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This week on RetroNOTS, we use our words.

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of RetroNOTS.

I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie.

Today we're going to be talking about text adventures or interactive fiction if you prefer.

Now this is a very important subject, but unfortunately one we've mostly treated as a footnote

in the discussion of other games.

But today we have a true expert on board to enlighten me and all of us out there about this important and actually ongoing video game genre.

Guess please introduce yourself for our audience.

Hey everyone, I'm Aaron A. Reed.

It's great to be here.

My background is kind of as indie game designer, but I've also been an academic.

I've worked in games industry a little bit.

But kind of my primary identity is really as a writer and the genre I've really been interested in is the genre of interactive fiction games, which is basically computer games that are mostly using words to create gameplay and tell stories.

So I've been writing those games more or less my whole life and then more recently I did a long blog series getting into their history.

And it's just something I'm I really love it as a genre.

I just love the combination of written words and this stuff you can do with digital platforms.

That's right. And you have a book coming out currently as of this recording, the Kickstarter is still ongoing.

Unfortunately, it will be over by the time this releases, but the book is called 50 years of text games from Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon.

I'm not sure how it works. Aaron, we did a retro.

We did our Kickstarter long time ago. Can you still donate after it closes?

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