Friday 17 January 2014

Open for business

AIF Blog (suggestions for a proper name would be welcome) is now open for business!

What is it?

AIF Blog is a multi-user blog that is intended to be a successor to the original AIF newsletter, Inside Erin, but with a more interactive format and without the tyranny of deadlines. As such it is a place to post any article or news item that is relevant to AIF. This includes discussion of AIF design, reviews, announcements of new games, coding tutorials, reports on games in progress, fiction, and so on.

It is not intended to replace any of the handful of already existing AIF-related blogs (some of which are listed on the right).

What is AIF?

AIF stands for Adult Interactive Fiction. When the genre got started in the mid-90s that meant adult text adventures. However, since then AIF has appeared in many other formats, including CYOA, Flash, HTML, RAGS, etc. For that reason I would enlarge the definition to include any adult game that has a narrative with which the player can interact in a meaningful way.

Who can contribute?

Anyone who's not a spambot.

Anonymous commenting is enabled, so you don't need to sign up to anything in order to comment on a post (however, it's polite to sign your posts so that others can tell all the anonymous comments apart).

If you want to become a regular contributor send an email to editor.aifblog@gmail.com requesting Author access. You will be prompted to create a Google Account if you don't already have one (NB. a Google Account does not require a Gmail address). Alternatively, if you only have a single item you want to contribute, it might be more convenient to send it to the above address and have it posted on your behalf.

If you have your own AIF-related blog or website that you would like this blog to link to (or not link to in the case of the blogs already added), send an email to editor.aifblog@gmail.com.

6 comments:

  1. Hello, it's Scion of Eros. I would love to contribute here. I intend to create a google account linked to my yahoo and hushmail ID as soon as I wake up, but meantime, good luck with the blog! I love this idea, and think that it's the sensible next-step evolution for the community to discuss topics of mutual interest.

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  2. Good on you for taking the initiative ExLibris! Looking forward to reading articles here.

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  3. While I applaud the sentiment and initiative, I was just wondering why not just use one of your other two AIF blogs. I regularly check Over-Analyzing AIF for AIF news and interesting thoughts. I guess it wouldn't quite fit the theme?

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    1. The reasoning behind starting a whole new blog is that on Over-Analysing AIF I've managed 124 posts in just over three years. If I opened it up to other users now, it would still be mostly my stuff, which wouldn't be a good look for what's supposed to be a site for the whole community.

      By contrast, starting a new blog means that it can be a community site from day one, which should hopefully encourage participation. It also means that I can hand off editorial duties at some stage.

      Speaking of participation, suggestions for a better name would be very welcome. Ditto the look of the site (I just chose the default theme I liked the most).

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    2. I'll also note that while we've only had a few posts so far, there are a bunch in draft form from several authors that will be posted in time, and when they're ready. I expect to post something about once a week for a while, as I have some stuff stored up from after the end of the newsletter. This collaborative format does look like it might be a good way to generate a stream of interesting content.

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  4. What about AIFEnthusiast - AIFE for short?

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