It seems to be a widespread impression on r*if that anyone who does anything "literary" with IF, anyone who sets his sights higher than Zork fanfic, is really looking for some kind of mainstream artistic legitimacy, seeking to distance himself from the IF geeks and be feted by the wider literary public.
"I think the IF community in general is geared towards inclusiveness with a few outstanding [writers] trying to push towards critical artistic acceptance."
"[IF] tries hard to break into popular recognition with genre-defying works and friendly accessibility [...]."
I think this view is based on some false assumptions. First of all, there is no "mainstream", and there hasn't been for many years. We're in the Information Age, and there is simply too much information being pumped out, too often, from too many sources, for any of it to claim the centre ground. We're in a world of total knowledge fragmentation, where every interest is a fringe interest; a world where novelists, poets, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, dramatists, dancers and painters are all sad geeks pursuing their own sad pastimes, either alone or in small communities of like-minded losers. In this world, "popular recognition" is never particularly popular, and there is no "critical acceptance" beyond the critical acceptance of small and smaller circles of nerds.
Of course, what many people mean by mainstream recogition is not popularity but profitability; "you get what you pay for" is an ingrained mentality in consumer society. For these people, art gains legitimacy by making money, and IF will never be a real art form again until people start handing over the cash for it. The price tag makes Infocom worthy of column inches, in commercial and academic journals; free IF will always be, by its nature, an inferior product, shoddy, lacking the dignity of lucre. (Without wishing ill on the various commercial IF ventures that have sprung up, Howard Sherman's scam operation excepted, I don't think IF will ever return to the mainstream in this sense. It's just too rooted in the imperative programming model, it comes from a time when computer users were also, by necessity, programmers. There's something about the parser interface that is both off-putting to new users and absolutely essential to the medium. I don't see a way around it.)
I have been accused of writing literary IF, but I most definitely was not writing it to get mainstream recognition, in either the delusional or the financial sense of the term. My aim was simply artistic self-expression; I used IF to say the kind of things I wanted to, in a way I found pleasing. I'd be lying if I said I didn't also have my eye on critical acceptance, didn't eagerly scour the reviews for words of praise; but I was certainly not looking for "mainstream" critical acceptance, and the kind words of a few IF people were good enough for me. Getting praised makes me chuffed, but getting praised ten times doesn't make me ten times as chuffed.
The perceived quest for "mainstream" is really tied into a shame in playing IF. Many people evidently feel like losers for enjoying games in some defunct 80s text-only medium, or at least are highly self-conscious about the fact:
"[IF] is a 'marginalised' medium that raises eyebrows (when I say I'm writing an 'interactive fiction--you know a text adventure--you know, pick up axe, throw axe at dwarf, kill dragon!', people just stare)"As has been pointed out, IF has a lot in common with comics in this respect. Just as the comics fan indulges in cheerleading for any shit comic that gets turned into a shit movie (e.g. A History of Violence), so the IF fan strives for external validation by hunting for IF references in more mainstream media -- such as obscure webcomics or the promo materials for trashy EFP novels. Such fans project their own feelings of inadequacy on those who write "literary" IF, assuming they must be striving for external validation too.
Worse are the IF fans who feel so inadequate that they even question the right of others to aim higher than fanfic. One such fan, at the end of a lengthy metaphor comparing IF writers to performers of church music, asks:
"Is it wrong to want to have great music? Is it wrong for a community of enthusiasts?"This is rather like wondering aloud whether it is right to allow free speech, or whether beautiful people should be purposefully disfigured so as not to upset their more homely colleagues. There is a strong implication that, as a mere "community of enthusiasts" and not professional hacks, we should all know our places and not get airs. But this is really carrying a feeling of inadequacy too far. If you feel like such a loser, then it's quite probable that you really are; but in any case, there's no need to inflict it on the rest of us.
Another false assumption being made is that there is a fundamental difference between "entertainment" IF (commonly referred to as "text adventures") and "art" IF (commonly referred to as "interactive fiction"). But in truth, it makes no sense to speak of "art" or "entertainment" IF; IF is either charming or tedious. My problem with a lot of "art" IF is that it is bad art; and my problem with a lot of "entertainment" IF is that I don't find it entertaining at all.