Chris Crawford's Storytron engine seems, to me, the best potential future of IF. Instead of trying to make the computers understand human language better, (a task of monstrous proportions... consider how much trouble we can have just communicating to other people!) his engine has its own unique language, Deikto, for communication. It's heavy design stuff, but it has very good potential to deliver realistic interaction between a computer player and a human being.
However, he and his team are doing everything in their power to distance themselves from games. They see the value of the engine as being a vehicle for dramatic storytelling. So they are avoiding association with games, which are about having fun and winning. The overview on the website does a pretty decent job describing why it's not about games.
You also have to be careful with the word "interactive"; Crawford may take your head off calling Zork or any old text adventure "interactive". One may argue the point, but he did write a book on interactivity, I'd read it before challenging his viewpoint. Also consider all the old text adventures where there was basically ONE way to win, and the game beat you on the head until you did everything in an exact order. This wasn't so bad when the tasks made logical sense, but I can remember plenty of adventures where they didn't. (Hitchhiker's, anyone?)
I also remember playing Cutthroats and getting very frustrated because I really couldn't speak to the various characters. I went to rent the ship and the McGinty was loitering about. So I deliberately asked for the WRONG ship. But Johnny Red still got pissed and stormed out, despite the fact I'd cleverly fooled McGinty into renting the wrong boat. The limitation of the engine was readily apparent at that point; you had to do things in a particular order, or it all fell apart. I never finished it.
Chris Crawford's Storytron engine seems, to me, the best potential future of IF. Instead of trying to make the computers understand human language better, (a task of monstrous proportions... consider how much trouble we can have just communicating to other people!) his engine has its own unique language, Deikto, for communication. It's heavy design stuff, but it has very good potential to deliver realistic interaction between a computer player and a human being.
However, he and his team are doing everything in their power to distance themselves from games. They see the value of the engine as being a vehicle for dramatic storytelling. So they are avoiding association with games, which are about having fun and winning. The overview on the website does a pretty decent job describing why it's not about games.
You also have to be careful with the word "interactive"; Crawford may take your head off calling Zork or any old text adventure "interactive". One may argue the point, but he did write a book on interactivity, I'd read it before challenging his viewpoint. Also consider all the old text adventures where there was basically ONE way to win, and the game beat you on the head until you did everything in an exact order. This wasn't so bad when the tasks made logical sense, but I can remember plenty of adventures where they didn't. (Hitchhiker's, anyone?)
I also remember playing Cutthroats and getting very frustrated because I really couldn't speak to the various characters. I went to rent the ship and the McGinty was loitering about. So I deliberately asked for the WRONG ship. But Johnny Red still got pissed and stormed out, despite the fact I'd cleverly fooled McGinty into renting the wrong boat. The limitation of the engine was readily apparent at that point; you had to do things in a particular order, or it all fell apart. I never finished it.