Introduction. I'm a computer games nut. I started playing computer games in 1967 (a stock market simulation on an IBM mainframe) and I've never stopped. Big shelves in my home office hold boxes for the games I decided to keep; I've given many more away when moving from one house to another. (Sadly, nowadays everything is available online, so I'm not adding more boxes.)
Starflight. My all-time favorite game is Starflight (1986, distributed by Electronic Arts). That's a space RPG that ultimately ends up having an emotional conclusion to the slowly unfolding plot line. [Big spoiler coming!] You start out with a dorky, weak ship that can only get to the planets in one solar system. You land on planets (witnessing amazing fractal graphics for the 1980s). You drive around planets in a space buggy, picking up minerals and plant samples and fighting monsters. Your main goal is the mineral endurium, which is needed for warp-speed flight. Over the course of the game you burn thousands of endurium crystals. Eventually you get better ships, discover many wormhole routes that lead to distant corners of a huge galactic map, and you interact with many alien civilizations. There is a sense of urgency, because a death-planet is traveling through the galazy, wiping out one civilization after another. Eventually you get the technology and the knowledge to find and land on the death-planet, seeking to destroy it. That's when you finally learn that all those thousands of endurium crystals you've been destroying are actually a silicon-based life form for whom time passes extremely slowly. They perceive other life forms as fast-moving gnats. They aren't trying to destroy the galaxy. They're trying to protect themselves. At the end you must choose whether to wipe them all out.
That's an interactive novel with a very good sci-fi plot. [Note: This game is available for free on several abandonware websites, and it's easy to play it on a current computer using Dosbox. I replayed it about a year ago on a Windows7 box with no troubles at all. It's still the best.]
Favorite Genres. My favorite game genres are MMOs (massive multiplayer games) like Everquest (which my wife and I are still playing though it's 15 years old); RPGs (roleplaying games, like Dragon Age); strategy games (like Civilization); all kinds of space games; loot games (like Borderlands, a first-person shooter, where the goal is to get better and better guns); and roguelikes (like the classic Rogue, which I think was first programmed for Unix mainframes).