Amy Briggs | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1962 (age 61–62) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Macalester College |
| Occupation | Video game implementer |
| Years active | 1985–present |
| Notable work | Plundered Hearts (1987) |
Amy Ruth Briggs (born 1962[ citation needed ]) is an American video game implementor known for creating Plundered Hearts , an interactive fiction computer game published by Infocom in 1987.
At one point in her youth, Briggs was a babysitter of Ron Gilbert, who went on to design the pirate-themed adventure game Monkey Island . [1] A Minnesota native, she graduated from Macalester College in 1984 with a B.A. in English, specializing in British literature.
Already a fan of Infocom's games, Briggs joined the company in 1985 as a game tester. Working long hours playtesting games and learning the ZIL programming language, she quickly rose to the rank of implementor. [2]
Briggs's literary background led her to write the company's only romance-genre text adventure. She also chose an explicitly female lead character, again unique for Infocom (other lead characters were either of unspecified gender, male, or allowed a choice of sex). She explained these choices by saying, "C. S. Lewis said he had to write The Chronicles of Narnia because they were books he wanted to read, and nobody else had written them yet. Plundered Hearts was a game I wanted to play." [3]
Although Plundered Hearts was her only published text adventure, Briggs worked as a writer and editor on a number of other Infocom projects: she did a major rewrite of Quarterstaff, and helped to design "The Flathead Calendar", the main feelie included with Zork Zero . She was also briefly lead implementor on Milliways, the never-completed sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . [4] After Infocom was shut down in 1989, she returned to Minnesota where she attended graduate school, eventually earning a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Minnesota. Then she went to work for 3M as a human factors engineer. [5]
Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called Cornerstone.
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text adventure game, and 2005 feature film.
Zork is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded and split the game into three titles—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master—which were released commercially for a range of personal computers beginning in 1980. In Zork, the player explores the abandoned Great Underground Empire in search of treasure. The player moves between the game's hundreds of locations and interacts with objects by typing commands in natural language that the game interprets. The program acts as a narrator, describing the player's location and the results of the player's commands. It has been described as the most famous piece of interactive fiction.
Steven Eric Meretzky is an American video game developer. He is best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the first games to be certified "platinum" by the Software Publishers Association. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. He has been involved in almost every aspect of game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an interactive fiction video game based on the comedic science fiction series of the same name. It was designed by series creator Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky, and it was first released in 1984 for the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari 8-bit family, and Atari ST. It is Infocom's fourteenth game.
Magnetic Scrolls was a British video game developer active between 1984 and 1990. A pioneer of audiovisually elaborate text adventure games, it was one of the largest and most acclaimed interactive fiction developers of the 1980s, and one of the "Big Two" with Infocom according to some.
Leather Goddesses of Phobos is an interactive fiction video game written by Steve Meretzky and published by Infocom in 1986. It was released for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Amstrad PCW, Apple II, Macintosh, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, Commodore 64, TI-99/4A and MS-DOS. The game was Infocom's first "sex farce", including selectable gender and "naughtiness"—the latter ranging from "tame" to "lewd". It was one of five top-selling Infocom titles to be re-released in Solid Gold versions. It was Infocom's twenty-first game.
The Lost Treasures of Infocom is a 1991 compilation of 20 previously-released interactive fiction games developed by Infocom. It was published by Activision for MS-DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, and Apple IIGS versions. It was later re-released on CD-ROM, and in 2012 on iOS.
Stationfall is an interactive fiction video game written by Steve Meretzky and released by Infocom in 1987. It was released for the Commodore 64, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, and MS-DOS,. The game is a sequel to Planetfall, one of Infocom's most popular titles. It is Infocom's twenty-fifth game.
Plundered Hearts is an interactive fiction video game created by Amy Briggs and published by Infocom in 1987. Infocom's only game in the romance genre, it was released simultaneously for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit family, Atari ST, Amiga, Macintosh, and DOS. It is Infocom's twenty-eighth game.
James Clavell's Shōgun is an interactive fiction video game written by Dave Lebling and published by Infocom in 1989. It was released for the Amiga, Apple II, DOS, and Macintosh. The game is based on the 1975 novel Shōgun by James Clavell. It is Infocom's thirty-third game.
Journey: The Quest Begins is an interactive fiction computer game designed by Marc Blank, with illustrations by Donald Langosy, and released by Infocom in 1989. Like the majority of Infocom's works, it was released simultaneously for several popular computer platforms, such as the Commodore 64, Apple II, and PC. Journey is unusual among Infocom games in that it could be played entirely via mouse or joystick, with no typing required. It was the thirty-fifth and last game released by Infocom before parent company Activision closed the Cambridge office, effectively reducing Infocom to a "label" to be applied to later games.
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.
The Space Bar is a 1997 graphic adventure game developed by Boffo Games and published by Rocket Science Games and SegaSoft. A comic science fiction story, it follows detective Alias Node as he searches for a shapeshifting killer inside The Thirsty Tentacle, a fantastical bar on the planet Armpit VI. The player assumes the role of Alias and uses his Empathy Telepathy power to live out the memories of eight of the bar's patrons, including an immobile plant, an insect with compound eyes and a blind alien who navigates by sound. Gameplay is nonlinear and under a time limit: the player may solve puzzles and gather clues in any order, but must win before the killer escapes the bar.
Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom is a collection of 33 computer games from interactive fiction pioneer Infocom, and the top 6 winners of the 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition, released in 1996. All 39 games are combined on a single cross-platform CD-ROM, which also includes PDFs of all the Infocom games' instructions, maps, and hint booklets.
Quarterstaff: The Tomb of Setmoth is an interactive fiction role-playing video game developed by Scott Schmitz and Ken Updike and released by Infocom for Macintosh in 1988. The game features a text parser, graphics, a dynamically updated map, and a graphical interface that incorporates Mac OS hierarchical menus.
An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres. Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified by Rick Adams as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Syberia, and Myst.
The Interactive Fiction Collections is a video game series developed by Infocom and published by Activision for the PC and classic Mac OS.
Breakers is a science fiction-themed interactive fiction video game published in 1986 by Synapse Software, which was then a division of Broderbund. It was released for the Apple II series, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS. The game was the last of Broderbund's "Electronic Novels" series, and was not a commercial success. Critics complimented the complex storyline, but found the game's parser had not kept pace with other game developers.
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