Top Highlights

• "Obviously, no small computer program can encompass the entire universe. What it can do, however, is simulate enough of the universe to appear more intelligent than it really is."
• I think looking at these games as isolated islands misses a lot of why they're interesting and important to keep thinking about.
• Choose Your Own Adventure books took care to keep their illustrations gender-neutral, so both boys and girls could picture themselves as "you," but then over time, the publisher abandoned this conceit under the perception that this kind of book would sell better to boys. Those kinds of decisions are both important historically but also, I think, de...
• —connecting to, for instance, the 1987 chapter on Plundered Hearts, where designer Amy Briggs was seen as an isolated outsider for being a woman writing an interactive story.
• I would love to see a whole book about BBS games, play-by-mail games, or about early games designed by women (amateur interactive fiction designers like Linda Wright or Dorothy Millard in the '80s, or Joyce Weisbecker, Carol Shaw, and Donna Bailey working on more graphical games in the early days) or queer people (and Christopher Strachey deserves ...

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