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I'm just toying with the idea of making a sandbox interactive fiction game - perhaps with some graphic elements, so it might roughly resemble a roguelike - it seems Inform 7 is capable of such things

http://glimmr.wordpress.com/

but I wonder, if it's going to be enough rewarding - moneywise - in order to take up such a project.

Basically the idea is to build a really complex game. I dont' want to give out too much, but the idea sprang from Dwarf Fortress, and how do people treat this game.
It's been said that many people don't play it, because they find it too complex - or what other reason they have - but they enjoy reading stories from the game.

I thought about delivering just that - stories. In text format.
Something like a book that writes itself. A series of many text generators. Which will generate a new world, character and story everytime you press "new game", and is interactive.
But I also have a few other ideas I'm thinking about, namely, one of them is the SIMBICON thing - I posted my proposition of us working together on that thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=15050.0 - and I try to decide which project to focus on.
Will the interactive fiction sandbox pay?
Or will I have to come back to programming (inform 7 enables some really pleasant English-language programming, so I guess making a game in it would be much more a pleasure).

I got myself in a really unnerving financial situation and I guess I'm wondering, if a text-game project like that could help me, eventually with that. Either on a donation-basis or "pay as much or as little as you want" for a game thingie...
What do you think?
Could a interactive-fiction/text based game possibly sell?

It's usually on the basis of a prototype that people decide if something is worth playing, rather than an idea... because it depends on the execution of the idea.

Whereas the idea alone is just a product of our imagination, which makes it really easy think that it could work or imagine something altogether different.

Obligatory: http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game

aren't most IF games free? I like IF games, but I don't think I'm a big fan enough to where I would purchase one. There are plenty available for free, almost too many. If you managed to pull off your idea though, I would probably purchase it. But it sounds something very involved and hard to pull off.

I dont think it would help you with your financial situation..this is something better done on your free time. You'd probably rake in a bit of money with it, but nothing really substantial.

The most successful IF games have started becoming graphical.  Façade is the most visually impressive.  Digital: A Love Story is the most memorable, though it definitely follows a strict storyline.  Judith is another...  

If you make it text-only though, don't expect to make any money at all.

I don't see you making a living off of IF, but then again I never expected anyone to make a living off of ASCII graphical roguelike strategy games, either

If book sell why not IF, but you need the correct formula and the correct platform (ipad?).
But text does not mean bad or no graphism, it just shift to typography and lay out!

I've read up a little on Inform, for what it's worth.  I'm interested in using it.

The natural language processing system it uses seems to be quite powerful, and most of the default logic (rooms, objects, containers, directions) is written directly in inform syntax.  It's a shame that kind of programming hasn't proliferated more, as a programmer.

I personally want to make an IF game where the player is a shapeshifter, and changes upon invoking a "become" keyword.  Inform looks like it could handle that in style.  :3

These guys are currently making money on IF. (not lots though, but more than beer and pizza money)

http://www.choiceofgames.com/


Yesterday, I was at the SF bay area IF meetup. The author of Blue Lacuna and other Inform 7 big wigs were there and the choiceofgames guys. Great meeting!

You might want to talk to Amanda Fitch, she is a game developer and runs a small but successful game portal that caters to people who play games like that (rpgs, story-based interactive fiction, etc.)... she's really nice and might be able to give you some advice about the financial aspect of developing this sort of game.  She knows her demographic really well.  Her site is http://amaranthia.com/

Yeah, I've recently begun looking into IF as a way for me to contribute to the indie-game world; it'd be great if there were a lot interested TIGForum users in the woodwork.

i think my biggest problem with interactive fiction is finding what does something

The multiple-choice style of IF solves this problem. Its format stems from those old Choose Your Own Adventure books. But those were pretty awful stories. Modern IF in that style is often much better. Again, see 'choiceofgames.com'. The blog there is pretty interesting.

Cool links.
I've been toying with the idea of a multiplayer IF.. aka "MUD". Except its on an alien planet not a dungeon, and would procedurally generate items ala Nethack. Sounds cool, but who's going to play it?

Yeah, I'd love to be part of a MUD development team, but it's another one of those things: I have no clue where to begin...

A lot of people still play muds, and it's not too hard to get something up quick. A guy made one for Ludum Dare (http://www.topmudsites.com/forums/mud-coding/6050-islandsmud-python-code-base-written-48-hours.html), and myself and two others got most of the way with one in two days for a RPGDX compo. Mudbytes (http://www.mudbytes.net) is probably the best current community for mud developers and it has a lot of information there.

There isn't really a good, comprehensive intro guide to IF dev (most will just point you to one or two tools), but I'd be happy to answer any questions (about IF or muds). One site that might help for IF is Parsifal (http://www.firthworks.com/roger/parsifal/), which compares many different IF dev systems alongside each other (http://www.firthworks.com/roger/cloak/).

Ah, I'll have to look into it all. I think that a dev-team for a MUD would be cool stuff; not many dev-teams look for writers, as far as the "job" section of this forum goes, and I'd love to get involved... :P

[Technical derail?]
From hearing people at work talk / show me how awesome Ruby is, it looks like it would be a great language to write a MUD in. Thoughts/comments?

Alehkhs, share some of your thoughts on writing in a MUD environment? Structuring individual stories? Dynamic storylines?

I think these folks (http://www.mudbytes.net/index.php?a=forum&f=43) would agree with you; there are a few Ruby mud servers (TeensyMUD (http://teensymud.kicks-ass.org/) off the top of my head) but no major ones yet that I know of, probably just because Ruby has caught on relatively late in the old genre that is muds. Ruby's flexibility and suitability for text parsing definitely are pluses for mud development.

I think your game sounds like a really neat idea, and I hope it works out! But I've got to warn you, getting into indie game design as a way to escape debt is not a very good bet. :( If you're taking other measures as well, have a regular job, etc, then it couldn't hurt to try this and see what comes of it; but, historically, there's a lot more indie developers who either flop or make very modest profits than ever become really successful, so don't pin any hopes on it.

A lot like authors, really. Well, maybe not quite that bad...

Yeah, by writing I mean everything from world-building to NPC conversations and, yes; I would love threading together dynamic, consequential storylines, although I think that community driven plots that have the potential to permanently alter affect the game-world need to be handled carefully. All very, very exciting to me, and one day I hope to have the opportunity.

The Interactive Fiction community has been going pretty strong since the 80s, it never really died. There's still a ton of comps that run and people that are extremely into the scene.

I actually watched this _awesome_ documentary this weekend all about Text Based Adventure games and Interactive Fiction called Get Lamp. Even had a cameo by Ian Bogost! Buy it, watch it, love it.

http://getlamp.com/ (http://getlamp.com/)