Really? I know a lot of IF fans who like them.
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My IF interest “origin story” has a lot in common with that of @ChanceOfFire and several others in this thread. I discovered gamebooks in my late tweens/pre-teens(though my first interactive story was actually a Mickey Mouse comic story) and played/read a lot of those in my teens( I have played/read a few of those afterwards as well, but never really to the same extent I did then). I did eventually try to find “made for the internet”-equivalents, but except for a few quite short interactive stories and a few add-to stories(l like the Addventurers), I didn’t have much luck with that for a long while. …Until I during the lockdown ,sometime in the spring 2021, while browsing the gamebook site Lloyd of Gamebooks, caught mention of Life of a Wizard. I thought the concept looked really interesting and decided to try it and quickly grew to love it. I quickly discovered that Choice of Games had plenty of other stuff that was at least kind of like that and during that year, I bought and tried many other HGs and COGs and to me it felt like a new and much improved version of gamebooks, and that was the start of my love affair with COGs and HGs and similar IF.
My favorite thing about this kind of IF these days is how it allows me to explore paths I rarely see explored in non-interactive fiction. Particularly for allowing me to make MCs who are different from the more common types of protagonists and making them the heroes of the stories and in that way, whether subtly or not subtly at all, changing the nature of the story, in addition to making it easier to make protagonists I can more easily identify with. I also really enjoy how the interactiveness of the story means I can explore many different outcomes and possibilities, including many different kind of MCs and how that in turn can affect the story.
The spaces that I know of where other fans of this kind of IF hang out are mainly this forum and the subreddits, one for HGs and one for regular COGs.
I’ve made quite a few recommendations on Reddit, mainly on the HG subreddit and the COG subreddit. Apart from that, I did try to get my brother interested in COGs/HGs a few years ago and tried to start him off with Evertree Inn, but AFAIK, it didn’t really catch his interest. I also tried to catch the interest of my youngest niece in a simillar way but didn’t seem to have any more success in that either.
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I think the first 1 i came across was The Lost Heir…It was on sale and i was sitting at the desk bored so i bought it and BOOM!!! i was hooked…didnt even know that there was 2 more till i started digging through steam and now ive pretty much bought almost every 1 thats come out on steam or amazon…and keep up with all the wip both here and the twin stuff…well i guess the first would have been all the cyoa stuff when i was a kid but lets skip that for now 
I think my fav thing about them is that i can kinda create a dif me or react to things dif then how i would in rl…i know what hits me emotionally so depending on my mood or the story i can make choices that i know are gonna hit me right where i want to be hit…
And lastly yes i recommend em all the time but my friends are lil more into blasting things then reading em so i have yet to get em into to many…i did get 1 friend to get both of VtM plug in digital games and he really liked em so ill keep hammering him
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It was the VtM games on Steam that got me in as I didn’t know it was possible to have a VN without the visuals. Then Wayhaven, and I checked out Google play for games for my mobile, and worked out there was a website, as the games on Google were not the same as the ones on Steam. They are great because while female protagonists are more numerous, it isn’t always the case, and these games give me an RPG without having to deal with massive amounts of fighting and violence. Plus I have the choice of a romance if I’m in the mood, and I don’t have to worry about arthritis making my mouse control impossible.
IF might be a niche market, but its an under-rated market, and I love that the forum on here allows readers and players to mix with authors and share new ideas and WIPs. The imagination and talent on here is amazing!
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I want a game where if I’m stupid there are consequences but I don’t have to just reload my last save. I want to pick which faction a book characters joins.
Interactive fiction allows for so much freedom, more than regular games and way more than books. I hate when characters make stupid choices in books/games and always wish I could see what happened if they did something differently. IF allows for that.
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I’ve been meaning to get back to this thread in a while and finally have. There are so many excellent answers here.
I really like this point. It’s freeing to be able to direct the character’s choices.
Agreed.
This is a great point, too. Being able to experience a different story depending on your mood is an excellent advantage for IF.
A lot of people have expressed the advantage of choosing an MC that you can relate with. Identity choice is a major pro for IF. I also like the flexibility to create different characters and explore the story from multiple perspectives.
The agency is huge, and IF gives you, the reader, the ability to shape the story and outcome, whereas a linear story gives the reader more of a witness roll.
Yes!
Reading through this thread, I tend to hone in on the reasons people enjoy interactive fiction. As an author, this helps me remember what players are looking for in a IF game, and inspires me to keep creating worlds that can be explored from myriad perspectives.
Interactive fiction offers something unique, and these responses help to define why and what that is. Thanks to everyone for sharing your thoughts. 
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There’s so much i like about IF but this question has honestly stumped me lol. my first encounter with text based games was A Second Life which i have no clue how i found back then because it took me forever to remember the name just now and then i struggled to find it on google… ANYWAYS. that was a life sim IF so back then i think i was intrigued by IF because there were so many different outcomes and i had never really encountered that with VNs (specifically otome). I loved the variability. I think now im more drawn to IFs with a lot of detailed interpersonal relationships which is why i was so excited for the hearts choice label but
the titles there somehow nearly always lack this?!? I also LOVE flavor text depending on stats/npc relationships.
All the IF loving friends i’ve made have come from discord! Usually servers for popular WIPs. I know tumblr is popular as well.
Outside of the IF community, no. Inside of it, yes! often
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Finished playing Dragon Age Origins and 2 and I fell in love with the idea of choice based games. I was also really into visual novels. So I searched the internet for more stuff to enjoy and stumbled on to Choice of the Dragon. Since then I’ve been lurking and playing. One day I would like to make my own.
I love branching storylines or reactionary content from other characters. I like the discovery and exploration of the lore and being able to immerse myself in a world.
In this forum, reddit, and tumblr. Some of the popular wips also have a discord to hang out in.
Yes. I like sharing things that I enjoy with others in hopes that they also get into it so that we can talk more about it.
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To the first, I mean I think I’d probably say it was a natural expansion from those Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to read as a kid and then all the table top rolepalying and video games I did in my teen and later years. How did I learn about COG and Hosted Games? I think played a few ones I loved on Steam back in the day, absolutely loved them - think it was probably Jim D’s Zombie Games, Lucid’s Daria Kingdom games, and the teen superschool game that I first played - eventually figured out all these games were being made by the same company, and became a huge fan ever sense, to the point where I have a half a dozen hobby projects wherein I am making my own now.
My favorite thing? Yes, in two words, probably immersion and, closely related, agency. Let’s face it - life is grim a lot of the time. Maybe as a little escape, or someway to look at the world differently, its nice to walk about in another world for a bit and play as someone else . . . to get a taste of someone else’s life for a while, to have an adventure or a romance or two . . . it is liberating and fun and I’d say mind expanding, for sure. I’d argue the best games, like Tin Star for example, are long and encapsulate a whole life experience for the prot . . . what better way to spend an afternoon than getting a bonus life? Obviously agency to make the choices that affect the arc of the story, the main characters mostly including the prot, and the tone and tensions of the game world are huge - they give positive feedback and are integral to the immersion factor.
Where do I hang out, I guess is question three? Back in the day, book stores and caffes, when not roleplaying or going to the gym or school . . . won’t lie, the pandemic has way downgraded my activities, which is sad, I suppose, but it is what it is. Honestly don’t have any real world interactive fiction group, though that is a thought, for sure. I mean, reading groups certainly are a thing, so why shouldn’t interactive fiction reading groups be a thing? Still really wish and would advocate for COG, Hosted, and Hearts Choice games getting ISBN listings so we could post reviews to Good Reads, by the by.
Have I ever recommended a game to anyone? Oh, yes. Usually at work, sometimes to my roleplaying groups. I mean, how could you play these wonderful things and not recommend your favorites? Perish that thought.
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I played classic 80s computer IF like HHGTTG and Zork, and a slew of gamebooks like Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the Lone Wolf series, and Way of the Tiger, along with CYOAs.
My favorite thing about games in general is the chance to explore, and that’s also my favorite thing about CSGs.
I don’t think the majority of readers hang out together anywhere. In my experience, the most serious readers hang out here, in a fan community that gets bigger and more active just about every year. But that might be underselling IF Tumblr or the Hosted Games subreddit, both of which are also pretty big and active (in the latter case, mostly relentless memeing about the same half-dozen games, but that still draws in a bunch of people).
I’ve mostly recommended Choice of Robots to people as the gateway drug, or sometimes Choice of the Dragon. In the broader IF-sphere, I’ve recommended Counterfeit Monkey to a lot of people – it’s the most fun I’ve ever had with a parser puzzle game.
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