Far more valuable than anything I’ve created during this fellowship are the skills I’ve developed through practice and struggle.

Since the fellowship began, I’ve started and completed my largest creative project to date. This fact alone shouldn’t go unappreciated. The lengthier the project, the more it requires of your personal concentration and commitment. I practiced seeing an idea through from start to finish. 

I’m proud of how clearly one could see my writing skills develop over the course of the fellowship. When I began this project last winter, I had hardly done any interactive fiction writing at all. I had certainly never written anything close to the scale of the final project. When I began, I had no sense of what made a piece of writing, especially interactive writing, good or bad. I didn’t know how to begin. All these things I’ve since learned through practice and hard work. 

Another important step in the creative writing process, one which I became intimately familiar with this summer, is revision. Again, the scale of this project made its revision unlike any other creative work I had done before. I now have a much better sense of the process. How to begin and how to finish. Practicing intermediate steps particular to game development, such as playtesting and prototyping, has been an invaluable learning exercise. I’m so happy to have gained skill and confidence in this part of the creative process, which is so particularly critical to interactive design. 

Finally, a skill more particular to my medium, but one I’m happy to have developed, is interactive narrative design. Looking back on my old drafts, I can’t believe how far I’ve come in creating an engaging, meaningful player experience. It’s hard to concisely describe everything I’ve learned. I think, most succinctly, I’ve learned where to pay attention. I’ve learned what questions to ask myself as I make decisions in order to guide my design. When I started, I didn’t have this sense. 

As I embark on new creative projects, remembering what I’ve learned during the fellowship gives me confidence. Not only the particular skills I’ve developed, but also remembering how I grew from a place of confusion to clarity. Like I’ve described, when I began The Counsel in The Cave, I didn’t know what made a playable story good or bad.. But I wrote one anyway, then improved it over time. As I experiment with new forms of interactive fiction, this directionless feeling returns. But now, not only do I have a better sense of where to direct my project as I progress, I also can have confidence that creating and iterating is the only way I can learn. I know the skills I’ve developed and lessons I’ve learned in prototyping, playteting, revising will all serve me well as I continue to create. 

During my time creating The Counsel in The Cave, a kind of “choice-based” interactive fiction, I became very interested in another kind of interactive fiction, called “parser-based” interactive fiction. These are games where, instead of selecting from a list of options, a player writes their own commands to control their character. These are some of the oldest computer games around. They feature challenging puzzles, detailed maps, and clever writing. I’ve already begun experimenting with writing this kind of parser-based interactive fiction, and I’m excited to see where it leads. 

In terms of my next professional directions, I plan on soon applying for internships at large game development studios for the summer of 2023. The Counsel in The Cave will serve as the first piece in my portfolio. I’m excited to be taking my next steps towards a career in game development!

I’d like to thank the Frederick Honors College, and Dr. Brett Say in particular, for making this fellowship and this project possible. Brett has been a great supporter of all the work produced in the fellowship and I’m so grateful for it. I’d also like to thank Dr. Steven LeMieux, my faculty mentor for this project. His guidance and support throughout this extended creative process have also been invaluable. His interest in my work has been inspiring.