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Choose Your Own Adventure

These books were the gateway drugs of interactive entertainment. — Choose Your Own Adventure historian Christian Swineheart My first experience with interactive media wasn’t mediated by any sort of digital technology.

I was interested in just about everything — a trait I’ve never lost, both to my benefit and my detriment in life — and I could sit for long periods of time in my room, spinning out fantasies in my head about school lessons, about books I’d read, about television shows I’d seen, even about songs I’d heard on the radio. TSR, the maker of that other school-cafeteria sensation Dungeons & Dragons, introduced an interactive-book line drawn from the game; even this website’s old friend Infocom came out with Zork books, written by the star computer-game implementor Steve Meretzky. “Play as male, female, or nonbinary; cis or trans; gay, straight, or bisexual; asexual and/or aromantic; allosexual and/or alloromantic; monogamous or polyamorous!” (Boring middle-aged married guy that I am, I must confess that I have no idea what three of those words even mean.)

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