If there ever was a conflict between the ludologists and the narrativists they could find common ground in interactive fiction. Interactive fiction would appear to be the ‘middle ground’; for the lugologists there are rules, objectives and non player characters; for the narrativists there can be interpretation, intertexuality and questions about the reader’s relationship to the text. One challenge for this solution though is that there seems to be a shortage of notable texts worthy of critical interpretation when compared to other more conventional mediums. There are exceptions though.

Varicella seems to achieve this winning eight out of ten XYZZY awards (an online interactive fiction magazine) and receiving critical interpretation from Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop in Face It, Tiger, You Just Hit the Jackpot: Reading and Playing Cadre’s Varicella (2003), saying that Varicella is clearly a game, “the interactor can win, following the unstated but certainly effective rules of the interface and world, by issuing the right commands and guiding Primo to the regency” (2). In spite of this, through the description of events connected by time and causality narratives are ‘invoked’ (Ibid). The interpretation can be taken further with involving characters such as the deranged Charlotte, she mentions to how one in eight of the prisoners go mad (5); this can be interpreted as a reference to V for Vendetta (1982) where the same thing is stated. The Character V has particular significance to Charlotte as they were both prisoners who were tortured and experimented on, giving both of them a moral flexibility needed to achieve their retribution (Ibid). This sense of intertexuality and Charlotte’s idiosyncrasies, such as talking to herself on the phone, help to make Varicella more than ‘just’ a game, it could be the beacon of hope in the simmering conflict of the Ludologist and the Narrativists.