Infocom

Last updated

Infocom
Industry Video games
FoundedJune 22, 1979 (1979-06-22)
Founders
DefunctClosed on May 5, 1989 (1989-05-05) [1]
FateMerged into Activision on 13 June 1986 [2]
Headquarters Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Key people
Joel Berez (president, CEO)
Products Zork
Deadline
Planetfall
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A Mind Forever Voyaging
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Parent Activision

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 . [3]

Contents

Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision. Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom Zork brand. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002.

Overview

Infocom games are text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted. Generally the program will respond by describing the results of the action, often the contents of a room if the player has moved within the virtual world. The user reads this information, decides what to do, and enters another short series of words. Examples include "go west", "take flashlight", or "give the letter to the woman then ask her for a book".

Infocom games were written using a programming language called ZIL (Zork Implementation Language), itself derived directly from MDL, that compiled into a bytecode able to run on a standardized virtual machine called the Z-machine. As the games were text based and used variants of the same Z-machine interpreter, the interpreter had to be ported to new computer architectures only once per architecture, rather than once per game. Each game file included a sophisticated parser which allowed the user to type complex instructions to the game. Unlike earlier works of interactive fiction which only understood commands of the form 'verb noun', Infocom's parser could understand a wider variety of sentences. For instance one might type "open the large door, then go west", or "go to festeron". [4]

With the Z-machine, Infocom was able to release most of their games for most popular home computers simultaneously: Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, IBM PC compatibles, Amstrad CPC/PCW (one disc worked on both machines), Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, Commodore 128, [5] Kaypro CP/M, TI-99/4A, Macintosh, Atari ST, Amiga, TRS-80, and TRS-80 Color Computer.

History

Foundation and Zork

Infocom began as a collaboration between Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty and alumni, some of whom had previously worked a text-based adventure game called Zork . [6] Development of Zork began in 1977 at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, with an initial team including Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, and Dave Lebling, as well as Bruce Daniels. [7] Inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure , [8] the developers aspired to improve on the formula with a more robust text parser and more logical puzzles. [9] They did not announce their game while it was in development, but a lack of security on the MIT systems meant that anyone who could access the PDP-10 computer over the ARPANET could see what programs were being run. As a result, a small community of people discovered the new "Zork" adventure game and spread word of it under that name. [7] [10] This community interacted with the developers as they created the game, playtesting additions and submitting bug reports. [10] [11]

Infocom was officially founded as a software company on June 22, 1979, with founding members Tim Anderson, Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley, Dave Lebling, J. C. R. Licklider, Chris Reeve, and Al Vezza. [12] By the end of the year, the core Zork game was complete, and Berez was elected the company's president. [13] The studio began seeking a professional publisher with store and distributor connections. After Microsoft passed on the project due to competition with their own Microsoft Adventure (1979), Infocom negotiated a publishing agreement with Personal Software, one of the first professional software publishing companies. [13] [14] However, Infocom grew wary of the publisher's lack of advertising for Zork I, and lack of enthusiasm for additional episodes and games. The developer decided to self-publish their games from that moment forward, buying out Personal Software's remaining inventory of Zork games. [13]

Following its 1980 release, Zork I became a bestseller from 1983 through 1985. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] By 1986, the game had sold 380,000 copies, with 680,000 sales for the trilogy overall, comprising one-third of Infocom's two million game sales. [20] Reviewers hailed Zork as the best adventure game to date, [21] [22] with later critics regarding it as one of the greatest games of all time. [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] Historians noted the game as a foundation for the adventure game genre, [37] as well as influencing the MUD and massively multiplayer online role-playing game genres. [38]

Zork I was Infocom's first product. This screenshot of Zork I is representative of the sort of interaction a player has with Infocom's interactive fiction titles. Here it is depicted running on a modern Z-machine interpreter. Zork I screenshot video game Gargoyle interpreter on Ubuntu Linux.png
Zork I was Infocom's first product. This screenshot of Zork I is representative of the sort of interaction a player has with Infocom's interactive fiction titles. Here it is depicted running on a modern Z-machine interpreter.

Expansion

Lebling and Blank each authored several more games, and additional game writers (or "Implementers") were hired, notably including Steve Meretzky. [39] Other popular and inventive titles included a number of sequels and spinoff games in the Zork series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and A Mind Forever Voyaging . [39]

In its first few years of operation, text adventures proved to be a huge revenue stream for the company. Whereas most computer games of the era would achieve initial success and then suffer a significant drop-off in sales, Infocom titles continued to sell for years and years. Employee Tim Anderson said of their situation, "It was phenomenal – we had a basement that just printed money." [3] By 1983 Infocom was perhaps the dominant computer-game company; for example, all ten of its games were on the Softsel top 40 list of best-selling computer games for the week of December 12, 1983, with Zork in first place and two others in the top ten. [40] In late 1984, management declined an offer by publisher Simon & Schuster to acquire Infocom for $28 million, far more than the board of directors's valuation of $10–12 million. [41] In 1993, Computer Gaming World described this era as the "Cambridge Camelot, where the Great Underground Empire was formed". [42]

Reception

Infocom games were popular, InfoWorld said, in part because "in offices all over America (more than anyone realizes) executives and managers are playing games on their computers". [43] An estimated 25% had a computer game "hidden somewhere in their drawers", Inc. reported, and they preferred Infocom adventures to arcade games. [44] The company stated that year that 75% of players were over 25 years old and that 80% were men; more women played its games than other companies', especially the mysteries. Most players enjoyed reading books; [45] in 1987 president Joel Berez stated, "[Infocom's] audience tends to be composed of heavy readers. We sell to the minority that does read". [46]

A 1996 article in Next Generation said Infocom's "games were noted for having more depth than any other adventure games, before or since." [47] Three components proved key to Infocom's success: marketing strategy, rich storytelling and feelies.[ citation needed ] Whereas most game developers sold their games mainly in software stores, Infocom also distributed their games via bookstores. [3] Infocom's products appealed more to those with expensive computers, such as the Apple Macintosh, IBM PC, and Commodore Amiga. Berez stated that "there is no noticeable correlation between graphics machines and our penetration. There is a high correlation between the price of the machine and our sales ... people who are putting more money into their machines tend to buy more of our software". [46] Since their games were text-based, patrons of bookstores were drawn to the Infocom games as they were already interested in reading. Unlike most computer software, Infocom titles were distributed under a no-returns policy,[ citation needed ] which allowed them to make money from a single game for a longer period of time.

Next, Infocom titles featured strong storytelling and rich descriptions, eschewing the inherent restrictions of graphic displays and allowing users to use their own imaginations for the lavish and exotic locations the games described. [48] Infocom's puzzles were unique in that they were usually tightly integrated into the storyline, and rarely did gamers feel like they were being made to jump through one arbitrary hoop after another, as was the case in many of the competitors' games. The puzzles were generally logical but also required close attention to the clues and hints given in the story, causing many gamers to keep copious notes as they went along.

Sometimes, though, Infocom threw in puzzles just for the humor of it—if the user never ran into these, they could still finish the game. But discovering these early Easter Eggs was satisfying for some fans of the games. For example, one popular Easter egg was in the Enchanter game, which involves collecting magic spells to use in accomplishing the quest. One of these is a summoning spell, which the player needs to use to summon certain characters at different parts of the game. At one point the game mentions the "Implementers" who were responsible for creating the land of Zork. If the player tries to summon the Implementers, the game produces a vision of Dave Lebling and Marc Blank at their computers, surprised at this "bug" in the game and working feverishly to fix it.

Third, the inclusion of "feelies"—imaginative props and extras tied to the game's theme—provided copy protection against copyright infringement. [45] Some games were unsolvable without the extra content provided with the boxed game. And because of the cleverness and uniqueness of the feelies, users rarely felt like they were an intrusion or inconvenience, as was the case with most of the other copy-protection schemes of the time. [49] Feelies also provided the player with a physical aspect to the gameplay of their text adventures, giving another dimension of strategy to what would other-wise just be a text parser.

Although Infocom started out with Zork, and although the Zork world was the centerpiece of their product line throughout the Zork and Enchanter series, the company quickly branched out into a wide variety of story lines: fantasy, science-fiction, mystery, horror, historical adventure, children's stories, and others that defied easy categorization. In an attempt to reach out to female customers, Infocom also produced Plundered Hearts , which cast the gamer in the role of the heroine of a swashbuckling adventure on the high seas, and which required the heroine to use more feminine tactics to win the game, since hacking-and-slashing was not a very ladylike way to behave. Infocom also came out with Leather Goddesses of Phobos in 1986, which featured "tame", "suggestive", and "lewd" playing modes. It included among its "feelies" a "scratch-and-sniff" card with six odors that corresponded to cues given to the player during the game.

Invisiclues

Originally, hints for the game were provided as a "pay-per-hint" service created by Mike Dornbrook, called the Zork Users Group (ZUG). Dornbrook also started Infocom's customer newsletter, called The New Zork Times, to discuss game hints and preview and showcase new products.

The pay-per-hint service eventually led to the development of InvisiClues: books with hints, maps, clues, and solutions for puzzles in the games. The answers to the puzzles were printed in invisible ink that only became visible when rubbed with a special marker that was provided with each book. Usually, two or more answers were given for each question that a gamer might have. The first answer would provide a subtle hint, the second a less subtle hint, and so forth until the last one gave an explicit walkthrough. Gamers could thus reveal only the hints that they needed to have to play the game. To prevent the mere questions (printed in normal ink) from giving away too much information about the game, a certain number of misleading fake questions were included in every InvisiClues book. Answers to these questions would start by giving misleading or impossible to carry out answers, before the final answer revealed that the question was a fake (and usually admonishing the player that revealing random clues from the book would spoil their enjoyment of the game). The InvisiClues books were regularly ranked in near the top of best seller lists for computer books. [3]

In the Solid Gold line of re-releases, InvisiClues were integrated into the game. By typing "HINT" twice the player would open up a screen of possible topics where they could then reveal one hint at a time for each puzzle, just like the books.

Interactive fiction

Infocom also released a small number of "interactive fiction paperbacks" (gamebooks), which were based on the games (such as Zork) and featured the ability to choose a different path through the story. Similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, every couple of pages the book would give the reader the chance to make a choice, such as which direction they wanted to go or how they wanted to respond to another character. The reader would then choose one of the given answers and turn to the appropriate page. These books, however, never did sell particularly well, and quickly disappeared from the bookshelves.

Cornerstone

Despite their success with computer games, Vezza and other company founders hoped to produce successful business programs like Lotus Development, also founded by people from MIT [2] and located in the same building as Infocom. Lotus released its first product, 1-2-3, in January 1983; within a year it had earned $53 million, compared to Infocom's $6 million. In 1982 Infocom started putting resources into a new division to produce business products. [40] In 1985 they released a database product, Cornerstone , aimed at capturing the then booming database market for small business. Though this application was hailed upon its release for ease of use, it sold only 10,000 copies; not enough to cover the development expenses. [3]

The program failed for a number of reasons. Although it was packaged in a slick hard plastic carrying case and was a very good database for personal and home use, it was originally priced at USD$495 per copy and used copy-protected disks.[ clarification needed ] Another serious miscalculation was that the program did not include any kind of scripting language, so it was not promoted by any of the database consultants that small businesses typically hired to create and maintain their DB applications. Reviewers were also consistently disappointed that Infocom—noted for the natural language syntax of their games—did not include a natural language query ability, which had been the most anticipated feature for this database application. In a final disappointment, Cornerstone was available only for IBM PCs; while Cornerstone had been programmed with its own virtual machine for maximum portability, it was not ported to any of the other platforms that Infocom supported for their games, so that feature had become essentially irrelevant. And because Cornerstone used this virtual machine for its processing, it suffered from slow, lackluster performance. [3]

Changing marketplace

Infocom's games' sales benefited significantly from the portability offered by running on top of a virtual machine. InfoWorld wrote in 1984 that "the company always sells games for computers you don't normally think of as game machines, such as the DEC Rainbow or the Texas Instruments Professional Computer. This is one of the key reasons for the continued success of old titles such as Zork." [43] Dornbrook estimated that year that of the 1.8 million home computers in America, one half million homes had Infocom games ("all, if you count the pirated games"). [45] Computer companies sent prototypes of new systems to encourage Infocom to port Z-machine to them; the virtual machine supported more than 20 different systems, including orphaned computers for which Infocom games were among the only commercial products. The company produced the only third-party games available for the Macintosh at launch, [40] and Berlyn promised that all 13 of its games would be available for the Atari ST within one month of its release. [50]

The virtual machine significantly slowed Cornerstone's execution speed, however. Businesses were moving en masse to the IBM PC platform by that time, so portability was no longer a significant differentiator. Infocom had sunk much of the money from games sales into Cornerstone; this, in addition to a slump in computer game sales, left the company in a very precarious financial position. By the time Infocom removed the copy-protection and reduced the price to less than $100, it was too late, and the market had moved on to other database solutions.

By 1982 the market was moving to graphic adventures. Infocom was interested in producing them, that year proposing to Penguin Software that Antonio Antiochia, author of its Transylvania , provide artwork. Within Infocom the game designers tended to oppose graphics, while marketing and business employees supported using them for the company to remain competitive. The partnership negotiations failed, in part because of the difficulty of adding graphics to the Z-machine, and Infocom instead began a series of advertisements mocking graphical games as "graffiti" compared to the human imagination. The marketing campaign was very successful, and Infocom's success led to other companies like Broderbund and Electronic Arts also releasing their own text games. [45] [40]

Activision takeover

After Cornerstone's failure, Infocom laid off half of its 100 employees, [51] and Activision acquired the company on June 13, 1986, for $7.5 million. [2] The merger was pushed by Activision's CEO Jim Levy, who was a fan of Infocom games and felt their two companies were in similar situations. [52] Berez stated that although the two companies' headquarters and product lines would remain separate, "One of the effects of the merger will be for both of us to broaden our horizons". He said that "We're looking at graphics a lot", while Activision was reportedly interested in using Infocom's parser. [53]

While relations were cordial between the two companies at first, Activision's ousting of Levy with new CEO Bruce Davis created problems in the working relationship with Infocom. Davis believed that his company had paid too much for Infocom and initiated a lawsuit against them to recoup some of the cost, along with changing the way Infocom was run. For example:

Later years

By 1988, rumors spread of disputes between Activision and Infocom. [55] Infocom employees reportedly believed that Activision gave poorer-quality games to Infocom, such as Tom Snyder Productions' unsuccessful Infocomics. [56] Activision moved Infocom development to California in 1989, and the company was now just a publishing label. [2] Rising costs and falling profits, exacerbated by the lack of new products in 1988 and technical issues with its DOS products, caused Activision to close Infocom in 1989, [1] after which some of the remaining Infocom designers such as Steve Meretzky moved to the company Legend Entertainment, founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu, to continue creating games in the Infocom tradition.

Activision itself was struggling in the marketplace following Davis' promotion to CEO. Activision had rebranded itself as Mediagenic and tried to produce business productivity software, but became significantly in debt. In 1991, Mediagenic was purchased by Bobby Kotick, who put into measures immediately to try to turn the company around, which included returning to its Activision name, and putting to use its past IP properties. This included the Infocom games; Kotick recognized the value of the branding of Zork and other titles. [57] Activision began to sell bundles of the Infocom games that year, packaged as themed collections (usually by genre, such as the Science Fiction collection); in 1991, they published The Lost Treasures of Infocom , followed in 1992 by The Lost Treasures of Infocom II . These compilations featured nearly every game produced by Infocom before 1988. ( Leather Goddesses of Phobos was not included in either bundle, but could be ordered via a coupon included with Lost Treasures II.) The compilations lacked the "feelies" that came with each game, but in some cases included photographs of them. In 1996, the first bundles were followed by Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom , a single CD-ROM which contained the works of both collections. This release, however, was missing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Shogun because the licenses from Douglas Adams' and James Clavell's estates had expired. Under Kotick's leadership, Activision also developed Return to Zork , published under its Infocom label. [57]

Eventually, Activision abandoned the "Infocom" name. The brand name was registered by Oliver Klaeffling of Germany in 2007, then was abandoned the following year. The Infocom trademark was then held by Pete Hottelet's Omni Consumer Products, who registered the name around the same time as Klaeffling in 2007. [58] As of March 2017, the trademark is owned by infocom.xyz, according to Bob Bates. [59]

Titles and authors

Retail boxes of several Infocom games, on display at the Digital Game Museum Infocom (1979-1986) (6120466941).jpg
Retail boxes of several Infocom games, on display at the Digital Game Museum

Interactive fiction

Other titles

Collections

Legacy

With the exception of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Shogun, the copyrights to the Infocom games are believed to be still held by Activision. Dungeon , the mainframe precursor to the commercial Zork trilogy, is believed to be free for non-commercial use. [60] but prohibited for commercial use. [61] It was this copy that the popular Fortran mainframe version was based on. [62] The C version was based on the Fortran version. [63] and is available from The Interactive Fiction Archive as original FORTRAN source code, a Z-machine story file and as various native source ports. Many Infocom titles can be downloaded via the Internet, but only in violation of the copyright. Activision did at one point release the original trilogy for free-of-charge download as a promotion [64] but prohibited redistribution [65] and have since discontinued this. [66] There are currently at least four Infocom sampler and demos available from the IF Archive as Z-machine story files which require a Z-machine interpreter to play. Interpreters are available for most computer platforms, the most widely used being the Frotz, Zip, and Nitfol interpreters.

Five games (Zork I, Planetfall, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Wishbringer and Leather Goddesses of Phobos) were re-released in Solid Gold format. The Solid Gold versions of those games include a built-in InvisiClues hint system.

In 2012, Activision released Lost Treasures of Infocom for iOS devices. In-app purchases provide access for 27 of the titles. It also lacks Shogun and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as Beyond Zork, Zork Zero and Nord and Bert.

Efforts have been made to make the Infocom games source code available for preservation. In 2008, Jason Scott, a video game preservationist contributing towards the Internet Archive, received the so-called "Infocom Drive", a large archive of the entire contents of Infocom's main server made during the last few days before the company was relocated to California; besides source code for all of Infocom's games (including unreleased ones), it also contained the software manuals, design documents and other essential content alongside Infocom's business documentation. [67] [68] Scott later published all of the source files in their original Z-engine format to GitHub in 2019. [69]

Zork made a cameo appearance as an easter egg in Activision and Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops . It can be accessed from the main menu.

Related Research Articles

Interactive fiction (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.

<i>Zork</i> 1977 video game

Zork is a text 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.

The Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions and could therefore port its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a Z-machine implementation for that platform. With the large number of incompatible home computer systems in use at the time, this was an important advantage over using native code or developing a compiler for each system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Meretzky</span> American video game developer

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 game 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.

<i>The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy</i> (video game) 1984 video game

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, Mac, Commodore 64, CP/M, MS-DOS, Amiga, Atari 8-bit computers, and Atari ST. It is Infocom's fourteenth game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Lebling</span> American computer game writer (born 1949)

Peter David Lebling is an American interactive fiction game designer (implementor) and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid.

<i>Leather Goddesses of Phobos</i> 1986 interactive fiction game

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, Mac, Atari 8-bit computers, 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.

<i>Planetfall</i> 1983 video game

Planetfall is a science fiction themed interactive fiction video game written by Steve Meretzky, and published in 1983 as the eighth game from Infocom. The original release was for Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, TRS-80, and IBM PC compatibles. Atari ST and Commodore 64 versions were released in 1985. A version for CP/M was also released. Planetfall was Meretzky's first published game, and it proved one of his most popular works and a best-seller for Infocom. It was one of five top-selling games to be re-released in Solid Gold versions with in-game hints. Planetfall uses the Z-machine originally developed for Zork and was added as a bonus to the Zork Anthology.

<i>The Lost Treasures of Infocom</i> 1991 video 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.

Tim Anderson is an American computer programmer best known for co-creating the adventure game Zork, one of the first works of interactive fiction and an early descendant of ADVENT.

<i>Enchanter</i> (video game) 1983 video game

Enchanter is an interactive fiction game written by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling and published by Infocom in 1983. The first fantasy game published by Infocom after the Zork trilogy, it was originally intended to be Zork IV. The game has a parser that understands over 700 words, making it the most advanced interactive fiction game of its time. It was Infocom's ninth game.

<i>Zork Zero</i> 1988 text adventure game

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz is an interactive fiction video game, written by Steve Meretzky over nearly 18 months and published by Infocom in 1988. Although it is the ninth and last Zork game released by Infocom before the company's closure, Zork Zero takes place before the previous eight games. Unlike its predecessors, Zork Zero is a vast game, featuring a graphical interface with scene-based colors and borders, an interactive map, menus, an in-game hints system, an interactive Encyclopedia Frobozzica, and playable graphical mini-games. The graphics were created by computer artist James Shook. It is Infocom's thirty-second game.

<i>Zork: The Undiscovered Underground</i> 1997 video game

Zork: The Undiscovered Underground is an interactive fiction video game written by former Infocom Implementors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn and implemented by G. Kevin Wilson using the Inform language. The game was commissioned by Activision as a free promotional product to coincide with the release of Zork: Grand Inquisitor. It was released on August 28, 1997.

<i>James Clavells Shōgun</i> 1989 interactive fiction game

James Clavell's Shōgun is an interactive fiction game written by Dave Lebling and published by Infocom in 1989. It was released for the Amiga, Apple II, MS-DOS, and Mac. The game is based on the 1975 novel Shōgun by James Clavell. It was Infocom's thirty-third game.

<i>Fooblitzky</i> 1985 video game

Fooblitzky is a board game-style video game published by Infocom in 1985 and designed by a team which included interactive fiction authors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn. It is unique among Infocom titles for not being interactive fiction and for being the first to incorporate graphics beyond ASCII characters. Unlike most Infocom games, it was only released for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, and IBM PC compatibles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Blank</span> American game developer

Marc Blank is an American game developer and software engineer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful text adventure computer games, Zork. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.

Michael Berlyn was an American video game designer and writer. He was best known as an implementer at Infocom, part of the text adventure game design team. He is also known as the designer behind Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (1993) and Bubsy 3D (1996).

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.

Albert Vezza was an American computer science professor and a founder of video game company Infocom.

The Interactive Fiction Collections is a video game series developed by Infocom and published by Activision for the PC and classic Mac OS.

References

  1. 1 2 "Inside the Industry: Infocom's West Coast Move Stirs Controversy", Computer Gaming World , p. 10, September 1989
  2. 1 2 3 4 Wilson, Johnny L. (November 1991). "A History of Computer Games". Computer Gaming World. p. 10. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Briceno, Hector; Wesley Chao; Andrew Glenn; Stanley Hu; Ashwin Krishnamurthy; Bruce Tsuchida (December 15, 2000). "Down From the Top of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc". Archived from the original on September 29, 2020. Retrieved June 7, 2007.
  4. ↑ The Wishbringer manual with more examples of complex commands possible with Infocom games.
  5. ↑ Infocom was actually one of the very few companies to release game software for the C128's native mode, contrary to most software houses' practice of only catering for the combined C64/128 market (as the C128 was compatible with the C64)
  6. ↑ Dyer, Richard (May 6, 1984). "Masters of the Game". The Boston Globe . Archived from the original on June 7, 1997.
  7. 1 2 Lebling, Dave (March 2014). Classic Game Postmortem: Zork (conference presentation). Retrieved August 17, 2022– via Game Developers Conference.
  8. ↑ Smith, Alexander (2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry, Vol. I: 1971-1982. CRC Press. ISBN   978-0-429-75261-2.
  9. ↑ Anderson, Tim (Winter 1985). "The History of Zork – First in a series". The New Zork Times. Vol. 4, no. 1. pp. 6–7, 11.
  10. 1 2 Anderson, Tim (Spring 1985). "The History of Zork – Second in a series". The New Zork Times. Vol. 4, no. 2. pp. 3–5.
  11. ↑ "The Making of Zork". Retro Gamer . No. 77. May 2010. pp. 36–39. ISSN   1742-3155.
  12. ↑ Williams, Wayne. "The Next Dimension". Retro Gamer . No. 10. Imagine Publishing. pp. 30–41.
  13. 1 2 3 Galley, Stu (Summer 1985). "The History of Zork – Third in a series". The New Zork Times. Vol. 4, no. 3. pp. 4–5.
  14. ↑ Rignall, Jaz; Parish, Jeremy (December 25, 2015). "Dave Lebling on the Genesis of the Adventure Game – and the Creation of Zork". USGamer . Archived from the original on July 30, 2022. Retrieved August 5, 2022.
  15. ↑ Solomon, Abby (October 1983). "Games Businesspeople Play". Inc. ISSN   0162-8968. Archived from the original on April 7, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  16. ↑ Mace, Scott (April 2, 1984). "Games with windows". InfoWorld . p. 56. ISSN   0199-6649.
  17. ↑ Ditlea, Steve; Onosco, Tim; Kunkel, Bill (February 1985). "Random Access: Best Sellers/Recreation". Video . Vol. 8, no. 11. p. 35. ISSN   0147-8907.
  18. ↑ Onosco, Tim; Kohl, Louise; Kunkel, Bill; Garr, Doug (March 1985). "Random Access: Best Sellers/Recreation". Video . Vol. 8, no. 12. p. 43. ISSN   0147-8907.
  19. ↑ Ciraolo, Michael (October 1985). "Top Software / A List of Favorites". II Computing. Vol. 1, no. 1. p. 51. ISSN   0889-9134.
  20. ↑ Carless, Simon (September 20, 2008). "Great Scott: Infocom's All-Time Sales Numbers Revealed". GameSetWatch . Archived from the original on September 24, 2008. Retrieved September 23, 2008.
  21. ↑ "Zork". Commodore Magazine. Vol. 3, no. 6. November 1983. pp. 8–11. ISSN   0814-5741.
  22. ↑ Grevstad, Eric (September 1983). "Zork I (Adventure)". Family Computing . Vol. 1, no. 1. p. 98. ISSN   0899-7373.
  23. ↑ Gutman, Dan; Addams, Shay (1985). The Greatest Games: The 93 Best Computer Games of All Time. Compute! Publications, Inc. ISBN   0-942386-95-7.
  24. ↑ "The Top 40 Games of the Millennium". Gamecenter . January 5, 2000. Archived from the original on June 17, 2000. Retrieved August 23, 2022.
  25. ↑ "GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time". GameSpy . 2001. Archived from the original on June 4, 2004. Retrieved April 22, 2022.
  26. ↑ Hollingworth, David (June 6, 2002). "Top 50 video games of all time". Sydney Morning Herald (Published in print, with additional preface, as part of the Herald's monthly e)mag supplement.). Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved May 3, 2022.
  27. ↑ "The Top 200 Games of All Time". Game Informer . No. 200. January 2010.
  28. ↑ "Top 100 Video Games of All Time". IGN. June 1, 2015. Archived from the original on December 10, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  29. ↑ Moore, Bo (June 16, 2014). "The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time". Popular Mechanics . Archived from the original on December 2, 2016.
  30. ↑ "All-TIME 100 Video Games". Time . November 15, 2012. Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
  31. ↑ Peckham, Matt; Eadicicco, Lisa; Fitzpatrick, Alex; Vella, Matt; Patrick Pullen, John; Raab, Josh; Grossman, Lev (August 23, 2016). "The 50 Best Video Games of All Time". Time . Archived from the original on August 30, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2016.
  32. ↑ Tony Mott, ed. (2013). 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die . Universe Publishing. ISBN   978-1844037667.
  33. ↑ Owen, Phil (March 13, 2017). "The 30 Best Video Games of All Time, Ranked". thewrap.com. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
  34. ↑ Polygon Staff (November 27, 2017). "The 500 Best Video Games of All Time". Polygon.com . Archived from the original on March 3, 2018. Retrieved December 1, 2017.
  35. ↑ "The Top 300 Games of All Time". Game Informer . No. 300. April 2018.
  36. ↑ Moore, Bo; Schuback, Adam (March 21, 2019). "The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time". Popular Mechanics . Archived from the original on May 27, 2019. Retrieved May 27, 2019.
  37. ↑ Barton, Matt (June 28, 2007). "The History Of Zork". Game Developer . Archived from the original on August 9, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  38. ↑ Heron, Michael (August 3, 2016). "Hunt The Syntax, Part One". Game Developer . Archived from the original on January 8, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  39. 1 2 "Four Minds Forever Voyaging (Part I)".
  40. 1 2 3 4 5 Maher, Jimmy (March 20, 2013). "The Top of its Game". The Digital Antiquarian. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
  41. ↑ Maher, Jimmy (October 23, 2013). "Masters of the Game". The Digital Antiquarian. Retrieved July 11, 2014.
  42. ↑ "The 7th International Computer Game Developers Conference". Computer Gaming World. July 1993. p. 34. Retrieved July 12, 2014.
  43. 1 2 Mace, Scott (April 2, 1984). "Games with windows". InfoWorld. p. 56. Retrieved February 10, 2015.
  44. ↑ Solomon, Abby (October 1983). "Games Businesspeople Play". Inc.
  45. 1 2 3 4 Dyer, Richard (May 6, 1984). "Masters of the Game". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 5, 2009. Retrieved October 9, 2017.
  46. 1 2 Ferrell, Keith (January 1988). "Interactive Text in an Animated Age". Compute!. p. 17. Retrieved November 10, 2013.
  47. ↑ "The Next Generation 1996 Lexicon A to Z: Infocom". Next Generation . No. 15. March 1996. pp. 34–35.
  48. ↑ "Crib Sheet". Next Generation . No. 24. Imagine Media. December 1996. p. 26.
  49. ↑ Peters, Ian M. (June 15, 2014). "Peril-sensitive sunglasses, superheroes in miniature, and pink polka-dot boxers: Artifact and collectible video game feelies, play, and the paratextual gaming experience". Transformative Works and Cultures. 16. doi: 10.3983/twc.2014.0509 . ISSN   1941-2258.
  50. ↑ Chin, Kathy (January 28, 1985). "Atari Promises Software For ST". InfoWorld. p. 17. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
  51. ↑ Oxner, Bill (May 1986). "Hobby & Industry News". Computer Gaming World . No. 28. p. 4. Retrieved May 21, 2016.
  52. ↑ "A Short History Of Activision". Edge . August 24, 2006. Archived from the original on April 4, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2019.
  53. ↑ Muse, Dan (September 1986). "Capturing a Buffalo". inCider. pp. 14–15. Retrieved July 2, 2014.
  54. ↑ Tommervik, Margot Comstock (March 1983). "By Golly, That's a Good Game! / Masters of the Mousetrap Maxim Tell Why". Softline. pp. 30–32. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  55. ↑ "Rumored Activision/Infocom Rift Unfounded". Computer Gaming World . No. 46. April 1988. p. 9. Retrieved May 21, 2016.
  56. ↑ "The Master Storytellers did (Info-)Comics (and nobody took notice)". The Good Old Days. Retrieved July 14, 2021.
  57. 1 2 Sengstack, Jeff (June 24, 1996). "Activision: Reorganized, Redefined and on the Rebound". NewMedia. Archived from the original on January 28, 1998. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
  58. ↑ "That "new" "official" Infocom web site". The Gameshelf.
  59. ↑ "Is this going to be an Infocom branded game? :: Thaumistry: In Charm's Way General Discussions". steamcommunity.com. Retrieved October 21, 2017.
  60. ↑ After a systems engineer at DEC obtained the source code for the MDL version by working out how to work around the implementors' directory protection and then brute-forcing their encryption, the implementors conceded that he deserved it if he was willing to go to that much effort. "Infocom Interactive Fiction (Peter Scheyen Archive)". Archived from the original on February 2, 2016.
  61. ↑ "Zork for Android". GitHub . January 23, 2015.
  62. ↑ "Infocom Interactive Fiction (Peter Scheyen Archive)". Archived from the original on February 2, 2016.
  63. ↑ "Zork for Android – History". GitHub . January 23, 2015.
  64. ↑ "Infocom Interactive Fiction (Peter Scheyen Archive)". Archived from the original on November 1, 2011.
  65. ↑ "Readme from the release". oregonstate.edu.
  66. ↑ "Liberated Games Forums: FAQs => General Liberated Games FAQ". October 12, 2007. Archived from the original on October 12, 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  67. ↑ GET LAMP Raw Interviews Pretty Much Up on ascii.textfiles.com by Jason Scott (December 3, 2012)
  68. ↑ Kohler, Chris (April 18, 2008). "'Infocom Drive' Turns Up Long-Lost Hitchhiker Sequel". Wired . Retrieved January 26, 2016. Remnants of the unreleased sequel to Infocom's text adventure version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have been made available to the public by Waxy.org. Playable prototypes, design docs, source code and a string of e-mails between Infocom designers and management provide a fascinating look at the game's turbulent, if aborted, development process. Among the assets included: design documents, e-mail archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released and unreleased game Infocom made."
  69. ↑ Kerr, Chris (April 16, 2019). "The source code for Infocom's classic text adventures is now on Github". Gamasutra . Retrieved April 16, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.