I get excited every time I encounter someone who remembers text-based adventure games especially if the individual is promoting an educational application. The most recent post I located was provided by Josh Caldwell.
Josh Caldwell, a middle school English teacher, argues for the creation of text-based games as a productive way to involve students as game authors and argues for the challenge of writing such games.
I became interested in text-based games in the mid-1980s. These were the days of the early Apples and to do research or create learning activities you pretty much had to become a programmer. So we did. My interest was in creating activities that would develop reading skills and adventure games when text only seemed a natural. So I was both playing adventure games and attempting to figure out how to create them at the same time. I had computers from Apple and this sometimes meant that students would find you just to learn with you. I met a couple of undergrads in a class I taught who became my research assistant. One, Mark Dossman, wrote an engine in Basic I used to create games. Amazing talent.
I had not thought about these guys in years. Both became physicians. The one whose name I cannot remember at this moment I have seen all too often because he is an emergency room doc in Grand Forks. Mark went to med school at Vanderbilt and according Google is not practicing in the Atlanta area.
We published a paper in 1988:
Grabe, M., & Dosmann, M. (1988). The potential of adventure games for
the development of reading and study skills: Journal of Computer-Based
Instruction Vol 15(2) Spr 1988, 72-77.
You no longer have to write an engine from scratch to construct these games before you can move to writing games. The Caldwell post suggests that educators consider an engine to author adventures games called inform. You can download the software to explore.
It is possible that this post makes little sense to you because you have no idea what a text-based adventure game is. Here is a prevlous post that should provide some background.
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Hi – I have a blog on using Interactive Fiction for language learning – http://www.theswanstation.com/wordpress (but I haven’t got around to juicy stuff yet). While doing some research for some book chapters I’m writing, I came across references for your 1988 article, As you’ve mentioned, it isn’t available anymore, however, I’d love to see it if you still have a copy. Thanks!