Thursday 1 January 2015

New Year Open Thread: How did you get into AIF?

As we start off the new year, here is a simple question: How did you get into AIF?

As gets pointed out pretty frequently, AIF is a niche that occupys a miniscule portion of all the adult content on the Internet. I'm curious to hear people's tale of how they ended up here.

Some suggested questions to answer:
What led you to AIF?
What year did you first come across AIF?
What made AIF appealing?/Why did you stay with it?

12 comments:

  1. I arrived at AIF via IF, although I wasn't that experienced at IF. I think "Jailbait on the Interstate" was the gateway drug, since it's respectable enough that you find it in mainstream archives. It made me wonder if there was more explicit IF out there, and hey, there was! The first true AIF I remember was "Moist," but the one that really made a big impression early on was Chris Cole's "Encounter 2: The Study Group." What I liked about that one was what I like most about AIF: being immersed in a plausible environment and having to figure out the best way to interact with the characters I find there. I can tolerate spaceships and sword-and-sorcery and superheroes and the like, but my favorite games are all set in something that looks like the world I know. I'm less tolerant of puzzle-fests because they tend to degrade the immersiveness of games (and I get too impatient), but I'm pretty sure that I've played every AIF game in existence at least once.

    (All this happened about 10 years ago, although I think the earliest quasi-AIF game I played was "Leather Goddesses of Phobos," on a 5.25" floppy. Watch out for the grues!)

    I've never written a game, although I've started a few and imagined many; it's a diverting mental exercise, especially if you don't have to do any real work. That's one thing that has made me stay with AIF, although it's mostly just the hope (faint at times) that something new will come along that will entertain me as much as my favorites.

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  2. "since it's respectable enough that you find it in mainstream archives"

    There's actually a fair amount of early AIF in the IF Archive. It always amused me that Moist was the most downloaded TADS game.

    Anyhow, I came across AIF in a similar way, via 'Emy Discovers Life' and 'Afternoon Visit', both of which were originally posted to rec.games.intfiction. I can't remember which I played first, so this must have been in late 1998 or early 1999. I'd been vaguely interested in IF ever since playing 'The Hobbit' on my old ZX Spectrum, but it was Mkj's two games, as buggy and poorly written as they were, that really sealed the deal.

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    1. It took me a long time to try out Mkj's games because they looked so clunky (and they are). But mechanically they were light-years ahead of their coevals, and much of what's come since, for that matter: there aren't many games now that do combo sex actions, but "Afternoon Visit" had it more than 15 years ago--and in a threesome, no less. And "Emy" has a really great framework and plotline (and some fine writing, especially considering that the author is Danish).

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  3. My answer isn't too relevant because it was years ago, I don't remember when but before I started writing games, obviously. I was looking for free sex games and came across something that I think was called "Porno Fantasy". Then when trying to track it down a second time (I don't remember why I needed to) I found the old AIF portal. That was Chris Cole's prolific era so that's what hooked me.

    I'd be interested to hear from more recent arrivals as to what is hooking them in these days.

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  4. I can't actually remember my first AIF games. I always liked text games. The earliest text game I remember playing off hand is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was frustrating but I was drawn to it and enjoyed it.

    Also played plenty of MUDs (and some MUSHEs or MOOs, as well as some forum/BB stuff along the way). At some point ended up hitting into the more 'adult' stuff. Played the graphical stuff like Leisure Suit Larry as well.

    Not a concrete answer I guess ;) The point being it was a fairly natural and steady progression. Liked the old text games, graphical adventure games, etc. Ended up hearing about the AIF from some forum or another and then just kinda played off and on through the years.

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  5. What lead you to AIF?
    Well, I've been lurking on Hongfire for almost five years now (well, I'm not a lurker anymore, I started actually taking part in discussions some three years ago - and actually, that's only the time since I made my account, so I think I spent at least three or four more years as a user without an account) by which I mean that I've been spending quite a bit of time in the hentai/adult fiction scene since I was maybe 15 or 16 (OH MY GOD, SOMEBODY WHO WATCHED PORN BEFORE HE WAS 18!!!). I've always been big on stories and having control over the action (to a degree) rather than waiting for it all to unfold. The fact that I was a late bloomer in terms of love and that my first two relationships ended in utter catastrophe (and died a very, very slow death which left me a jealous and emotionally unstable mess) added to that in a big way. I wanted to flee into a sort of fantasy that I could control and with sex being an issue in both relationships, I became obsessed with it. I don't think I'm really exaggerating when I say that by maybe 2012 or 2013, I had played or at least tried out just about any worthwhile 3d hentai game in existence, most big-name virtual novels, pretty much every good adult flash game and a lot of stuff in between. If I had to pay a dollar for every game I ever played, I don't think I could ever afford the marriage my girlfriend wants and deserves.
    The bottomline is that I have a history of taking enjoyment and consolation from playing adult games and I had enough time, disappointment and obsession to always be on the lookout for more to sate my cravings.


    What year did you first come across AIF?
    I stumbled across GoblinBoy's Meteor... What was I saying earlier? Of course I can tell you exactly when I got into AIF: It was in early 2012 because that's when the Meteor Walkthrough was ExLibris latest one, and I think it was some guy on HongFire or in the Blue Lagoon who pointed me that way. After I discovered everything Meteor had in store, I started looking for more on ExLibris blog, going through all the older entries and singing halleluja every time a new walkthrough would point me towards a new (or old and great) AIF game.
    I have to thank ExLibris and that fantastic walkthrough blog for bringing me into the fold - Without it, I may very well have thought all those command- and input-driven games too daunting, would have gotten frustrated very quickly and never realized the treasure I had found.
    So, thank you, ExLibris!


    What made AIF appealing?/Why did you stay with it?
    I mentioned earlier that I like control, that my awful first attempts at love made that something I needed to feel in control of my life. I guess that's left a lasting impression on me since, at least when it comes to sex, I still want to be on top (or behind) most of the time.
    Oddly enough, choose-your-own-adventure books were never really appealing to me; it's odd because I started writing stories of my own some ten years ago because I wanted to shape the action rather than just watch it and I kinda got off on the wrong foot with CYOA stories.
    But the level of involvement in the story I found in Meteor (and somewhat more prominently in Camping Trip and other great AIF games) was what really captivated me and made me stay - AIF games have a way of making you part of the action in a way no game in the hentai scene can. The fact that I write here and on other community sites (even though I stay anonymous, more out of habit than anything else) might not have too many implications for those reading this but to me, personally, it means I'm here to stay.

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  6. I came across AIF via fan fiction .I don't remember where, but some site had a link to the X-Trek games. My two favorite adult interests where erotic stories and hentai games with choices in them and AIF was exactly what I was looking.

    After X-Trek I continued with any AIF I could find. This was early 2007,which makes me a relative newcomer, so it was a lot of Christopher Cole games (which I loved, and because he gave out the passwords to open his games it was also how I learned Adrift). I know it was definitely 2007 because one of the first games I played after X-Trek was BBBen's Crossworlds series. I played all of the parts straight through and after I was finished went to read about them online, to then discover that people where talking about part 4 in the present tense because it had been released in the past month. I still remembering thinking about how lucky I was to play all of them together, and wondered how everyone else put up with the waiting between parts.

    I've stayed with AIF because it offers something more than other porn does on the internet. I don't know how to put it exactly, the closest I can think of is that AIF is an experience. I don't just blow through a game and am done with it. I will play it over multiple sittings. When a good game comes out I know this isn't something I will look at just once and be done with, but return to multiple times.

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  7. I have played adult games (particularly hentai) for several years, but i have met the aif world at the end of 2013, i don't remember what research was doing (probably i was jumping between links) when i found GOP3, I was in a mood for a game with a fantasy setting so i tried it and i found so interesting that i researched who had done it and if he had done others (at that time the retire of Goblinboy wasn't sure, i found that at the same time i decided that i adored his style) and i played them, first those with graphics (meteor e tesliss, because i admit that without at the beginning i wouldn't have played a pure text game), before to play sd3 I played camping trip for continuity (and i find beautiful aside the night dreams sequence).
    I played lamont games, but the games with graphics were nearly finished, so the combination of the celebration of other aif games done in SD3 and articles read in overanalysingaif (found as alink after using incredible walkthrough in aifsansmistery) push me to try pure text aif games that i liked very much.
    After an year i have played the majority of the aif games, and the presence of graphic isn't so important, for example i have played the crossworld series before playing PAF (and i had already found some images of the game that i had liked).
    How much i like this community is showed by my posts, in years i have always been only a reader, even now for me is strange posting, but i think that in a little community is good to show appreciations, so sometimes i try to win my reluctance and write.

    XXX

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  8. What led you to AIF?
    At the time Abandonware games were really popular in my circles. The site I was browsing promised a new game to download every day. XTrek popped up. I played it two to three times. Next day Boffing Both Generations popped up. Then the site stopped posting as much. So I started searching, and found Starbase 69 and the old EMSAI(might be misspelling it, but it was the main AIF website for years).

    What year did you first come across AIF?
    1999, or 2000.

    What made AIF appealing?/Why did you stay with it?
    One of the reasons I loved DOS is the command structure always made me feel like I was in control of what was going on. I get the same appeal from most AIF games, and feeling like I can do more with a command line then I can with a controller. Especially since everything isn't buried in menus(at least perspectively speaking). They also usually run faster with the exception of Rags. Combine that with puzzles, and often they're pretty interesting games.

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  9. Somebody announced the release of SD3 on Shark's Lagoon (probably in 2009) and since they don't much like direct file links on there it directed me to the old aifgames website. After I'd exhausted SD3 i downloaded a bunch of other TADS games, then the ADRIFT games, then pretty much everything else i could find.

    I guess I like AIF because I appreciate story-telling and I'm more than a little addicted to video games. I like "Adult," I like "Interactive," and I like "Fiction" so it's pretty much a winner by definition.

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  10. What year did you first come across AIF?

    Oh god, I can't remember what year I started playing AIFs. But I would hazard a guess and say between 2002 and 2003.

    I do know that at the time that I was not very involved in the community at all. I would download and play the games but almost never participated in the discussions. Thus, even though I played Vachon and Sly Old Dog's games when they were first released, I was completely oblivious to the backlash they had generated in the discussions at the time.

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  11. The two games i played when i first got into aif that stick in my mind are Sam Shooter 1 and GB's camping trip before the big picture boom.

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