In my last post, I briefly mentioned the Interactive Fiction Identifier (IFID) as an e-lit equivalent of an ISBN (although some e-lit games use the latter). In this post, I want to take a closer look at the IFID and how it’s used within the Interactive Fiction (IF) community.

In 2006, a group of IF creators, software designers, and digital archivists came together to write the Treaty of Babel, a document that provides community standards for formatting IF bibliographic data, unique IDs, and format-neutral APIs for reading story files. These standards allow works to be added to databases and located through search engines regardless of the systems used to create them. The treaty is maintained by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and the current version (Revision 10) was published in January 2021.

The document discusses three levels of bibliographic data used for IF works: “internal” metadata (that which is included within the game itself, like in a title screen), “local” metadata that is read by the interpretive software/emulator that plays the story file, and “external” metadata that exists independently of the story file (like an about page or a game review). Because not all game design systems had structure for creating and publishing metadata, much of the bibliographic information was not interoperable, amking it difficult to create a comprehensive database of works. Hence, the Treaty of Babel provides standards that game design systems have implemented within their software, allowing for metadata creation (often without conscious input from the game creator.)

The IFID is a fairly flexible system - each project needs to have a unique identifier between 8 and 63 characters (including hyphens). Most game systems generate an alphanumerical code automatically when a new game is created, but Babel has a tool that can generate an IFID for games created without one. Works that are revised or updated keep the same IFID, while works that are migrated to a different format get a new IFID.

Along with the IFID standard, the Treaty of Babel describes the iFiction record - essentially the cover, title, and publication information that can be viewed independently of the game itself. The iFiction record is written in XML and can be used in various databases and organizational systems. IFDB uses this information to create bibliographic records of games and reviews.

What this tells me is that there is an existing standard for game metadata that can be integrated into systems - in particular, library catalogs can map this data to the existing MARC fields.