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====Second Person Mazes====

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Many of the earliest computer-presented mazes were not seen head on or from above. They were presented in text. Second-person mazes were found in early text-based adventure games, now known as interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). The full sentence that presents the previous maze to the player of ''Adventure'' is:

+

Many of the earliest computer-presented mazes were not seen head on or from above: They were presented in textual descriptions. Second-person mazes of a sort were found in early text-based games such as ''Hunt the Wumpus,'' a 1973 BASIC program by Gregory Yob. ''Hunt the Wumpus'' departed from the standard grid-based BASIC game by providing a playing field of a different topology, one that was a dodecahedron. The player stalked and was stalked by a wumpus opponent, much as the dinosaur would later pursue the player in ''3D Monster Maze.''

+

Textually described mazes developed into their most complex and confusing configurations in text-based adventure games of the sort that are now called interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). The full sentence that presents the previous maze to the player of ''Adventure'' is:

YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.

−

The mode of address here—“YOU”—is as important to the game as the cryptic description of the maze that follows. Interactive fiction is one of the few literary genres to consistently use second person narration. Second person narration in interactive fiction closely resembles what Brian Richardson calls the “autotelic” mode of second person address. The autotelic form is distinct from both the “standard” second person found in literature, in which the protagonist is known as “you” instead of “I,” “he,” or “she,” as well as distinct from what Richardson calls the “hypothetical” or “subjunctive” form, in which the narration reads like a guidebook or recipe book (2006, 18). The very Commodore 64 manual that introduces the 10 PRINT maze employs this subjunctive second-person form, telling readers, “Congratulations, on your purchase of one of the best computers in the world. You are now the proud owner of the COMMODORE 64....The Commodore 64 USER’S GUIDE is designed to give you all the information you need to properly set up your equipment, get acquainted with operating the COMMODORE 64, and give you a simple, fun start at learning to make your own programs” (vii).

+

The "YOU" also works to connect the player to the character in the maze, although in a different way than first-person 3D games do. For one thing, that pronoun sometimes is explicitly used to address the operator of the program rather than to indicate the main character, as when Adventure outputs "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST."

−

Unlike the subjunctive, didactic form or the standard, novelistic form of the second-person, the autotelic "you" is not a stable pronoun. Its referent shifts seamlessly between an imagined diegetic "you" and an extradiegetic reader. As Richardson explains, the autotelic form is a "direct address to a 'you' that is at times the actual reader of the the text and whose story is juxtaposed to and can merge with the characters of the fiction" (30). This shifting is evident in an interactive fiction game like ''Adventure'', as the game alternates between addressing the adventurer within the game and the player sitting in front of a keyboard, using "you" in both cases. For example, when ''Adventure'' tells the player toward the beginning of the game, "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST," the game acknowledges the extradiegetic "you." And without interruption the game shifts back toward addressing the in-game adventurer.

+

From ''Hunt the Wumpus'' through ''Adventure,'' another notable difference was that second-person mazes were typically turn-based rather than real-time. They also came to be embedded in a broader context of simulated spaces. Sometimes these were confusing ones that, even if they were not called mazes, required that players map them. But in any case, they usually invited different forms of systematic, high-level thinking that would allow the environment to be figured or puzzled out. The player's activity was thoughtful and was paced at the player's discretion rather than being based on twitch reflexes. The activity of completing a text adventure is called solving (as opposed to "beating a level"), the same term that is used for finding a path through a maze.

−

The autotelic second person is "alternately opposed to and fused with the reader" (33), which in the case of ''Adventure'' means that the "you" shifts from adventurer, to player, to reader. Richardson suggests that the instability inherent in the autotelic "you" is particularly effective at "revealing a mind in flux" (35). It is a mode of address, then, that is particularly suited for interactive fiction, in which so many of the early games centered upon being lost—and more to the point, lost in a maze. The instable "you" of the games matches the instability of the narrative itself.

−

Players frequently solved textual second-person mazes by mapping them, generating secondary visual mazes. The manual to the Apple II version of ''Zork'', the famous "prose adventure" game directly inspired by ''Adventure'' even told players (using a subjunctive second-person form), "It is essential that you draw a map. Some of the problems in the game (the Maze in ZORK I, for one example), cannot be solved without mapping" (Infocom 1981, 5). The maze in the game requires a map of the maze outside the game: Maze begets maze.

====Third-Person Mazes====

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@@ Line 139: / Line 139: @@
 ====Second Person Mazes====
-Many of the earliest computer-presented mazes were not seen head on or from above. They were presented in text. Second-person mazes were found in early text-based adventure games, now known as interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). The full sentence that presents the previous maze to the player of ''Adventure'' is:
+Many of the earliest computer-presented mazes were not seen head on or from above: They were presented in textual descriptions. Second-person mazes of a sort were found in early text-based games such as ''Hunt the Wumpus,'' a 1973 BASIC program by Gregory Yob. ''Hunt the Wumpus'' departed from the standard grid-based BASIC game by providing a playing field of a different topology, one that was a dodecahedron. The player stalked and was stalked by a wumpus opponent, much as the dinosaur would later pursue the player in ''3D Monster Maze.''
+Textually described mazes developed into their most complex and confusing configurations in text-based adventure games of the sort that are now called interactive fiction. The genre began with the groundbreaking ''Adventure'', written by Will Crowther for the PDP-10 in 1976 and later expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23). The full sentence that presents the previous maze to the player of ''Adventure'' is:
     YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.
-The mode of address here—“YOU”—is as important to the game as the cryptic description of the maze that follows. Interactive fiction is one of the few literary genres to consistently use second person narration. Second person narration in interactive fiction closely resembles what Brian Richardson calls the “autotelic” mode of second person address. The autotelic form is distinct from both the “standard” second person found in literature, in which the protagonist is known as “you” instead of “I,” “he,” or “she,” as well as distinct from what Richardson calls the “hypothetical” or “subjunctive” form, in which the narration reads like a guidebook or recipe book (2006, 18). The very Commodore 64 manual that introduces the 10 PRINT maze employs this subjunctive second-person form, telling readers, “Congratulations, on your purchase of one of the best computers in the world. You are now the proud owner of the COMMODORE 64....The Commodore 64 USER’S GUIDE is designed to give you all the information you need to properly set up your equipment, get acquainted with operating the COMMODORE 64, and give you a simple, fun start at learning to make your own programs” (vii).
+The "YOU" also works to connect the player to the character in the maze, although in a different way than first-person 3D games do. For one thing, that pronoun sometimes is explicitly used to address the operator of the program rather than to indicate the main character, as when Adventure outputs "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST."
-Unlike the subjunctive, didactic form or the standard, novelistic form of the second-person, the autotelic "you" is not a stable pronoun. Its referent shifts seamlessly between an imagined diegetic "you" and an extradiegetic reader. As Richardson explains, the autotelic form is a "direct address to a 'you' that is at times the actual reader of the the text and whose story is juxtaposed to and can merge with the characters of the fiction" (30). This shifting is evident in an interactive fiction game like ''Adventure'', as the game alternates between addressing the adventurer within the game and the player sitting in front of a keyboard, using "you" in both cases. For example, when ''Adventure'' tells the player toward the beginning of the game, "IF YOU PREFER, SIMPLY TYPE W RATHER THAN WEST," the game acknowledges the extradiegetic "you." And without interruption the game shifts back toward addressing the in-game adventurer.
+From ''Hunt the Wumpus'' through ''Adventure,'' another notable difference was that second-person mazes were typically turn-based rather than real-time. They also came to be embedded in a broader context of simulated spaces. Sometimes these were confusing ones that, even if they were not called mazes, required that players map them. But in any case, they usually invited different forms of systematic, high-level thinking that would allow the environment to be figured or puzzled out. The player's activity was thoughtful and was paced at the player's discretion rather than being based on twitch reflexes. The activity of completing a text adventure is called solving (as opposed to "beating a level"), the same term that is used for finding a path through a maze.
-The autotelic second person is "alternately opposed to and fused with the reader" (33), which in the case of ''Adventure'' means that the "you" shifts from adventurer, to player, to reader. Richardson suggests that the instability inherent in the autotelic "you" is particularly effective at "revealing a mind in flux" (35). It is a mode of address, then, that is particularly suited for interactive fiction, in which so many of the early games centered upon being lost—and more to the point, lost in a maze. The instable "you" of the games matches the instability of the narrative itself.
-Players frequently solved textual second-person mazes by mapping them, generating secondary visual mazes. The manual to the Apple II version of ''Zork'', the famous "prose adventure" game directly inspired by ''Adventure'' even told players (using a subjunctive second-person form), "It is essential that you draw a map. Some of the problems in the game (the Maze in ZORK I, for one example), cannot be solved without mapping" (Infocom 1981, 5). The maze in the game requires a map of the maze outside the game: Maze begets maze.
 ====Third-Person Mazes====