomes a character in the story, one who doesn’t have the right to force her to take an action she’s uncomfortable with. Whether a player is cis or trans, they are not inhabiting Cordy’s body, with all the specific, personal difficulties the story lays out; a player can close the browser window at the end of the session.

5 |

The fact that Bloom is an episodic, rather than a chaptered piece, contributes further to this.  The piece is not only segmented into narrative sections but partitioned in ways that required original readers to wait for the next piece, to inhabit Cordy’s discomfort over a period of time and space. If a reader has followed Bloom since its inception, the wait between pieces creates a kind of space in which Cordy’s story takes the time to breathe. Sandel refuses to provide readers with a narrative that can be resolved quickly, easily, or in one sitting. It’s a particular perspective on the personal, one in which the reader must linger in a highly individual narrative for days or weeks at a time and share their own emotional space with Cordy and her author. Even the end of the current series ends on a note of possibility and futurity rather than a neat conclusion.

6 |

[Disclosure: Cat Manning supports Caelyn Sandel on Patreon.]

7 | 8 | ---- 9 | timestamp: 2016-08-22T16:32:36+00:00 10 | timestr: August 22, 2016 at 4:32 PM 11 | authorurl: http://english2classroom.blogspot.ru/ 12 | author: Oleg Oleg Aney 13 | body:

Quote ‘Caelyn Sandel’s Bloom, an episodic semi-autobiographical piece of dynamic fiction about her gender transition...’ unquote.
The consequence of sin is spiritual death (Romans 6:23). SPAG is dead! The most vile, vulgar, and reprehensible behaviour known is now openly displayed without shame as IF games. The celebration of sin has become a prominent feature of the new SPAG editions.. IF community have grown accustomed, calloused, and insensitive to sin.
We are losing all of our reputation and honour.

14 | 15 | ---- 16 | timestamp: 2018-04-05T17:38:47+00:00 17 | timestr: April 5, 2018 at 5:38 PM 18 | author: Donald Johnson 19 | body:

I am a follower of Yeshua the Messiah. I do not see why being a transsexual is a sin as it does not involve a choice. The descriptions of the experiences of such people seems like a form of torture to me and they need our compassion, regardless of any decisions they may make.

20 | 21 | ---- 22 | timestamp: 2018-08-21T12:12:39+00:00 23 | timestr: August 21, 2018 at 12:12 PM 24 | author: Victor Gijsbers 25 | body:

Oleg, I think you will love Herman Schudspeer’s essay on the history of interactive fiction inside his game Nemesis Macana!

26 | 27 | ---- 28 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-61-5/issue-61-5-letter-from-the-editor-masthead-and-call-for-submissions: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Today is Groundhog Day. I’ve been holed up in a coffee shop in New York all day, and for the past several hours all that’s been visible out the window is static-thick snow; I can’t imagine what a groundhog, with its slush-eye view, would see. Now Groundhog Day, the movie, is a rather IF-like conceit: if at first you don’t succeed, try, try forever until you win the story; perhaps no movie except Run Lola Run has been the source of more IF comparisons. So really there was no better day to officially relaunch SPAG!

2 |

We’re biased at SPAG, in that we’ve worked for several decades(!) now toward the preservation of IF; but we believe that interactive fiction is one of the most dynamic artforms out there now. Never before have there been so many authors working in so many different forms, pushing the limits of what IF can be and how it can reach people. The medium truly is, in the perhaps regrettable words of the New York Times, “having a moment”; and we want to be there to help shape and document it.

3 |

For our relaunch, we’re bringing you a mini-issue, containing:

4 |

a SPAG Specifics entry by the ever-thoughtful Victor Gijsbers!

5 |

a brief review of the Year that Was by your editor-in-chief!

6 |

– The letter from the editor you’re currently reading. Mathematically speaking, that means my verbiage takes up a whopping two-thirds of this issue, so without further editorial ado I’ll turn it over to the part you’re really here for.

7 |

MASTHEAD!

8 |

SPAG has been a one-man show for most of its existence, an era that ends today. If you’d like to get involved in SPAG on the editorial level, please get in touch! Here’s who you’ll be working with, either way:

9 |

Editor-in-Chief: Katherine Morayati

10 |

Katherine Morayati is an IF author and critic; her credits include Broken Legs (second place, 2009 IF Competition) and a swath of other, smaller works and reviews. In her other life, she’s a music critic who writes as Katherine St. Asaph and helps run a mini-constellation of blogs.

11 |

Managing Editor: Matt Carey

12 |

Matt Carey is a longtime IF follower and the author of a number of acclaimed (pseudonymous) works, both parser and Twine; he’s also the former editor of the science-fiction zine Labyrinth Inhabitant.

13 |

Senior Editor/Webmaster: Dannii Willis

14 |

Dannii Willis is the previous editor of SPAG, the maintainer of Parchment and the developer of Kerkerkruip. He hopes to one day produce a work of IF himself, but for now his creativity is directed toward the ones and zeros of technology.

15 |

CALL FOR PITCHES!

16 |

The next full issue of SPAG will come out in April! and its theme will be: Society/Preservation/Text/Adventure. Interpret this theme as strictly or as loosely as you’d like, and feel free to deviate, or not, as you will. Some ideas, to guide you — perhaps you’ll think of more:

17 |

SOCIETY: Interviews with IF figures, prominent, niche or otherwise interesting; guides to setting up IF-related events in your city; outreach; coverage of local events; parts or whole of the IF community, whether writing or dev communities; compelling personal essays if you’ve got those sort of chops.

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PRESERVATION: The storage and rediscovery of older IF works, either within the IF community or Internet archival efforts; the canon, and everything surrounding; efforts to re-release adventure and/or IF works; replayability/rereadability.

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TEXT: IF’s crossover into other literary forms, such as poetry, flash fiction, scriptwriting or traditional hypertext; the art and science of writing IF prose; IF in translation; books and IF; static fiction authors’ involvement, hypothetical or not, in IF.

20 |

ADVENTURE: Puzzle design; design tutorials; IF and the graphic adventure community; experimental IF; adventures in the still-largely-uncharted land that is commercial IF; generally, a catch-all for whatever weird, niche or enthusiast ideas you may have.

21 |

OTHER, NON-THEME STUFF: Did I mention “design tutorials”? We want those. Another thing we want: traditionally, since its inception in 1996, SPAG has run reviews of interactive fiction, particularly the entrants in the annual IF Competition. It’s never been the only contender in this arena; Usenet gave way to IFDB gave way to forums and blogs. So to avoid spewing into a flood of spew, we are going to look for two specific kinds of reviews:

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    23 |
  • SPAG Specifics. In-depth reviews of a piece, preferably about one salient aspect. Why is this good? How does it work? Victor’s piece, in this mini-issue, is a nice guide.
  • 24 |
  • Super-brief capsule reviews of the comp field. Fun is good, irreverent is good, supportive is good. Christopher Huang’s Breakfast Review is the crème de la crème (in coffee, with a pastry) of this sort of thing; while I don’t advise you rip off his gimmick, that’s what we’re looking for here.
  • 25 |
26 |

Send all pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com, along with a brief bio of yourself, and writing samples if you prefer. Also appreciated: a rough sense of word count (we’re an online publication and flexible, but we’re probably not gonna run 50,000-word novellas, nor 140-character tweets, unless stated above) and an estimated time of completion (aim for February or March, leave time for line edits, follow your gut.)

27 |

We highly encourage submissions from experienced IF critics as well as newcomers, and we are particularly interested in applicants who are under-represented in IF writing. However, all are welcome, including those who have previously expressed interest in writing for the website. To paraphrase a call for submissions from one of my old haunts: We are not so interested in anything you have ever written anywhere ever. All we care about is how well you can play our game.

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P.S.

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There’s really no place to plug social media links while maintaining the flow of an article, so I’ll put it here: we are on Twitter, at @spagazine! Follow us, retweet us, swell our numbers to the trending heavens.

30 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-62/the-writer-will-do-something-matthew-burns-review: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

Whenever I read the seemingly unkillable complaints about modern IF and its “uninteractivity,” I’m plagued with flashbacks to 1998. (Boy, I hated 1998. I had helmet hair.) 1998 was the year of Photopia, a near-universally acclaimed work of interactive fiction in which nothing you do will derail the crushing inevitability of the plot one inch, which is of course the point. Two years later came Rameses, a more brutal, polarizing sort of work, and its detractors delighted in pointing out that you can type WAIT dozens of times and let the narrative shuffle you listlessly through the motions without any intervention or initiative on your part — not that much could pierce through your inner defeated stubbornness. Which is, of course, also the point. To many of you I’m recapping oft-recapped history, surveying the long-dried battlefields of flame wars better off forgotten; and yet “uninteractivity’’ keeps appearing fresh, always an accusation of ineptitude and accidental failure, never deliberate or a deliberate point.

2 |

I was reminded of all this mess after reading Matthew S. Burns’ excruciatingly entertaining Twine piece The Writer Will Do Something. You’re employed by the AAA developer of ShatterGate, a Frankensteinally unwieldy shooter, as the lead writer of the latest sequel — a job you know you have no business doing. It isn’t imposter syndrome; you’ve neither played the previous games nor have any real intention to, and the current entry is a thicket of lore you can barely hack. You are as imposter as they come — and yet you’re no more an imposter than the rest of your team, a motley assortment of hopers, no-hopers, middle managers and babysitters talking and pacing through a morning meeting about the game’s inevitable prospects: “unambiguously catastrophic.” What follows are several hours of circling around cold opens, cinematic opens, Dark Souls, “visual quilts,” doodles on whiteboards, guns with swords on them – and absolutely no real progress.

3 |

Needless to say, most people with game dev experience are probably fighting off their own flashbacks, but you certainly don’t need that experience to appreciate the disaster. As someone who used to work on the production desk of newspapers, I felt a certain sad kinship with the poor harried audio tech who rushes in mid-meeting from Greenland – the nickname of the audio department, cold and distant: why can’t you tell <s>audio</s> copy about things that affect copy? (The audio tech, it should be noted, is female, which contributes to a certain subtext throughout the piece; while the PC’s gender is never mentioned, the way they’re continually talked over, around and past resonated with entirely too many stories from my female colleagues, not to mention myself.)

4 |

What The Writer Will Do Something isn’t, exactly, is fun. It’s funny, certainly – Burns is a good enough writer that it’s worth going through each path just to extract every last quip– and thoroughly polished, but it’s also an exercise in calculated frustration. None of your choices matter; the difference between a courageous action and a weaselly cop-out is entirely in the PC’s head. Keep your head down? Doesn’t matter. Stand up to your coworkers’ various haranguing? Doesn’t matter. Attempt the classic “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, fuck you I’m out?” Nobody even pays attention. The story has three endings, all of which drop like (and are accompanied by) a horror-movie audio sting and none of which seem to have much correlation to anything you’ve said; I’ve gone through about a dozen times now and I’m still not convinced they’re not random. You quite literally cannot win. And it doesn’t take too much searching to find people’s complaints about this, which derail quite readily into complaints about Twine and interactivity in general.

5 |

Your first clue should be the overwhelming quality of the work, the snappiness of the writing, the polish of the design (I like to think it’s a little joke about the pecking order that the audio is particularly effective); this is not an amateur’s product. Your next clue, and really your last, should be the title: the writer will do something. Much like (again) Rameses, which devotes a significant portion of its runtime trapping the PC in a not-quite-two-sided conversation with his friend (“friend”) rhapsodizing about the free will the player consistently fails to have, Burns milks the game-dev arguments for every drop of comedy and dramatic irony and the choice-based medium itself for every drop of vicarious pain. Take one passage toward the middle of the game, after a couple protests have gone nowhere and after your boss delivers what sure looks like an ultimatum:

6 |

Your mind is a bright, glittery cascade of thoughts. Unfortunately, you’re not able to isolate or hold any single one of them. Everything in your head is water. Making a decision, in this room, has too many implications.

7 |

What follows is another choice point: three decisions, every implication and worry and possibility laid out in your head. The entire thing is over 500 words, and it’s rendered in text that scrolls faster than even the quickest reader can keep up with. As the prose goes on it gets steadily angrier, more earnest, closer to a grand statement – but you probably won’t get that far on your first playthrough, as before you can keep up, the screen advances to:

8 |

“I vote cold open,” says Shawn, before you can speak.

9 |

Mike nods. “Yep. Agreed. Cold open.”

10 |

Troy says, “Okay, done. Cold open. Next issue?”

11 |

(The final nail into the reader: everything in the story up to this point was about how sucky that cold open was. Wait, no, one more nail: the remainder of the story is… more discussion of the cold open. Ultimatum, my gunsword.)

12 |

It’s among the most maddening uses of macros I’ve encountered lately. It breaks most of the rules of player friendliness and accessibility and satisfaction that are endlessly hashed over in the plot; it undermines its own writing — the point of which is to get to be read, right? And yet it’s as much a setpiece as any elaborate puzzle or intricately designed object; it immerses the player totally and viscerally in a setting and feeling, in this case mind-searing bureaucratic frustration. In real life, that’d be, well, mind-searing; conveyed by fiction, it’s high praise.

13 | 14 | ---- 15 | timestamp: 2016-04-04T07:39:33+00:00 16 | timestr: April 4, 2016 at 7:39 AM 17 | author: Senex 18 | body:

“...while the PC’s gender is never mentioned...”

There’s one sentence that sheds some light on the matter:

“Why did you ever want to make video games anyway? What adult would ever choose this life for herself?”

19 | 20 | ---- 21 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
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29 | 30 | 31 |

SPAG Issue Index

32 | 33 | 167 | 168 | 169 |
170 | 178 |
179 | 180 | 181 | 182 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-62/poetry-is-what-gets-lost-in-translation-notes-on-translating-patanoir-and-sunday-morning: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

I love the English and the German languages equally. The process of translation fascinated me since I first realized I could watch my DVDs in English, so wanting to translate an IF game came naturally to me. I offered a translation as an IFComp prize three times, and the first two I completed were PataNoir by Simon Christiansen, which took fifth place in the 2011 competition, and Sunday Afternoon by Christopher Huang, the fifth-place winner in 2012. And I’m currently working on Origins (2014) by Vincent Zeng and Christopher Martens.

2 |

Translating the Text

3 |

Let’s begin with some general observations. Both translated games are written in Inform 7, for which there is an excellent German translation available, called GerX. This replaces all standard library messages, lays the groundwork for gendered nouns, and comes with a translation of Basic Help Menu.

4 |

My work starts, naturally, with a copy of the original source (I marvel at just how organized an I7 source file can look, complete with annotations, but I digress).

5 |

The easiest order in which to translate the text turns out to be just top to bottom.

6 |

This leaves the least chance of missing something, and trying to piece together code bits that belong, say, to a certain scene (all rooms, NPC dialogue, error messages and so on) turned out to be a major headache that led to unnecessary confusion.

7 |

All objects in the code retain their original name, because anything else would muddle the original code unnecessarily. This means that every single room, object and NPC gets its own printed name and synonyms — and nouns being gendered in German, that as well. (For extra fun, some of the synonyms have different genders.)

8 |

It’s actually quite straightforward. Grab a piece of text, translate it, copy back in.

9 |

But text with variations turned out be another tricky bit. German has not quite lost its cases and inflections like English has. Often, a phrase needed some careful rewording to work with the existing code structure and to not sound completely awkward and artificial. The German versions of these descriptions often ended up far more convoluted than the original, and hammering them into readable and grammatically correct end results caused more than a few bilingual curses.

10 |

PataNoir

11 |

At first glance, Simon’s work seemed like a tough nut. For those unfamiliar with it, PataNoir is a hard-boiled detective story based on similes, with each object in a simile implemented as a separate, interactive object. Luckily, most of the these were straightforward enough to translate. In one or two cases, I took the liberty to make some of the similes more appropriate for German readers. For instance, the grass that “(…)has been meticulously groomed. The strands are all exactly alike, like citizens in a socialist utopia.” became “Bürger im real existierenden Sozialismus,” a friendly jab at fellow Germans from the former GDR.

12 |

Apart from the similes, PataNoir is pretty straightforward hardboiled fiction, and it was a joy to use the appropriate German vernacular. I can recall only two points that gave me pause. The rich old man with a missing daughter in the game is called Baron Ahrend von Bülow, which is eerily similar to German comedian Vicco von Bülow (Loriot). Interestingly, Simon was actually refering to Claus von Bülow, a Danish man who was accused of murdering his wife but later acquitted. There was a movie and everything. In the German version he is now called Johann Albert von Korff, after an 18th century Freemason. (Thanks, Cabal!)

13 |

The other thing was a thorn in my side for literal months. In one pleasant moment of the game, inconsequential to the larger plot, the protagonist rests in a garden and finds that “the air is cold and clear, like the justice we all seek, but never find.” Cold and clear are not adjectives you can use for justice in German at all. And everything else I could think of didn’t work with either justice or air at all. I was stumped and angry, and it was one of those never disappearing points on my to-do list.

14 |

Months later, I ran into a girl I had a crush on in elementary school on the street. We nearly didn’t recognize each other. A day later, Reilly now finds the air “as pure as first love”. And if he tries to take it, alas, “You gave up chasing it a long time ago. Better focus on your case.”

15 |

Sunday Afternoon

16 |

Where PataNoir was based on its excellent mechanics, Sunday Afternoon is a more literary work of traditional parser IF. Early on, Christopher proposed that I move the setting of the game to Germany in 1893 and 1916. I enthusiastically agreed, and this produced some interesting conundrums.

17 |

A lot of the backstory of the game hinges on its Victorian setting, with strict house rules and a certain nostalgic admiration for war and stiff patriotism. For obvious historical reasons, we Germans don’t quite have this quaint kind of memory for this episode in our history. This gives the whole game, for purely extra-textual reasons, a slightly bitter tinge not at all present in the original.

18 |

Moving the settings to Prussia also meant some interesting changes to in-game events. The Sepoy Mutiny became the Battle of Dybbøl. Wales became Weimar. All the characters names’ are borrowed from either All Quiet on the Western Front or Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The city name has been changed to Christofstadt as an obvious nod to the original author. St. Swithin’s cathedral is now called St. Donatus, a more appropriate German saint. The Owl Service, virtually unknown here, has been replaced by Goethe’s Faust. I had to dig around some libraries to find the exact German quote for one or two of the boxed quotes, and a few are replaced with better-known German equivalents. Rewatching Indiana Jones (for research!) was less of a chore. Since the game’s comp release, the news about the Hello Kitty mascot being a girl has made the rounds, and the German description of the cat trinket now reflects that. One thing remained the same in both versions of the game, though: The guys in the bonus content are each in Flanders, 1916, scared for their lives, happy for the distraction.

19 |

Each of these translations took a few months and felt at time likes writing a completely new work of IF. It was interesting to dive into someone else’s world and try to be faithful and yet transformative enough to create a work that’s true to the source. But it’s also a huge load of work. So this year, and from now on, I’ve changed the prize to focus on Twine games, or at least games where no recoding is necessary. Looking to the future, this is also a more viable course for those from the smaller scenes inclined to translate works into English, not vice versa — Hannes Schüler already did this with The Story of Mr. P in the 2014 Spring Thing. It’s a great way to expose works to a greater audience, as the thing when translating into german is that you can safely assume everyone has already played it. (My thread announcing “Sonntag Nachmittag” on the German forum has 0 responses.)

20 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call60.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Call for Submisssions, SPAG Issue #60 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 |

SPAG

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Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #60 (Deadline: March 27, 2011)

73 | 74 | 75 |
76 | 77 | 78 | Topics: IF-Demo@PAXE 2011, XYZZY 2010 and Other Reviews, IFC 2010 Interviews
79 |
80 | Hi, all!
81 |
82 | It's been over a month since SPAG #59, and while it's a tad early in the standard quarterly cycle for a request for content, PAX East 2011 (11-13 MAR) is shaping up to present another exciting opportunity for IF theory, design, works-in-progress, and especially community mingling.
83 |
84 | (Please pardon the lack of a SPAG e-mail at the moment as I'm working out a list server problem. I'll have it posted ASAP.)
85 |
86 | -- PAX East 2011: IF Demo Fair, and SPAG Event Coverage --
87 |
88 | Emily Short is heading up an IF Demo Fair at PAXE 2011 highlighting "novel ways to interact with in-game characters," and "innovative user interfaces for text/story-based games," although all submissions are appreciated. Entries will be made available on laptops to attendees of the (free! to the public) IF side conference, with a playthrough on Saturday in the Alcott Conferences room at the Westin, with demonstrators encouraged to speak briefly on their works.
89 |
90 | Her full announcement may be found on her blog. Please let her know by next Friday, the 18th, what the details of your submission are. IF's in danger of coming down with a full-fledged conference circuit, it appears!
91 |
92 | As for SPAG in particular, I'd love to hear from all interested parties who may be in attendance. There will be plenty to cover, from individual talks to panels to general atmospherics, observations of trends, the terribly cute and fragile still-ashen baby phoenix which is commercial IF, and mockery of our collective inability to get to bed before dawn when there's, you know, STUFF to discuss, etc. =) Emily or a duly authorized representative has already offered to cover the Demo event proper, but we'll want to get your thoughts and analysis on any relevant part of PAX/IF which catches your fancy.
93 |
94 |
95 | -- XYZZY 2010 and Other Reviews --
96 |
97 | Not coincidentally, most of the games nominated for XYZZYs this year were also to be found in the IF Comp, and thus have been reviewed. However, we have a few notable gaps to fill: Gris et Jaune, by Steve van Gaal; The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game, by Taylor Vaughan; and, for the charitable and multi-lingual amongst us, the German works Allein mit Kai by Ingo Scharmann and Joana Markus, and Mariel by Michael Baltes.
98 |
99 | Also, we're looking for reviews of the following three stand-alone releases:
100 |
101 | The Art of Fugue, by Victor Gijsbers, Jimmy Maher, Dorte Lassen, and Johan;
102 | 'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus, by Victor Gijsbers;
103 | Starborn, a short by Juhana Leinonen.
104 |
105 |
106 | -- IF Comp 2010 Winner Interviews --
107 |
108 | With congratulations again to IFC 2010 winners Matt Wigdahl, C.E.J. Pacian, and Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine, we're looking for interviews with Matt, and Colin and Carolyn for first-place Aotearoa and third-place One Eye Open, respectively. I'm pleased to report Valentine Kopteltsev already has an extremely characterful interview with C.E.J.Pacian in the bag which you should feel at liberty to begin anticipating even now.
109 |
110 |
111 | -- Concluding Business and Other Opportunities --
112 |
113 | Also, if you have a paper you're working on related to IF, or would like a forum in which to cover a technical issue, concepts in game design, story craft, or other topic (e.g., incorporating cultural differences in interactive fiction), send it in!
114 |
115 | Submissions should be in by the weekend of March 26th and 27th, which gives us a couple weeks after PAXE 2010 to incorporate coverage. For the rest of it, earlier submissions are always appreciated! =) Thanks as ever to all contributors, and if you'd like to help but just aren't sure what to do . . . just ask, at davidm.spag SP@G gmail.com!
116 |
117 | I look forward to hearing from you and getting everyone involved!
118 |
119 | Cheers,
120 |
121 | David
122 | 123 |
124 | 125 | 126 | 127 | 128 | 129 |
130 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 131 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 132 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 133 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 134 |

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136 | 137 | 138 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/issue-61-5/the-year-that-was/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
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Issue 61.5: 34 | 2014: The Year That Was

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By Katherine Morayati — February 2, 2015

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Sentiment on the Internet seems to be that 2014 was a bad year. Perhaps so. In IF-land, however, 2014 was one of the most exciting years in a decade that’s been full of them. Simply put, IF’s hasn’t had this large an audience and this vibrant a field of creators since the 1980s. A brief rundown of The Year that Was:

42 |

February 14: IndieCade East enters its second year at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. (The author, who lived in Astoria for years, takes a perverse sort of pride in the fact that New York’s IF events these days, largely take place in Manhattan and Queens, and not in Brooklyn.) While not an IF-only event, interactive fiction or IF-adjacent works showcased included Elegy for a Dead World, Ice-Bound and the excellently titled Sext Adventure.

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April 6: The 18th annual XYZZY Awards ceremony was held, as always, on ifMUD! Some facts about the 2013 XYZZYs:

44 |

2013 is the second year in a row, after 2012, in which the majority of XYZZY Award winners were women. Part of this can be attributed to the rise of Twine – but not all; Coloratura and Olly Olly Oxen Free are both traditional parser works.

45 |

2013 is the year of the coolest thing ever: the acceptance speech for Trapped in Time, a PDF CYOA, was also a PDF CYOA. This is a fact. It is in no way opinion.

46 |

2013 has the best out-of-context Best Individual Puzzle, dethroning Violet’s  “disconnecting the Internet” (oh, how puzzling):  “creating the meat monster,” from Coloratura. This also is a fact. Indisputable, cold fact. Nothing about it is opinion.

47 |

May 11: Results came in for Spring Thing, an annual competition traditionally intended for longer, more experimental, critically meaty works – a preview of Aaron Reed’s epic Blue Lacuna lived there, as did Victor Gijsbers’ The Baron. 2014 was no exception: winner The Price of Freedom was polished, expansive in story, and part one of an ambitious trilogy — something surprisingly rare in the IF world. Spring Thing’s returning next year as a festival and showcase; and if you are reading this, there’s still time for you to concoct an idea!

48 |

July 6: Interactive fiction, according to The New York Times, has a moment. As we all know, interactive fiction has had a lot of moments! You’ve read about several here. But this year, IF was so presumably momentous to merit a mention in the Grey Lady; despite a baffling swipe at one author’s prose from a writer who thunk the clunker “Interactive fiction, which once went by the name ‘text adventure’,” it was a hard-won piece of visibility for IF in one of the most prestigious outlets in the world. And it wasn’t the NYT’s only time this year covering IF; the New York Times Magazine ran a full-length piece on Twine in November.

49 |

July 31: 80 Days, a piece by Inkle, is released for iOS (its Android counterpart arrived in December); it’s one of the rare IF works to receive widespread critical acclaim, even being praised by The Telegraph as one of the best novels of the year. (That’s novels. As in, DeFoe, James, Austen stuff.)

50 |

September 13: Boston’s Festival of Independent Games has traditionally been a haven for IF enthusiasts (who tend to be independent and into games); this year featured a live playthrough of IFcomp winner Coloratura and tutorials in Inform and Twine.

51 |

October 30: Hadean Lands, Andrew Plotkin’s five-years-in-the-making magnum opus, is finally released. It’s by far the most expansive piece of interactive fiction the scene’s seen in years, and the sort of alchemy of worldbuilding and puzzlecrafting that’s not just difficult, but Zarfian-difficult, to get this right.

52 |

November 8: WordPlay, run by the Hand Eye Society, enters its second year in Toronto. Every year the IF community has something like a summit, and this year Canada was it; the event featured a live reading of Aisle, premieres of works by Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai and Porpentine, a talk by Plotkin on the aforementioned Hadean Lands and an entire, usually-packed room showcasing IF and IF-adjacent works, of all kinds.

53 |

November 16: The Interactive Fiction Competition announces its winners. 42 authors entered – historically, a high-water mark – and the top five was remarkably diverse: Hunger Daemon, a traditional Lovecraftian-lampoon parser work; Creatures Such as We, a space dating sim using ChoiceScript; Jacqueline, Jungle Queen!, a parser romp made in Quest; AlethiCorp, a surveillance satire with an entire Web interface; and With Those We Love Alive, a multimedia-enhanced Twine piece. They’re all beyond worth your time.

54 |

December 22: Twine 2.0, the long-awaited second release of the hypertext tool, is released. Long in the works – it was previewed at No Show Conference in 2013 – the new system notably adds browser-based support for creating Twine pieces.

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63 | 77 |
78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-62/letter-from-the-editor-and-call-for-submissions: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

SPAG 62 cover art

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Good afternoon! We’ve wrapped up what has proven to be an unusually historical month for IF:

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    5 |
  • The XYZZY Awards, for the first time ever, were dominated by commercial IF, notably Meg Jayanth and Inkle’s excellent steampunk piece and Best Game winner 80 Days. Ever since the beginnings of the hobbyist IF boom, authors, readers and observers alike have speculated about whether commercial interactive fiction would ever resurface, let alone become as half ubiquitous — and financially viable — as it was during  the ’80s. For years, people have argued that this day was approaching, slowly; several commercial publishers have come and gone, and increasingly come and stayed. And while commercial IF might not yet be a financial heavyweight (though it must be said that the creative economy is an entirely different thing in the 2010s than the 1980s), the past year has proven that for the first time in decades, it’s competing at the highest levels of acclaim.
  • 6 |
  • Going back in time a bit: what’s the first IF game ever written? Many of you likely answered Adventure — not so! Wander (1974), one of many mainframe games previously thought lost, was recently unearthed from the crumbling world of digital history, and soon after added to Github and compiled for Windows and Linux by the French IF community. Tantalizingly, it’s not merely a simple dungeon crawl like Colossal Cave, Zork or even Hunt the Wumpus, but includes a tool for prospective writers to create “non-deterministic fantasy stories” of their own. The spirit of collaboration is not a new thing; it’s baked in from the beginning.
  • 7 |
  • While we at SPAG are loath to call ourselves as historic as either of the previous, we are publishing our first issue in some time! And though I’m biased, I think it’s a great one. We’ve got a new online presence. We’ve got not one but two covers, both by J. Robinson Wheeler, and they deserve to be seen in high-res; check them out here and here. We’ve got plans to roll out SPAG in several new forms, from plaintext to a printable magazine, over the new few weeks and months. (Want to help? Get in touch!) 8 |

    And last, but not least, we have pieces on each of the issue’s themes:

  • 9 |
10 |

SOCIETY:

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    12 |
  • Hugo Labrande, “>JUSTIFY, HEIGHTEN, SAY YES: Interactive Fiction as Improv
    13 | IF is often described in theatrical metaphors — scenes, stages, props. Labrande makes a case for IF to be considered specifically as improvisational theater: a collaboration between performers and audience, working in tandem rather than at odds, to produce the idea that anything can happen.
  • 14 |
15 |

PRESERVATION:

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    17 |
  • Marius Müller, “Poetry Is What Gets Lost in Translation: notes on translating PataNoir and Sunday Morning
    18 | As prizes for several successive IFcomps, Müller offered translations of winners’ work from English into German, and the authors that chose the prize presented interesting challenges: a wordplay-based detective story, a historical Victorian epic. The process, and the resulting product, falls somewhere between preserving the original meaning and collaborating on an entirely new work.
  • 19 |
20 |

ADVENTURE:

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GAMES:

26 |

The cornerstone of each issue of SPAG, we have capsule blurbs as well as long-form reviews of the spring’s major releases, including:

27 | 32 |

And last, but not least, we have our…

33 |

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: ISSUE #63

34 |

ShuffleComp is nearly upon us, and we are looking for reviewers! Same idea as always: capsule reviews, quick and snappy, like a three-minute pop song. (Musical accompaniment optional.) We are also particularly interested in SPAG Specifics on the spring’s offerings, and especially the Spring Thing Back Garden — though, as always, we’re open to whatever you have something to say about!

35 |

As for longer-form pieces: befitting the news, the theme for issue #63 is WANDERING! As always this is semi-optional; interpret this as strictly or as loosely as you’d like — let your mind wander, if you will. If you need inspiration, some ideas might include: exploring story worlds, delving into IF developments around the world, in real life and on the ‘Net; wandering through the far reaches of what IF can do, or the history of what it’s done in the past; and hey, of course, there’s always the game itself.

36 |

As always, send all pitches to spag.mag.if@gmail.com, along with a brief bio of yourself, and writing samples if you prefer. Also appreciated: a rough sense of word count (see the pieces in this issue for a guideline) and an estimated time of completion (aim for June or July).

37 |

We highly encourage submissions from experienced IF critics as well as newcomers, and we are particularly interested in pitches by women, people of color and others who are under-represented in IF writing. However, all are welcome, including those who have previously expressed interest in writing for the website.

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Thank you for reading and keeping us alive all these years! Let’s make #63, and the issues to come, just as strong.

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SPAG 62 alternate cover art

41 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /articles/issue-62/active-fiction-project-vancouver: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 |

An outdoor corkboard covered with letters and photos

2 |

Take off the Oculus and power down: all you need to play Gone Home is a house. Go figure! The graphics leap past the uncanny valley; the sound design is remarkable in its verisimilitude, with a whole radio full of stations and live DJs. The only problem is that there are so many distracting details (look, the toilets all flush!) that it’s easy to stray from the path of the main quest and get sidetracked in emergent side-stories.

3 |

The Active Fiction Project — what are the odds that in this world, “active fiction” would evolve parallel to interactive fiction? — has made it easy for you. In place of a map and modeled rooms, they present you a gameplay environment of — the world. That is, a subset of the world, consisting of one neighbourhood, Riley Park, in the city of Vancouver, Canada. And in this neighbourhood, story nodes with branching choices sporadically appear on laminated printouts attached to street signs and lamp posts with zap straps, the most low-tech version of augmented reality imaginable. Each placard contains a story segment and presents a few choices at the end, which can be invoked by visiting specifically described physical locations (eg. “the SE corner (aha, the artificial imposition of compass directions persists!) of Quebec St. and 26th Avenue”) where the next cards, and their story sections, are to be found. In a neat bit of contextual dovetailing, the setting of the story events coincides with the location of the cards, so cards found in parks will describe outdoor activities there, cards in commercial areas will concern themselves with visits to local businesses, etc: the map IS the territory!

4 |

The project is the brainchild of regional planner Jaspal Marwah, who moonlights as the public art coordinator of the Vancouver Public Space Network. An example of their previous public art projects might include the surprise appearance of several brighly-decorated upright pianos installed at neighbourhood street corners for pedestrians to use to channel their inner Jerry Lee Lewis, but as Jaspal has noted, public art is rarely literary in nature: for all the murals or mosaics installed or cacophonous live-music street parties (or public transit flashmobs) blared, insertion of simple words into public spaces falls way behind. They’re not entirely unknown, but will typically take the form of short and ambiguous poetic phrases expensively cut into sheet metal or programmed into LED displays — not much to sink your teeth into. (Author Douglas Coupland had a residency at a local hotel’s marquee a few years back, but let’s face it, he’s no Jenny Holzer.) And interaction with literary public art? Why, it’s nigh unheard-of!

5 |

A CYOA-style passage posted on a signboard

6 |

Jaspal brought the matter to University of British Columbia Creative Writing instructor Timothy Taylor, who posed the challenge to his students. The first to rise to meet it, Nicole Boyce, presented the inaugural Active Fiction story in May of 2014, in conjunction with a series of walking tours celebrating the ideas of urban planner Jane Jacobs. It was entitled The Raffle, and concerns itself with an attempt by a new arrival to town to make some friends in the area. (SPOILER ALERT: A meat draw in the Legion Hall figures prominently, lending the piece its name.)

7 | 9 |

The cards were up for nearly three weeks, and then they came down again. Suddenly, the game unplayable, the story unreadable — all we were left with was the Monopoly board without any of the dice, cards, money or tokens! Our mission, we chose to accept… this message had now self-destructed. Thanks for the memories! (This author documented the cards for posterity,
10 | but reading them removed from their geographical context is as incomplete an experience as an Infocom marathon with no feelies! Not a great candidate for the Situationist game of navigating one area using the map of another; this would be more akin to watching your favorite movie, remade with new actors — they’d speak the same lines, but it just wouldn’t quite be right.)

11 |

The second and most recent work of Active Fiction went up in November of 2015, again for a limited lifespan of a few weeks. “In Search of Little Mountain”, by playwright Sarah Higgins, was nominally concerned with a search for the origin of the neighbourhood’s name; like the previous story, it also presented low-stakes slice-of-life vignettes somewhere between a
12 | Seinfeld episode and a Samuel Beckett play, where zany characters interact with vaguely-defined (AFGNCAAP) readers in broad strokes with many, many paces between opportunities for story paragraph injection and game-choice availability.

13 |

Another CYOA-style passage posted on a signboard

14 |

In a sense these little scattered scripts are plays that are 99% intermission, doubling down as scene changes. Similarities come to mind with the “Zombies, Run!” fitness app for smartphones, which makes you travel distances (but nowhere in particular) at speed to successfully (avoid being eaten by zombies and) further major plot points in a post-apocalyptic audiodrama. Active Fictions, by contrast, make you move to very specific places at any pace you like to advance vague events and happenings in the mundane everyday here and now. (Also, to be clear, none of them contain any zombies — thus far.)

15 |

The Active Fiction Project turns out all the lights between those handful of weeks when their stories are up on the streets, so it’s difficult to know exactly when to expect them to spin back into motion. That said, with the limited sample size of two releases to date to work with, one might reasonably conjecture that we’ll see another installment out this month — for the series’ first anniversary! Perhaps fans of (inter)active fiction who find themselves pounding the pavements of Canada’s most expensive and least satisfied city might find at least one free and public thing to look forward to.

16 |

Additional links:

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23 | 24 |

About Rowan Lipkovits

25 |

Rowan has designed something in the ballpark of sixty games in his head since childhood, and in three decades has had the persistence and vision to follow a grand total of three of them through to completion and public release. He writes about old video game print ads at Shilling Epilepsy to Mouth-Breathers, CYOA gamebooks and works of hyperfiction at Turn to Page 4, and rocks a mean (outright angry, in fact) squeezebox with the jug band of the damned, The Creaking Planks.

26 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/issue-61/editorial/index.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | SPAG: The Interactive Fiction Magazine 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
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Issue 61: 34 | Editorial: Welcome back!

35 | 36 | 37 |

January 2, 2013

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SPAG 61 cover art

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It’s been too long, so welcome back to SPAG! Real life intervened and unfortunately our previous editor David Monath was unable to keep publishing the magazine. Like many of you, for a long time I too was worried that SPAG might not receive the resurrection it deserved. But when I saw that Jimmy Maher, SPAG’s penultimate editor, hoped that someday someone would offer to take over running it, I decided that I could be that someone. I asked, he gave me his blessings (and the passwords for the old website), and here we are today!

44 |

I’ve been involved with the IF community for a few years now, though I wouldn’t consider myself a very important part of it. I’m not a, you know, author. But I guess I have made my mark: although I didn’t create it for the last few years I’ve been the main developer of Parchment, and I consider myself a reasonable Inform 7 hacker. My creative contributions are a few small additions to Kerkerkruip.

45 |

Portrait of Dannii Willis

46 |

Over the last eighteen years the IF Community works has on occasion shifted its hubs of discussion. The old newsgroups are all but dead as people have migrated to the intfiction.org forum and independent blogs, most of which are aggregated at Planet IF. Of relevance to SPAG is that there are now innumerable places to publish reviews, and those who don’t have their own websites can always use the IFDB.

47 |

So this new SPAG is more than a new web address and a shift to using WordPress. No longer will SPAG be the clearing-house of reviews as it once was; it’s been twenty months since Issue 60, and the community had coped well enough posting their reviews elsewhere. So what will the new SPAG be? Well I hope to fill these pages with longer articles: interviews, the art and craft of writing IF, tutorials for working with IF technology. We’ll have discussions of the growing community, and the broadening of what exactly “Interactive Fiction” entails today. But all this will still be grounded in reference to the works of our community, just with more analysis and synthesis than you see in normal reviews; SPAG Specifics will still be a regular feature!

48 |

Issue 61 isn’t a big issue, but I think it’s a good one. To start with we have interviews with the top three winners of IFComp 2012. Joey Jones then brings us a discussion on shared worlds in IF: what has been tried so far and where we might go in the future. And lastly Mark Ricard compares Deadline and Make It Good and how they together have defined the IF detective genre.

49 |

In bringing this issue to publication many thanks are in order: to Jimmy Maher for allowing me to take over as editor and giving me a leg up for the task, to Brandon Invergo for providing web hosting, to Marco Innocenti for his fabulous logo and cover design, to Rob Wheeler for the cover design and proof reading, to the IFComp winners for being willing interviewees, and of course to our writers! Many others have given advice or encouragement, so if that’s you know that I appreciated your help too.

50 |

Now I must finish on a traditional note, and remind you that SPAG is always after more content. So if you have an idea for an article please email me and tell me all about it.

51 |

See you soon!

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54 | 55 |

About Dannii Willis

56 |

Dannii is the developer of Parchment, the web IF interpreter.

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Reader comments

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68 | 69 | matt w 70 | 71 |
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73 | January 2, 2013 at 2:27 AM 74 |
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76 | 77 |

” I wouldn’t consider myself a very important part of it.... although I didn’t create it for the last few years I’ve been the main developer of Parchment,”

Modesty! Being the main developer of Parchment makes you a very important part of the IF community, even if you never do anything else.

78 | 79 |
80 | 81 |
82 | 83 | Jimmy Maher 84 | 85 |
86 |
87 | January 2, 2013 at 10:34 AM 88 |
89 |
90 | 91 |

The new format looks great! Congrats on pulling everything together and getting this out. I can hardly express how happy it makes me to know that SPAG is a going concern again.

92 | 93 |
94 | 95 |
96 | 97 | Robert DeFord 98 | 99 |
100 |
101 | January 2, 2013 at 1:05 PM 102 |
103 |
104 | 105 |

I echo what Jimmy Maher said.

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108 | 109 |
110 | 111 | Paul O'Brian 112 | 113 |
114 |
115 | January 3, 2013 at 4:24 PM 116 |
117 |
118 | 119 |

Congratulations on the revival, and on this beautiful new issue! I heartily approve of the new direction, and I can’t wait to read it.

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Available Issues

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438 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 439 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 440 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 441 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 442 |

443 |
444 | 445 | 446 | 447 | 448 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /htdocs/archives/backissues/call60a.html: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Call for Submisssions (Bonus Edition), SPAG Issue #60 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 |

SPAG

66 |
67 | 68 |
69 | 70 | 71 | 72 |

Call for Submissions (Bonus Edition) for SPAG Issue #60 (Deadline: April 03, 2011)

73 | 74 | 75 |
76 | 77 | 78 | Topics: New Mailing List, XYZZY 2010 and Other Reviews, IFC 2010 Interviews, PAXE 2011
79 | 80 |
81 | 82 | -- New Mailing List --
83 | 84 |
85 | 86 | Hi, all! Many of you are aware of the popular Previous Call for Submissions for SPAG Issue #60 posted a few weeks ago on the site, but not on the mailing list, as there was a temporary existential crisis involving not being able to contact our former mailing list administrator. BUM bum Bummmmm. The solution, alas, is going to have to be to switch to another list server, but it should be relatively painless! There's no way for us to acquire the current list of subscribers and migrate them all, so the good news is I won't inadvertently incur wrath by signing you up for a new service you did but didn't want. The bad news is in order to respect Jimmy's retirement from editorship (who's kind enough to send out this interim notice), we'll have to head over to the new SPAG Google Group and subscribe.
87 | 88 |
89 | 90 | Woah, what's that entail? Well, for one, even though it's a Google Group, it's set to only publish e-mail, and normal users don't have permission to post or the ability to see other users' personal information, so it'll function exactly like the current mailing list. Second, while you do have to have a Google Account, you don't need a Gmail account and can use your current e-mail address.
91 | 92 |
93 | 94 | --XYZZY 2010 and Other Reviews--
95 | 96 |
97 | 98 | Huge congrats to Matt Wigdahl, who basically won the XYZZY 2010 Awards singlehandedly. . . . Not that he let that get in the way of "family" and "parental responsibility," and thus couldn't make it for the IF MUD presentation itself. Happily for us, Sarah Morayati will extract every remaining curious detail about Aotearoa and Matt's approach to game design, so I can't wait for that!
99 | 100 |
101 | 102 | To recap from the aforementioned prior call for SPAG #60, most of the games nominated for XYZZYs this year were also to be found in the IF Comp, and thus have been reviewed. However, we have a few notable gaps to fill: The People's Glorious Revolutionary Text Adventure Game, by Taylor Vaughan; and, for the charitable and multi-lingual amongst us, the German works Allein mit Kai by Ingo Scharmann and Joana Markus, and Mariel by Michael Baltes. Thanks to Valentine Kopteltsev for his review of Gris et Jaune, by Steve van Gaal, a needed review from the earlier list.
103 | 104 |
105 | 106 | Also, we're looking for reviews of the following three stand-alone releases:
107 | 108 |
109 | 110 | The Art of Fugue, by Victor Gijsbers, Jimmy Maher, Dorte Lassen, and Johan;
111 | 'Mid the Sagebrush and the Cactus, by Victor Gijsbers;
112 | Starborn, a short by Juhana Leinonen.
113 | 114 |
115 | 116 | -- IF Comp 2010 Winner Interviews --
117 | 118 |
119 | 120 | With congratulations again to IFC 2010 winners Matt Wigdahl, C.E.J. Pacian, and Colin Sandel and Carolyn VanEseltine, we're looking for interviews with Colin and Carolyn for third-place One Eye Open. I'm pleased to report Valentine Kopteltsev already has an extremely characterful interview with C.E.J.Pacian in the bag which you should feel at liberty to begin anticipating even now.
121 | 122 |
123 | 124 | -- PAX East 2011 --
125 | 126 |
127 | 128 | I'd love to hear from all interested parties who may be in attendance. There will be plenty to cover, from individual talks to panels to general atmospherics, observations of trends, the terribly cute and fragile still-ashen baby phoenix which is commercial IF, and mockery of our collective inability to get to bed before dawn when there's, you know, STUFF to discuss, etc. =) We'll want to get your thoughts and analysis on any relevant part of PAX/IF which catches your fancy.
129 | 130 |
131 | 132 | -- Concluding Business and Other Opportunities --
133 | 134 |
135 | 136 | Also, if you have a paper you're working on related to IF, or would like a forum in which to cover a technical issue, concepts in game design, story craft, or other topic (e.g., incorporating cultural differences in interactive fiction), send it in! If inspiration fails, drop by Planet-IF for leads.
137 | 138 |
139 | 140 | Submissions should be in by the weekend of April 2nd and 3rd (extended a week from the prior deadline due to the list serv quest), which gives us a few weeks after PAXE 2010 to incorporate coverage. For the rest of it, earlier submissions are always appreciated! =) Thanks as ever to all contributors, and if you'd like to help but just aren't sure what to do . . . just ask, at davidm.spag SP@G gmail.com!
141 | 142 |
143 | 144 | I look forward to hearing from you and getting everyone involved!
145 | 146 |
147 | 148 | Cheers,
149 | 150 |
151 | 152 | David
153 | 154 |
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161 |

SPAG is maintained as a historical archive by the 162 | Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. 163 | Pages are no longer updated and links may no longer work. 164 | All articles and reviews are copyright by their original authors. 165 |

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