Our class selected Colossal Cave Adventure for our video game canon in large part because it created the genre of interactive fiction – it pioneered a new way of using textual interface to create a representation of game world. According to Gonzalo Frasca, representation or narrative is important in video games, but the rules of a game convey its underlying meanings in a way that narrative alone cannot do, and one can understand the ideas of a game through playing it (Frasca). This is an important thing to consider when looking at Adventure, since it introduced a new form of gameplay. Examining both the representational and simulational elements of Adventure reveals two main themes inherent in the game: an appreciation for cave exploration, and a validation of the desire to conquer unknown territories.
Colossal Cave Adventure centrally features a cave, as the name itself sets the player up to expect, and the titular Colossal Cave (a fictionalized version of a real cave system in Kentucky; more on this later) is the main location of the game. However, at the start of the game, the player character is above ground. He or she can explore using the basic directional commands, but except for a few distinct spaces, most notably the building and the area with the grate, any movement will lead to a generic forest. While the forest is not entirely nondescript – there is, in fact, a description of the forest, which appears when the player “looks” at it – it is endless, non-varied, and unrewarding to explore (for example, the player cannot climb trees or go hiking). This encourages the player to find a way underground, as the game rules reward cave exploration. Furthermore, the fact that the cave must be entered from an aboveground area makes the cave itself stand out more as a magical world separate from the ordinary. This emphasizes the game’s depiction of caving as an enjoyable experience.
Looking at the context in which the game was created also highlights its respect for cave exploration. The original creator of the game was Will Crowther, who was himself a caver; Don Woods later modified the game code. A common belief is that Crowther’s original was a straightforward caving simulation, and that all the fantasy elements were added by Woods. However, inspection of the real Colossal Cave demonstrates that some of the magical elements in the game were based on features of the real cave, indicating that these features were added by Crowther, since he had explored Colossal Cave before making the game (Jerz). The faithful depictions of Colossal Cave show that the game was made with an appreciation for caving, and the added fantasy elements imply that the experience of caving is almost magical.
The game Adventure isn’t only about caving, though – while cave exploration is the main activity in the game, the objective is to find all the treasure in the cave and bring it back to the surface. The player is awarded points for picking up treasures in the cave and for depositing them in the aboveground building, so the game rules valorize these actions. The source of these treasures, however, is not addressed. Since almost all of them are man-made, the most probable explanation is that they are artifacts from a cave-dwelling culture. Zork, which was heavily based on Adventure, addresses this question more directly by establishing that the treasures are relics from the Great Underground Empire, and something similar might be concluded about Adventure. If that is the case, by awarding the player points for taking treasures, the game reinforces a common value in Western history as well as fiction: It is not only acceptable to take the artifacts of other civilizations, it is commendable. However, the fact that the origin of the treasures is never addressed is significant in itself – the game does not acknowledge any civilization other than that of the player. From that perspective, the inherent idea is not that it’s acceptable to exploit other cultures, but that other cultures are entirely negligible and not worthy of the explorer’s consideration.
The simulational aspects of Adventure continue to encourage the longstanding idea of the hero as conqueror. The rules of any game dictate the player’s interaction with the game world, and the “rules” of Adventure’s text-parsing program are what words it recognizes. The player can type anything, but only certain words and phrases elicit a response from the game program, so what words were included and excluded are significant. While interactive fiction games allow great variety in command input, there is a finite number of choices of action that the game will recognize at each juncture, and very few will be rewarded. In Adventure, for example, the verb “speak” is recognized, so the player could type “speak with dwarf” upon encountering a dwarf in the cave. However, while the game recognizes this action, it informs the player that he or she receives no reply. The only way to deal with the dwarf is through violence; the game program does not allow attempts to negotiate to be successful. The dwarf is the enemy figure common to many video games, but if the game’s Colossal Cave is seen as the ruins of a foreign civilization, the dwarf is also a figure that represents foreignness. The fact that the game rules produce a favorable result only when violence is used against the humanlike dwarf figure implies that the game tacitly valorizes the conquering of unknown territories, no matter who or what may live there.
Colossal Cave Adventure created a new genre, interactive fiction, by introducing a new way to represent space and movement in a text game. It accomplished this through a new type of gameplay, typed commands processed by a noun-verb parser. Both representation and rules of gameplay convey messages to the player, representation directly and rules implicitly. Examining Adventure from both these perspectives reveals two major themes: a respect and appreciation for caving, and the idea that conquest over unknown territories is an act to be rewarded.
References
Frasca, Gonzalo. “Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology.” The Video Game Theory Reader. Ed. Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. Routledge, 2003. http://vgc.zachwhalen.net/sites/vgc.zachwhalen.net/files/frasca-sim.pdf.
Jerz, Dennis G. “Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original ‘Adventure’ in Code and in Kentucky.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 1 (2007): n. pag. Web. 5 Nov. 2009. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009.html.
