A Mind Forever Voyaging

As a recent convert to interactive fiction, I have been looking for good games to get started with. Although this is perhaps not a typical work, I was intrigued by the sci-fi dystopian premise and encouraged by the wealth of critical praise heaped upon AMFV. Rather than detailing specific aspects of the gameplay or plot that I found especially effective, I want to focus this review on the merits of AMFV as an introduction to IF.

In short: I found AMFV quite stunning in its own right and also an effective introduction to IF more broadly. The work opened my eyes to the artistic potential of IF as a form and delivered a playing experience that was easy and engaging for someone with only minimal prior exposure to IF.

A few more detailed points:

I appreciated the relative lack of puzzles. Though I'm not averse to puzzle-heavy IF, I wanted a work without punishing puzzles or cruel game design (e.g. unwinnable states, lots of learning by dying). I loved that the main mission of the game is to explore the simulated versions of Rockvil, which still requires some careful attention to the description of places and objects without the demands of a typical puzzle (e.g. finding just the right use of an object to get past an obstacle). AMFV helped to ease me into the playing mechanics of IF without suffering the pain of banging my head (literally or metaphorically) against some puzzle to make progress.

I also thought that AMFV did a great job of introducing the a novice player to the poetics of IF, that is, the joys (and challenges) of navigating a simulated world via a text interface. Cleverly, the simulated versions of Rockvil can be seen as sorts of IF worlds within the broader IF work -- Perry Simm is in the same role as the player. This effect was achieved quite well and not in an eye-winking kind of way.

Finally, this work is clearly significant in the broader history of IF, which is obvious even to a newcomer like myself. Playing it definitely helped me to better understand the historical foundation of where more recent IF works have come from, but the experience was not that of an 'eat your vegetables' history lesson. The work is still fresh and enjoyable on its own terms, and indeed the satirical thrust of the work is still very relevant (even if the political satire could be heavy-handed at times -- probably my only real complaint about AMFV).

There's a rather famous quote about the Velvet Underground's first album. It comes from an LA Times interview with Brian Eno:

“I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!"

In 1985, Steve Meretzky was hardly a Lou Reed. He was probably one of the better-known game developers in America, thanks to the success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Infocom, for its part, was hardly Verve Records. They had published some of the most successful microcomputer games ever made, and were making a play for big, corporate software dollars.

And yet, for all of Infocom's lavish production and post-production resources, A Mind Forever Voyaging has the aspirational earnestness of a small art film. According to Jimmy Maher, people around the office referred to it as "Steve Meretzky's Interiors," an unflattering comparison to Woody Allen's 1978 film of the same name. In fairness to Meretzky's contemporaries, amused bafflement is a possible reaction to something that one has never seen, anticipated, or imagined.

I could go on like this for hours. In fact, I already have elsewhere. So let's let this review be a review. In A Mind Forever Voyaging, the player guides an artificial intelligence, Perry Simm, though various iterations of a simulated future. The point of the simulation is to evaluate the effects of a sweeping legislative package usually referred to as "The Plan." The author of said plan is "Richard Ryder," and he and his policies are meant to remind us of Ronald Reagan.

The gameplay here is radically different from what one would have been used to in 1985. Perry must observe and record events and conditions that the game considers significant in terms of enriching or expanding the simulation. The AI is expanding its data set, in other words, while we guide Perry through daily life in Rockvil, Dakota. What is popular entertainment like, for instance, across the decades following the implementation of The Plan? How does the Simm family - Perry, Jill, and little Mitchell - get on? How are things at Perry's favorite Chinese restaurant?

Contemporary reviewers sometimes gloss over these innovations, missing the significance of centering human experiences and relationships in interactive narratives in 1985. Perhaps it is because we see these things everywhere nowadays. It can be easy to miss the influence of A Mind Forever Voyaging because it is everywhere. It can be hard to find an absence from which we can begin, from which we can detect its presence.

It has problems as a video game, and some of those problems are serious. It is not always clear what data is and is not useful for Perry, which can lead to feelings of being stuck. There is a climactic puzzle that has no relationship to the gameplay in the rest of the game. A game should train the player for its endgame, which A Mind Forever Voyaging fails to do.

I encourage contemporary players to refer to the Invisiclues - written by Meretzky himself - when stuck. If you don't understand a word or phrase in a Shakespeare play, do you look it up? The language of 1980s interactive fiction can seem equally arcane. Sometimes, these old games can feel mechanically obsolete. Which is fine! We have resources to help us through them as needed.

Some critics have invested significant ink in characterizing the model of AI in AMFV as unrealistic or incredible, as if A Mind Forever Voyaging was ever meant to be about computers. Despite appearances, it is about human beings. Humans wielding power, humans making art, humans forging friendships and families. Humans getting old together, humans insisting - rather shockingly in this context - that care, thoughtfulness, and imagination are essential to well-lived lives.

I knew two things about the game before I started playing:

* There's not much of a "game" in it, with only a few puzzles near the end
* Steve Meretzky intended it as a blistering attack on Ronald Reagan's policies

The first point is definitely correct--most of the game feels of a piece with the more recent walking simulators, where the focus of the experience is just to explore an environment and get a general sense of what's happening. This isn't a complaint! Wandering Rockvil, watching the decay, was fascinating; the dread from witnessing just how bad things got was palpable.

For the second point, though... Maybe it's just a consequence of being 30-some years removed from Reagan and no longer viscerally angry about or afraid of his platform, but I had some quibbles about the politics--it's hard for me to draw a straight line between the Plan as described and a fascistic cult coming into power, for example. And since 2041 is pretty OK, wouldn't it be possible to implement the Plan now and then change course in 10 years? (Also, just from a writing perspective, the 2071 segment is so, so bleak, it's almost funny that Dr. Perelman's response is, "Well, maybe it turns a corner at the 50-year mark." (Spoiler - click to show)The state's running gladiator fights to punish ration cheats!)

Despite my reservations there, I really did enjoy this game and have no qualms about recommending it.