One axiom of our modern society is that "if it has a screen, someone will try to play a game on it". The first video game in history - Tennis for Two - was run on an analogue computer, a Donner Model 30 with a low-frequency sine wave generator hooked up to an oscilloscope, using various waveforms to represent two paddles and a ball. Certain scientific calculator models are to this day used to play simpler video games, and we can already play games on smart appliances like fridges, for example - these are the two extremes as we speak. There is, in turn, an entire category of games (I won't say
video games for a reason) that don't rely on visual representations at all. I'm speaking of the text-based games, of course, that emerged at a time when the vast majority of computers were incapable of displaying complex graphics.
From connected typewriters to interactive fiction
Back in the 1960s, the first "teleprinter games" emerged - they ran on mainframe computers, accepting commands and printing out responses through a teleprinter - basically, a connected typewriter that was widely used as an instant form of communication at the time. The famous "Oregon Trail" appeared first on such a system. In the 1970s, as video terminals became cheaper and thus widespread, the text-based games became more complex - they took on famous titles like "Dungeons and Dragons" and J. R. R. Tolkien's works. In a few years, the first game with the ability to save progress appeared - Colossal Cave Adventure, the archetype of text-based games - and soon led to the emergence of the entire genre of MUDs, BBS games, and interactive fiction. Over the decades, in turn, visuals stole the show - even today, we tend to judge a game by its looks, and gaming hardware by its capability to display the ever-improving looks of these games.
A new device and the new possibilities
Those who
understand smart home systems know that they are complex voice-based interfaces designed to understand simple commands. While they aren't smart enough just yet to really understand natural speech, they are great at singling out certain keywords from a text command. And this makes them perfect for running text-based - or better said, voice-based - adventure games, taking interactive fiction to the next level.
Imagine a story similar to Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's "Gamebooks", a sort of a "choose-your-own-adventure" narrated by a famous actor (like Benedict Cumberbatch or Samuel L. Jackson). Imagine having the choice to influence the story with a few voice commands. The hardware is given - there are now hundreds of millions of smart speakers used all over the world - so it's up to the developers to use their capabilities to take interactive fiction to the next level.
...
Catherine: Full Body’s English translation for the Vita