History
Electronic literature first came to prominence in the 1980s, with the advancement of computing technology. The earliest electronic literatures were known as hypertext fiction and used hyperlinks to connect otherwise isolated story nodes. Eastgate Systems published many of the first hypertexts on CD-ROM, including Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story, which is often regarded as the first hypertext.
These texts were supplemented in the 1990s by "digital born" texts, designed specifically for the World Wide Web. At the same time, developments in multimedia software allowed authors to "integrate an increasingly sophisticated multimodal range of resources into digital texts." The focus of digital texts moved away from storytelling through words alone and highlighted visual elements of the text. Text-based adventure games, or interactive fiction, also fall into this genre.
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