Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
Interactive fiction platform Versu re-emerged last week after a deal was struck between its creators and Linden Lab, bringing the product out of the red-tape limbo it had been in since Linden greenlit its demise. When the news of its closure broke back in March I wrote about the loss of "Blood & Laurels," an unpublished work 15 years in the making by one of Versu's developers, acclaimed interactive fiction writer Emily Short. I spoke with Short as well, and she shared not only the heartbreaking reality of losing rights to the stories she'd developed for Versu, but also the disappointment of no longer being able to support the platform's academic use.
With Versu back in the hands of her and partner Richard Evans and the long-awaited "Blood & Laurels" is set to make its official debut tomorrow, I returned to ask Short what the future may hold for this phoenix-like storytelling app.
"We want to get the existing work out there," she shared, "And we can make sure that people who are doing Versu-related work in an academic context don't get cut off from access."
The use of Versu in an academic context has been a primary concern for Short, and while she'd originally hoped that it could be opened and made more freely accessible across a variety of platforms at the moment it seems like that isn't in the cards. She continued, "There are some limits to what we can make available, according to the terms of our agreement with Linden; we can't just open source the whole thing." As Hamlet pointed out in his post last week this is likely due to a revenue sharing deal, which obviously wouldn't be served by open-sourcing the app.
While it may not be going open source, that doesn't mean that Short and Evans aren't still looking beyond the bounds of the original iOS app. "We need to figure out what we can do with our own resources, essentially, and that's going to affect things like ports to other platforms," Short explained, with much of the same determination she expressed when I contacted her in March.
As for Versu's more immediate plans, you'll be able to pick up "Blood & Laurels" for yourself tomorrow, while the publication of Jake Forbes' "Bramble House" on the platform will follow in the near future.
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