Earlier this year, when I realized that all of the old Infocom games were in the public domain, I spent some time playing Zork I, Border Zone, and HHGTTG -- the ones I played most often when I was younger.
There was some sentimental fun to be had, but these games take a tremendous amount of time to play and are difficult in a way that modern games are not. Their puzzles are almost unsolvable in some cases, or can only be solved by combining every permutation of every verb with every noun in every place to get the right answer.
Relative to what's available in the modern gaming realm as well as conventional fiction, I've also been pretty underwhelmed by what the Interactive Fiction community is putting out, especially the games that are purely web-based. There are some authors, Andrew Plotkin comes to mind, that have picked up the Infocom torch, but the feeling that you are using 0.1% of what your computer can do at about 5% of the rate your mind can work is difficult to shake for me in our modern era.
Why do you need to need to be using the full capacity of your computer, if you are having fun?
One of the real advantages of interactive fiction in the modern era is that it can afford to take more risks, narratively, than a AAA title. Since it can be the work of a single person as a hobby or small business, rather than needing mass-market sales to repay for its development, you can try out different things, some of which may not work out but some of which can be fascinating.
Beside Andrew Plotkin, I've always loved the work of Emily Short, like Galatea which couldn't even really be considered a game but is quite fascinating.
I love Plotkin's games. "Spider & Web" is one of the best games I've ever played... even if it gets a bit too difficult near the end, the premise and implementation is almost flawless. I've seen few games like it, "full capacity of your computer" be damned! :)
Interactive Fiction was a breath of fresh air to me. Experimental, funny, innovative, emotional. There was a time, a few years ago, when IF games were about the only kind of games which could hold my interest.
I think it is the middle of Spider & Web that is the trickiest and where I had to go find a walkthrough. Once you work out "the twist" the end is pretty logical but the setup you have to do before getting there was, for me, not intuitive in the slightest.
For some reason, while I always see Adam Cadre mentioned along with Plotkin and Short among the innovative modern IF authors, something about his writing style just rubs me the wrong way and I've never been able to enjoy his games.
I think he is great, at least the games I've played, but I suppose some could find his writing slightly pretentious.
The first game I played by Adam was Photopia, and while it's not particularly interactive, I found it tremendously moving. It has it all, in my opinion: a moving storyline that doesn't necessarily tie all ends neatly, non-linear narrative, a novel point of view (it's not a big spoiler to say that almost every game segment is "narrated" from the point of view of someone who likes the main character, but we never actually play the main character), and some pretty clever moments (the maze, the exploration of the Red Planet). It's a game I immediately replayed once I reached the ending I finally had the full picture, because some scenes get a new meaning once you know what's truly going on.
Of course, the same applies to 9:05: it's amusing to replay it once you know what's going on.
More in general, I think the IF community is marvellous (I haven't followed it in a while, no idea if it's still active). To me, it was like a games rennaissance. There were authors truly exploring what narrative in games could do, and while there is a mandatory technical know-how -- some of the IF languages are programming languages after all -- it's way lower as an entry barrier than, say, almost anything with graphics, let alone 3D graphics. I think this "not caring about using the full power of the computer" was an advantage to game authors.
> There was some sentimental fun to be had, but these games take a tremendous amount of time to play and are difficult in a way that modern games are not. Their puzzles are almost unsolvable in some cases, or can only be solved by combining every permutation of every verb with every noun in every place to get the right answer.
It's interesting how intolerable these games would be considered today. I have a choice of thousands of games on steam (not to mention other platforms), many for less than $5. I would give these games such a bad rating, not for "lack of graphics" or anything technological, but for lack of smooth gameplay. But I loved them, and they are considered foundationial to current games.
It's also interesting to me how much time I spent patiently trying different solutions. Nowadays, if I don't get a puzzle in ~30 min, I'm off to google the answer.
I think we're way better off now, but I think there was some dedication/patience/pure-effort that we've lost with our vast number of choices, and access to information.
We always had the option of the "invisiclues" but... you had to order those and wait (time and money) or drive to a local computer store and buy (money). Both put a damper on the urge to "cheat".
In so many ways, Invisiclues are a fascinating relic. That they existed (and were extremely popular) speaks to a number of different aspects to technology between then and now. (And, as I recall, Invisiclues were also available as some sort of 900 number service at one point.)
Its very much like learning to code. In the old days figuring stuff out for yourself generated a high you don't get from finding and paraphrasing a stack overflow answer...
Mass market AAA FPS sequels are made and played by very different people. IntFic scene seems to have the producers and consumers a lot closer. Rogue-likes are the same way.
It's also worth noting that the ability of Infocom/IF games to simulate real-world puzzles is fairly limited next to what can be done with two- and three-dimensional graphics, stereo sound, various input method, etc.
There is some novelty in solving some problem abstracted into written language, but I find it to be most analogous to reading a good novel. Calling these kinds of things "interactive" is a stretch to me, because the "interaction" is severely limited. It really is, an another commenter implied, more akin to solving a coding problem using a REPL loop.
On the other hand, the potential landscape of IF games is unlimited, bounded only by the author's imagination!
Still, at the end of the day, given an hour to play games after work, I'm going to reach for something new and shiny because some of the newer games are truly astonishing in scope, story, and technical accomplishment.
I'm sure there are exceptions but there seems to be a general "dumbing down" (or at least arcade-ification) of games if you look at things like the strategy or simulation genres.
>I would give these games such a bad rating, not for "lack of graphics" or anything technological, but for lack of smooth gameplay.
Like anything else, some are better than others. In general, though, it's fair to say that the parser wasn't very smart (by modern standards), so solving puzzles could sometimes seem like an exercise to coming up with a specific incantation. And, in the absence of walkthroughs etc., that could be really frustrating. I gave up on a number of their games because I just lost interest in digging up how to get past some puzzle.
That is generally quite bad assumption to make. Safer one would be to assume that everything is under copyright unless indubiously demonstrated otherwise.
Classic Infocom games are probably too hard, but you should give modern Interactive Fiction another chance. Because anyone can write IF games, and this means Sturgeon's Law applies, you should look for the masters first: Andrew Plotkin, Adam Cadre, Emily Short, and I'm sure I'm missing many more.
Modern IF can be emotional, suspenseful, hilarious, surprising, experimental. There is a downplaying of "gamey" elements, and more focus is there in the storytelling or using the textual platform in surprising ways.
For example, one game -- Fail Safe by Jon Ingold -- has the player trying to communicate with the single surviving crew member of a spaceship in distress. Communication is limited, and the game's parser is the crew member. Anything the crew member doesn't understand is turned into a comms error ("zzhghfz... sorry, can you repeat that?"). It feels natural because it means you're not simply typing verbs; instead, you are "giving commands" to a person! Anyway, play the game: it's innovative like only modern IF can be.
Have you checked out Em Short's work? A lot of her pieces are more fiction-heavy than "gamey", but if you're looking for a more Infocom-esque experience then Counterfeit Monkey is an absolutely stunning example.
Going down another thread, have you been keeping abreast of non-parser IF? There are a lot of incredibly polished, beautiful pieces of choice-based IF for mobile platforms (check out 80 Days if you haven't), as well as a whole lot of wonderful, incredibly deep and personal works happening in Twine.
If you wait a few more years for the industry to develop its narrative legs, I think you'll really enjoy playing Escape Room Games (ERGs). Very few have any semblance of story at this point, but it's absolutely a topic of discussion amongst ERG designers. For my own part, I'm busy building a platform/operating system for ERGs that is essentially a version of Z-machine that interacts with hardware and handles multiple players (readers) simultaneously. All going well, in the future it will power a lot of ERGs by better storytellers than myself.
>> Their puzzles are almost unsolvable in some cases, or can only be solved by combining every permutation of every verb with every noun in every place to get the right answer.
That's an interesting reaction. I spent my teenage years playing Infocom games and agree that some of the puzzles were quite difficult. But they always seemed logical and discoverable - the opposite of random. Several friends played as well, and I remember many a study hall spent noodling through solutions to various puzzles. Some took weeks, and the sense of pride we found when cracking something particularly vexing was immense.
I think there is a parallel in modern gaming: difficult raid bosses in MMORPGs. Solving the Babelfish problem in HHGTG = defeating Ragnaros for the first time in vanilla World of Warcraft.
Try going back and playing these games. I find they are quite difficult to wrap your head around.
I played a large number of these games as a youth, including the notoriously hard A Ming Forever Voyaging. And I find I have a hard time enjoying them as an adult. Maybe I need to give it another go.
Maybe it's the pace of the puzzles. I know I spent a long time solving individual puzzles in Spell Breaker and it took combined effort with another friend to make it through.
Surprised that you found AMFV to be notoriously hard. As I recall, it was less puzzle-oriented than most of Infocom's games. It may be my personal favorite precisely because it wasn't so much about working your way through difficult puzzles.
HHGTG is notoriously difficult. If you've never played a text adventure before you're more likely to find it frustrating than fun.
Instead, I recommend playing something more modern. There's a community of people making these games who hold an annual competition, and the winner is usually very good:
http://ifwiki.org/index.php/The_Annual_IF_Competition
If you want to start with an Infocom game, I found "Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It" to be a fun little amuse-bouche. It's a wordplay game instead of a lengthy story full of old-style adventure logic, so you really can't get "stuck", and is also an interesting example of a game that fundamentally could never be anything but a text adventure.
(This may depend on your wordplay ability. A quick check on Wikipedia says fan consensus on the difficulty ranges from "Standard" to "Expert". Oh well. It's 2015. You're only about 30 seconds away from a walkthrough. Given the nature of the game, it won't ruin anything if you have to consult a walkthrough once or twice. In the meantime, it's the only Infocom I've ever beaten without a walkthrough at all. My brain seems to really, really not jive with text-adventure game logic.)
Granted, it's very different than a text "adventure", but I think if you've never played a pure text-based game, it's a very gentle and genuinely entertaining experience.
Nord and Bert is all wordplay, though. You're never going to know to "call her onto the carpet" and "read her the riot act" unless you already know the idioms.
Other games use it to a lesser extent. I recall a text game called T-zero where you earned points both for "leave no stone unturned" and "leave no tern unstoned".
I've been looking for a copy of that game for a while now. Is there an online version or a z(5,8) version I can run with frotz or something? Is it even in the public domain?
Crap, I thought GOG.com had the Infocom collection digitally available, but I seem to be mistaken, they just have a couple of things. Nobody seems to. I bought it a long time ago, when digitally downloading things was a novelty.
Well, if the copyright gods will forgive me, it should be in this collection, which I can find no particularly legal way to purchase in a way that gives money to any rightsholders: http://www.myabandonware.com/game/the-lost-treasures-of-info... I don't know, but it is likely the core z5 files can be found in there with a bit of hunting.
Awesome. Could some rich entrepreneur please take this to the next level and fund a few million to completely scan in high quality every magazine in Steve Meretzy's collection?
The Get Lamp documentary looks awesome. It's CC licensed so you can watch it for free, but they also have some physical DVD copies left with all the extras.
It is awesome. As is his BBS documentary. Speaking of monetizing physical media, my wife went to some effort and expense to get me a personally signed copy of the BBS documentary for Fathers Day a long time ago, that was really cool.
As a disclaimer, I'm a financial backer of the upcoming 6502 documentary, looking forward to it.
It's more a series of interviews than a true documentary but, that quibble aside, it's a great window into a world that really hasn't been well documented otherwise because it happened outside of the main thread of the Internet's evolution. I see one (self-published) book on Amazon about BBSs but there really isn't much out there.
Come on Jason. With a bigger budget you would probably have done things a bit differently. But as I said, it's a well done (and appreciated) look into a neglected area of computing history. And frankly the interviews are probably the most important thing. I'm not being critical.
About 57391 neurons which have not fired in this particular way since 1989 or so have just fired.
Wow. I remember rushing to the store to buy Infocom games. Which were incredibly expensive on a student budget, by the way. Kids these days are so spoiled by how cheap games are.
Infocom games were the last computer games I played seriously. (I really don't have the eye-hand coordination for anything more recent. Or the competitive urge.)
I have the strangest feeling of pressure in my chest right now.
There's some interesting creative subtext in Steve Meretzky's collection of documents from Sorcerer.
("Agency" refers to Giardini/Russell Inc., the advertising agency Infocom used to create collateral and 'feelies' for the game packages.)
Client/Agency met to discuss Agency's recommendation
that Enchanter II should be called Spellbreaker (rahter
than Sorcerer), and that Enchanter III should not be
called Spellcrafter. After discussion, Client/Agency
agreed to proceed with Client's preferred name for
Enchanter II, Sorcerer. Name for Enchanter III will be
discussed at a later date.
I can't wrap my head around the idea that the ad agency is in charge of coming up with the game's title. That certainly isn't how things would have been done at any other game company I'm familiar with. I've always had a ton of respect for the quality and literacy of Infocom's collateral, so it was fascinating to learn how much of that was outsourced to a generic agency that would have sandwiched their work between full-page ads for furniture sales and TV commercials for used car dealers.
Overall, these documents offer a really interesting peek inside the sausage factory. Thanks to Steve M. for making them available and to Jason for doing the legwork!
I suspect it's giving G/R somewhat short shrift to describe their contributions so dismissively -- those "feelies" were part and parcel of Infocom's charm and reputation. The agency was, AFAICT, a huge part of Infocom's marketing, and titles are absolutely within a marketing department's purvey. (And I suspect they were not working on anything resembling full-page ads for furniture sales and TV commercial for used car dealers; that's not the sort of thing that ad agencies at that level do!)
Much heavy lifting in design, layout, and verbiage for Infocom was done by a firm called Giardini/Russell, Inc. out of Watertown, Massachusetts. In fact, let’s just make it clear – a lot of what people think of as “Infocom” is in fact Giardini/Russell. For example: The Zork logo, the names Infidel and Deadline, and, of course, the verbiage of the advertisements I previously discussed. They wrote manual copy (some of which was then re-written by the implementors) and a pile of other stuff. The story of Infocom’s success, for all its considerable talents, is incomplete unless you realize this firm that contributed so much.
I knew putting these up would show some rough feelings. I've done my best to keep that to a minimum - I hope that'll be the case. But be clear - G/R is EASILY one of the most important contributors to Infocom's success.
I'm not sure what is so unusual about an advertising agency having input into a product name. In the B2B tech industry, you'd typically engage with a separate firm for product naming, but in consumer sales branding and product names/titles are part of the whole advertising/promotion package. I don't read that so much as the agency being in charge of naming as arguing that name X would be more effective.
For better or sometimes worse, good agencies are about more than just coming up with ads.
Game development in the 1980s was not exactly something you'd recognize as the "B2B tech industry." It was a business populated exclusively by control freaks (and yes, I'm speaking from experience.)
Without getting too specific, let's just say that the titles of the games we were working on would not have been subject to delegation outside the creator's office, much less outside the company.
I didn't phrase things clearly. I was saying in consumer products (unlike B2B--where you may bring in other consultants to help with product naming) advertising agencies may have input on product naming and so forth. But that seems to be counter to your experience in any case.
Awesome. I love these games and played a lot of them as a kid. Managed to solve a few too.
In the early 00's, I ended up with one of those little HP Palmtops running Windows CE. Could not figure out what to do with it, until I found it would run Frotz.
So I packaged up a few of the good ones, not too tough, and put in in the car for the kids. They actually played 'em. One would run the palmtop, reading it, and everyone would suggest options. They got through a few long trips doing that. Today, a phone would work much better than that old Palmtop did.
Somebody should make the voice input for these dead simple.
Archive.org keeps at least two copies, Jason Scott probably kept one somewhere, but nothing official. You should grab it too - and join #internetarchive.bak on efnet if you want to help backup more collections :)
There was some sentimental fun to be had, but these games take a tremendous amount of time to play and are difficult in a way that modern games are not. Their puzzles are almost unsolvable in some cases, or can only be solved by combining every permutation of every verb with every noun in every place to get the right answer.
Relative to what's available in the modern gaming realm as well as conventional fiction, I've also been pretty underwhelmed by what the Interactive Fiction community is putting out, especially the games that are purely web-based. There are some authors, Andrew Plotkin comes to mind, that have picked up the Infocom torch, but the feeling that you are using 0.1% of what your computer can do at about 5% of the rate your mind can work is difficult to shake for me in our modern era.