This quote will seem quite familiar if you follow small press—or so-called “indie”—RPG design and the corresponding response to it by the likes of the pugnacious RPGPundit. When she describes the argument over the terms “interactive fiction” and “text adventure,” think “story-game” versus “role playing game.”
«In form, this is interactive fiction. Over the course of amateur IF development, there’s been a movement towards more complete implementation and more literary story-telling: more descriptions of objects, more actions for the player to use on everything and sundry, more plausible settings, more logical solutions to puzzles, greater concern for literary values in story, and so on.
There has also been a compensatory school of authors and players who reject the literary nonsense (deeming it pretentious), and who prefer obvious puzzles and unsubtle implementation as more essentially fun. These are often the same people who dislike the term “interactive fiction” and consider “text adventure” more honest, or at least a better description of what they want to play.
»
—Emily Short, from her review of Treasures of a Slaver’s Kingdom