Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction by Nick Monfort (2003) is an excellent and thorough paper on Interactive Fiction. A lot of what it does is define terms.
Some of things I like are:
1. A discussion of the different types of players: the user, the player character, the narrator, and the voice of the system. Along with this is a discussion of world and rooms which makes useful distinctions and the point that in a game there can be multiple worlds.
2. A discussion of traversal, winning and losing.
Reaching a final reply that indicates the achievement of the IF work’s goal is winning, and a traversal that ends in such a reply is a successful traversal. Similarly, reaching a final reply that indicates failure is losing, which concludes an unsuccessful traversal.
3. A good discussion of the place of puzzles in IF. A puzzle has to have a goal (a solution) and has to be non-trivial. In this context he talks about scores, though to my mind scores have more to do with the player character.
The reference is:
Montfort, Nick. 2003. “Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction.” December 19. First published 8 January 2002. Available online at http://nickm.com/if/toward.html. To appear in IF Theory, ed. Emily Short. St. Charles, Illinois: The Interactive Fiction Library. 2004.
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