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Review
I remember when this came out. It's a kind of Zeno's Paradox, or Schrödinger's Cat; a tangible thought experiment about the nature of interactive fiction, and what constitutes interactive fiction. Like Zeno and Schrödinger, this piece says "Well, according to what a bunch of guys are saying, this would qualify as IF, because there is a world model and you interact with it. So, is this IF?"
I always thought it was an interesting experiment, and it took me a while to grok that what was actually going on here was a bit more subtle.
This is not "an IF version of Moby Dick". This is an IF version of someone reading the book Moby Dick.
I know it seems obvious, but it upends the original question entirely. The question is, partly, "is the act of writing >READ MORE sufficient to call something interactive fiction?". The story of Moby Dick is totally incidental. It could have been any book. It could have been anything. You are certainly not interacting with Ishmael or anything in the book. You are in a room; in the room you have a book. That is what the world models, that is what you are interacting with. The fiction is not "Ishmael met Peequod and Ahab and an epic adventure followed in which you incidently learn more about whales than you ever thought was sane". The fiction is, "a book is before you. Do you continue to read?"
In fact, if the book were the Necronomicon, or Clive Barker's "Mister B. Gone", the decision to READ MORE might have some weight!
There is a cheeky review that consists of an original contemporary review of Moby Dick. That was a fun move, but it misses the point, because this game is not Moby Dick. This game is an entity reading the book called Moby Dick.
Is it IF? Like Schrödinger meant for his Cat to expose the ridiculousness of what was being proposed and instead finding it to be completely embraced, I would say yes. A world is modelled. You interact with an object. There is no story, there are no puzzles - but storyless and puzzleless IF is no less IF. You might even say that a world model isn't strictly necessary for IF, though we enter a more esoteric realm; even choice-based IF models a world in some respect. Not necessarily the way that parser-IF does; sometimes more narrative than world-building; but there is a world model in which the player makes choices.
Is this good IF? Erm, I would say not, no. It's dull.
Is this a good provocatory thought experiment? Heck yeah.
What is it? It's the story of a person reading a book. Nothing else. The whole point is that it is not the story of Moby Dick. That happens to be what is written on the book.
