Thus began one of the earliest computer text adventures, Zork. It was a vaguely D&Dish world with a quirky, slightly geeky sense of humor, as anything computer related was at the time. It was followed by Zork II, then Zork III, and then… the world changed. At least computers changed. Games came along with pictures, sound, and even short snatches of video, making the old-fashioned text adventure seem rather quaint.
Not liking the idea of being placed on the memory wall next to Grandma's victrola, the franchise came out with Return to Zork. The opening screen, music swelled with the dramatic pretensions of Carmina Burana as a helicopter "camera shot" circled in on, you guessed it, a white house.
Boy, did it suck. Return to Zork has to be one of the dullest, emptiest, most inanely stupid CD-Rom games out there. Why? Because it tried to actually show you what had only been evoked before from words. When you filled in the waterfall, the dam, end the endless caverns in your own imagination, it was perfect. It was perfect as only those elements concocted in your imagination can be, and it was real as only those things you build yourself can be.
I've said before, that it is filling in between the panels that makes comics so real for us. It is filling in all that is only suggested by a sound effect or a shadow that makes theatre a more immediate experience than film. It is the shark remaining unseen for so long in Jaws that made the movie so terrifying.
Writing prose and poetry, you are leaving a great deal up to the reader's imagination. You have to know how to coax it, how to lead it hither and thither, and how to give it a reward when it's done well.
Reading prose and poetry, you have to do a little more work to get the full experience. Reading passively like one half-listens to a predictable sitcom while updating one's Facebook profile is a lot like reading the cliff notes. You'll know the character's names and the basic plot. You can probably pass the test (you'll get a C). But if you really want the full experience, if you want to know what all the fuss is about, you've got to slow down and chew. Taste your food, listen to the music, smell the flowers.
It's amazing the sorts of things you start to notice. Sometimes characters' names have meaning. Sometimes the way a mud puddle is described is a metaphor for the whole damn crisis. Sometimes characters face a similar dilemma over time, or two characters face a parallel dilemma. The contrasts between then and now, or between what Harriet and Mary do on hearing the news that Tom's brother was taken prisoner, that's all part of the story. It just isn't spelled out for you. Nobody says "hey, Harriet's first reaction is to hit her knees and pray while Mary is proactive and does something." You are expected to work that out for yourself. If you do, that's your biscuit. If you don't, you miss out.
There's a happy ending with Zork. There was another CD-Rom game, Zork Nemesis, which was a first person POV as you the player were a spirit moving through this haunted land. The music evoked mood from creepy to foreboding, and the visuals showed you just enough that you could see passively. For the rest, you had to explore.
They learned. I would like to think we can all learn how to make the most of our medium. But like with active readers, we've got to do the work.
