To create an interactive fiction or not to create an interactive fiction, that's not the question...

Based on the article "Interactive Fiction and the Future of the Novel" by Michael Berlyn and Marc Blank, I think the creation of an interactive fiction would be a very difficult task. Beyond creating the story, something that many people would agree is itself not easy, you must also create the "parser" for your work.

For your parser, the portion of the program that attempts to understand the typed input of a potential reader, to be anywhere near the sophistication of a modern interactive fiction, you must consider as many possible typed input statements as the potential reader might make. Word combinations, unexpected commands, typing errors, and likely responses all have to be considered with equal care because a program that is too sophisticated or idiosyncratic will be impossible for the reader to complete, or worse: not enjoyable. But, on the other hand, a parser that is too simplistic will be unable to decipher what the reader has typed.

Coming up with a functional parser seems like a very time consuming and tedious task. I suppose the level of enjoyment that people receive from a well constructed interactive fiction story justifies the time and energy spent on creation, but for the amount of time that we have left in this class, creating an interactive fiction seems almost impossible.