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Two for Infocom∗ Boris Schneider The requests we receive prove it: the recently published Infocom ad- ventures Stationfall and The Lurking Horror are great favourites among our readers. The respective authors let us in on some of their secrets. We met Steve Meretzky (Station- almost exactly five years ago. fall) and Dave Lebling (The Lurking Dave: Horror) at the fringes of a computer I can say that I started at the be- exhibition somewhere in the United ginning; I was there when Infocom was States, where they very kindly answer- born. The founders of Infocom were ed some of our questions. all professors or students at MIT. We Power Play: belonged to a group of people who Steve, Dave, please tell us how you played the first real text adventure, the joined Infocom. famous Colossal Cave Adventure. At Steve: first we thought \This is really great," When Infocom was founded I was and then \but we can do it better." a student at MIT. I had nothing to do At that time Zork was started as with computers, but I had met some a project on a mainframe. It was a Infocom employees at student parties. diversion for us, just for fun. Then I graduated with a degree in civil one day someone had this crazy idea: engineering, and then had a number of \If we publish this for home comput- jobs in that field. I found them ter- ers, someone might actually buy it." ribly boring. After a few years I was At this time (around 1980) only ten lucky enough to be hired at Infocom percent of all home computers in the as a tester. I did that for a year, which United States had a floppy disk drive. I spent on finding bugs and suggesting We have never been able to do any- improvements for Zork II and III, Star- thing with cassette tape. On the other cross, Suspended, and Deadline. One hand, ten percent were already quite a day Marc Blank, the chief developer large number of systems. So we started at the time, came to me and asked to publish the Zork trilogy. The orig- \Would you like to write a game of inal mainframe Zork was cut in three your own?" I just said \Great!" and parts and edited. After that, we simply started work on Planetfall. That is now never stopped writing new stories. ∗Originally published as \Zwei f¨urInfocom" in PowerPlay Ausgabe 1 (pp. 65-66), a De- cember 1987 special issue of Happy Computer magazine. Translated from German into English in 2015 by De Blauwe Schicht. 1 Power Play: the Atari ST, there is an appropriate So one might say that you are one Muddle/ZIL interpreter. When a pro- of the senior employees at Infocom? gram runs on our mainframe, it can Dave: be immediately transferred to a target At first I only worked at Infocom computer. in my free time; my day job was at Power Play: MIT. Only two years ago I left MIT and There is a rumor that many of your joined Infocom full-time. Many peo- authors can write in ZIL in their sleep, ple find it extraordinary that I worked but actually don't know BASIC1. on eight games without actually being Dave: employed by Infocom. I have never touched BASIC! I sup- Power Play: pose I should be able to read and un- Do you have many freelancers, or derstand a BASIC program, and rea- are your authors part of the regular sonably quickly learn the fundamentals staff? and write a ten-line program. But at Dave: the moment I don't know the language Essentially all are regular staff. at all; I am an old Muddle fan. Other There are only a few people outside the programming languages that I know company who work for us, like for ex- are Pascal and LISP, for example. ample Douglas Adams, who worked on Steve: Hitchhiker's Guide and Bureaucracy. I hate computers. I really don't Power Play: know how they work. I haven't the What programming language do faintest idea. The only thing that I can you use to write your adventures? do is write adventure games. I also dis- like the term \programming". I can't Dave: do that. I write stories in the ZIL lan- The language our authors use to guage. Many folks I talk to are dumb- write the games is called ZIL; that founded when I tell them that I have is short for Zork Implementation Lan- never owned a computer. guage. ZIL in turn is written in Mud- dle. Muddle is a kind of pet name; it's Dave: actually called MDL. We wrote Muddle I don't own a computer either. at MIT as a language for artificial intel- There are enough of them at Infocom. ligence. One could say that Muddle is Steve: a cousin of LISP. When we implement You have a PC at home, don't you? new functions (such as the oops func- Dave: tion), we change ZIL's instruction set; Yes, but it's not mine. It belongs this implies programming in Muddle. to the company. However, the stories in the adventures Many of our authors know a lit- themselves are entirely programmed in tle of a few programming languages. ZIL. For every computer, whether it be The only expert among our authors is the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, or Brian Moriarty (Wishbringer, Trinity), 1A popular beginner's programming language that came with most home computers in this period { the translator. 2 who arrived at Infocom in an unusual have written some of the World's fun- way. Steve started as a tester, Amy niest adventures. They range from pro- Briggs (who has just finished writing found satire to absurdity. Are you as Plundered Hearts) started as a tester, humorous in your private life? Jeff O'Neill (has just completed Nord Steve: and Bert...) started as a tester, Dave I am not funny at all. I'm a rather (Hollywood Hijinx) started as a tester. serious type of person. I have never re- Brian started as a system programmer. ally made anyone laugh; I can't force He wrote ZIL interpreters for a number myself to be funny. It's different when of home computers and worked on the I write; then I can work for hours refin- Infocom Plus system. He knows com- ing a joke, and I don't have to read it puters and many programming lan- out when I'm done. guages inside out, but he is the excep- Power Play: tion that proves the rule. You certainly appear to be a very funny author. One thinks of the ar- ticles that you wrote for The Sta- tus Line (Infocom's in-house magazine that is sent to members free of charge). Presumably you have also contributed some texts in the Hollywood Hijinx package. At least, they are signed with your name. Dave Lebling Power Play: On the whole your adventure sys- tem has stayed the same since the days of Zork, not counting the Infocom plus games. Are you planning any changes in this area? Dave: Steve Meretzky At the moment Brian is working on a Zork sequel named Beyond Zork, Steve: which will be our first game with a new Oh, that's Dave \Hollywood" An- look. It will feature role-play elements derson's joke when he was preparing and windows. Beyond Zork should be stuff for the game. He knew that Brian ready in November. Moriarty { who has also served as \au- Power Play: thor" for the packaging { and I are A very different subject. Steve, you great movie fans. Brian is very fond of 3 B-movies and has seen the most aw- and asked whether they had made a ful films ever made several times. If decision. One of them nodded and there would be a new Godzilla movie opened a drawer. This drawer was in the cinema right now, it would be filled to the brim with beetles, in- as if Christmas had come early. I did sects, snakes, all kinds of vermin. She write the articles in The Status Line then dug nonchalantly in this mass of though. miniature monsters and says \No, it's Power Play: not here.". She then opened another What can you tell us about the drawer, also full of this stuff, and then famed packagings? Is that also done more digging. Finally she held up a by the authors, or is that the work of bug and tersily said \This is it." a separate department? Power Play: Steve: Brian is a fan of B-movies, Dave in- Yes, we have a dedicated depart- sists on horror and fantasy, what does ment that is involved with the pack- Steve Meretzky like? aging. The ideas of the authors are Steve: (with a straight face) welcome, however. Actually, it is de- What do I really like? Carrot cake. cided in a meeting what is going to be Power Play: in a game box. Take the blueprints I must have misheard. Carrot found in the Stationfall box, for exam- cake? ple. I absolutely wanted those in there. Dave: The forms are also important { they are He has you now, Boris. needed to solve the game. The Stellar Patrol patch on the other hand was a Steve: group idea. That wasn't a joke. My wife makes Dave: a great carrot cake. But to answer your I just remember a funny story that question, I'm a great science-fiction I really have to tell you.
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