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 adventures 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.
Zork is an interactive fiction computer game. It was originally developed by four members of the MIT Dynamic Modelling Group—Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling–between 1977 and 1979 for the DEC PDP-10 mainframe computer. The four founded the company Infocom in 1979 and released Zork as a commercial game for personal computers, split due to memory limits of personal computers compared to the mainframe system. The three titles released commercially were Zork: The Great Underground Empire – Part I in 1980, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz in 1981, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master in 1982. The game has since been ported to numerous systems.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It currently serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Kyoto University, or KyotoU, is a public research university located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is the second oldest university in Japan, one of the former Imperial Universities, the first three Designated National University and selected as a Top Type university of Top Global University Project by the Japanese government. KyotoU is usually ranked amongst the top two in Japan, the top ten in Asia, and the world's top thirty institutions of higher education.
Nabisco is an American manufacturer of cookies and snacks headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey. The company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Mondelēz International.
Six Flags Entertainment Corporation, more commonly known as Six Flags or as Six Flags Theme Parks, is an American amusement park corporation, headquartered in Arlington, Texas. It has properties in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Six Flags owns more theme parks and waterparks combined than any other amusement park company in the world, and has the seventh-highest attendance in the world. The company operates 27 properties throughout North America, including theme parks, amusement parks, water parks and a family entertainment center. In 2019, Six Flags properties hosted 32.8 million guests.
Movable Type is a weblog publishing system developed by the company Six Apart. It was publicly announced on September 3, 2001; version 1.0 was publicly released on October 8, 2001. The current version is 7.0.
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo. The name is a reference to the six-day age difference between its married co-founders, Ben and Mena Trott.
Japan Tobacco Inc., abbreviated JT, is a cigarette manufacturing company. It is part of the Nikkei 225 index. In 2009 the company was listed at number 312 on the Fortune 500 list. The company is headquartered in Toranomon, Minato, Tokyo and Japan Tobacco International's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. As of 2012 the chairman is Hiroshi Kimura and the CEO is Mitsuomi Koizumi. It was founded as an enterprise of the Japanese government in 1945, and became a public company on 1 April 1985.
Quiksilver is a brand of surf-inspired apparel and accessories that was founded in 1969 in Torquay, Australia, but is now based in Huntington Beach, California. It is one of the world's largest brands of surfwear and boardsport-related equipment. The parent company changed its name in March 2017 from Quiksilver, Inc. to Boardriders, Inc., and is the owner of the brands Quiksilver, Roxy and DC Shoes. In 2018, Boardriders acquired Billabong International Limited, gaining the Billabong, Element, Von Zipper, RVCA and XCEL brands.
1977 has several new titles such as Space Wars.
Benjamin Trott is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad. In November 2010, he became Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of SAY Media, a new online advertising and software company formed by a merger of ad network VideoEgg with Six Apart.
Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China by the 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best-known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the 15th century.
Robert "Bob" Bates is an American computer games designer. One of the early designers of interactive fiction games, he was co-founder of Challenge, Inc., which created games in the 1980s for the pioneering company Infocom. After Infocom's dissolution in 1989, Bates co-founded Legend Entertainment to continue publishing games in the Infocom tradition, but with added graphics. He has designed, written, or produced scores of games, including Unreal II (2003), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Eric the Unready (1993), listed as Adventure Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine and also included on the 1996 list of "150 best games of all time". In 1998 he wrote the award-winning game Quandaries for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has twice been the chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Bates has written extensively about game design and development in works such as the 2001 book Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is commonly used as a game design textbook in college courses. From 2011–2014, Bates was Chief Creative Officer for External Studios at Zynga. He continues to work as an independent consultant with various publishers in the games industry.
Mena Grabowski Trott is a co-founder of Six Apart, creator of Movable Type and TypePad. The company name originates from the fact that Trott and co-founder/ex-husband Benjamin Trott were born six days apart.
Vox was an Internet blogging service run by Six Apart. Announced on September 21, 2005 by Six Apart president Mena Trott at the DEMO Fall conference under the codename "Project Comet," the site began private alpha testing in March 2006. In June 2006, the site entered public beta—opening registration to outside users on a limited basis via an invitation system—and transitioned to its official name Vox, moving the site to the domain Vox.com. Vox officially launched on October 26, 2006, with registration opened to the general public.
Say Media is a technology and advertising firm. The company provides a publishing platform (Tempest) to professional publishers and sells advertising across that platform and extended network of sites. Say Media has offices in San Francisco, Portland, NY, London, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago and Detroit and is privately held.
Bruce L. Davis is an American businessman, most recently CEO and chairman of Digimarc. Formerly the head of both Imagic and Activision, he is known for his role in the development of the video game industry.
My Neighbor Seki is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Takuma Morishige. The series follows a girl named Rumi Yokoi who is constantly distracted by her neighboring classmate, Toshinari Seki, as he indulges in elaborate hobbies and somehow never gets caught in the process. Originally published as a one-shot in 2010, it started serialization in the November 2010 issue of Media Factory's Comic Flapper magazine. Vertical publishes the manga in North America. An original video animation by Shin-Ei Animation was released bundled with the limited edition of the manga's fifth volume on January 4, 2014, and a 21-episode television series adaptation aired in Japan between January and May 2014. A new manga series debuted on July 4, 2020.
