[danielmarkbruce]

So, boiled down:

The medium allows low cost creation. Low cost creation allows lots of experiments. Lots of experiments leads to some weird but wonderful concepts.

Perhaps throw in that humans seem to be good at abstraction and then the lack of graphics doesn't matter sooo much that it can't be overcome with a great concept?

Is that about it?

[krisoft]

Sounds about right.

I feel a bit wobbly about your question though. Would you ask someone who is hiking in a forest why they are not surfing on a beach instead? Interactive fiction is not a faulty game where the graphics is somehow missing. It is a different experience. Some days you entertain yourself with this, other days with that.

a thought provoking question: why would you read a novel where you can’t influence what is going to happen? What is the appeal in that? :)

[danielmarkbruce]

In my mind a graphics based game was strictly better. Your example is more obvious in that it has a choice but no one would say one is strictly better (even a surfer).

So I was wondering what I was missing. Because the graphics based game can't be strictly better if people are playing these text based games. My mental model and the evidence didn't match.

I think I have a better handle on it now, your explanation above was a good one.

[RodgerTheGreat]

To expand on this a bit, even when it comes to graphics, more complex isn't necessarily "better".

Sometimes a simpler presentation helps focus on what matters most. Sometimes leaving things to the audience's imagination is more impactful than showing them explicitly. Relying on "closure" from the audience is a common technique in horror, for example.

Sometimes interactive fiction can express abstract concepts or subtle detail through prose which would be tremendously difficult to convey visually. The IF titles "9:05" and "Spider and Web" do very interesting things with unreliable narrators, for example. Less can be more.

[krisoft]

Thank you for asking the questions! It really helped me clarifying my thoughts too.

If you are interested in how these games look like / play, but don’t want to invest too much effort into it you can take a peek at a game play video: https://youtu.be/fFqg5gAbeAw

This one is someone playing Overboard. In this game you play an actress in the roaring twenties who just thrown her husband overboard from a trans-atlantic ship. Your goal is to get away with the murder before the ship docks in New York. (Perhaps by framing someone else.)