Choose your Own Adventure (CYOA) are based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and picked up by Chooseco, LLC, who copyrighted the term in 1979.
In recent years, other entities, such as Netflix and the indie game developers of Itch.io, have run into issues with the copyright, including lawsuits or having their games taken down from the public view. Many game developers have adopted the term "Interactive Fiction" (IF) as a copyright-neutral term. While Interactive Fiction is similiar to CYOA, but is different in other ways. CYOA normally has pre-determined paths set for the player, while IF normally allows the player to input their own responses. Both types of story-telling have multiple endings, even if only one of the endings is a "true" ending. Many players of these games create flowcharts, such as to keep track of the path they are currently on.
There are two distinct categories of Interactive Fiction: