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Home , Dave Lebling, Infocom, Marc Blank, Stationfall, Steve Meretzky, The Lurking Horror

Two for ∗

Boris Schneider

The requests we receive prove it: the recently published Infocom ad- ventures and are great favourites among our readers. The respective authors let us in on some of their secrets.

We met (Station- almost exactly five years ago. fall) and (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 . 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 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 . On the other cross, Suspended, and Deadline. One hand, ten percent were already quite a day , 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 . 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 . 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 , 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 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 , or (, 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. When we were fan. I also enjoy going to the cinema. finishing the Lurking Horror packag- Unlike Steve, I like good movies! And ing, we wanted to put a rubber bug I like baseball. in the box. We wanted to set the Power Play: mood by giving the player a fright After Stationfall there will be a when he opens the box, and our col- long vacation, right? leagues had to select the nastiest bug Steve: from a large range of possibilities. All Yes, I have just returned from a Hell broke loose for two weeks: on long vacation and I have started work- monitors, in coffee cups, under the ing on my next adventure. Well, actu- phones, on lamp shades; those little ally I’m still finding out what the next creatures were stuck everywhere. A game will be about. few self-proclaimed statisticians kept Power Play: notes about who was how much fright- How does that work at Infocom? ened by what specimen. Can everyone just program their own After two weeks the episode was adventures the way he likes, or are over. I went to the design department there specific rules?

4 Dave: can go to sleep without being afraid. We don’t impose restrictions on That wouldn’t be a good horror story. our programmers. No one interferes Power Play: with anyone else, although we often The Lurking Horror cries out for ask one another for advice. Everyone a sequel because of the open ending. has a list of things that he or she would Will there be one? like to do some time. When someone Dave: starts a new project, he goes through Yes, there are often sequels to sto- his list and discusses it with his col- ries. For example, Stationfall is a se- leagues. quel to Planetfall. Zork II is a sequel Steve: to . You never know if there is Of course one has to make sure going to be a sequel. that a theme is not too complicated or Power Play: strange to come across with the public. Speaking of the subject, Steve, will Apart from the fun at work we should there be a sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide also sell a few games to make a living. soon? I think that many fans are wait- And we have to make sure that not all ing for it. authors are working on a murder mys- Steve: (grinning broadly) tery, in order to have a diverse range of Yes, there are often sequels to sto- games. Similarly, we have to produce ries. Stationfall is a sequel to Plan- games with different difficulty ratings etfall. Zork III is a sequel to Zork II. and not only make very hard or very You never know if there is going to be easy games. a sequel. Power Play: Steve: (laughs) Dave, your new game doesn’t re- Let’s put it like this: no-one would ally have a plot. The player wan- be surprised when there would be a ders through the rooms of the uni- sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide.  versity and runs into gruesome things. We don’t find out anything about the background. Dave: Yes, that was intentional. I have deliberately avoided a story because I wanted to write a game like Zork; sim- ply explore, find objects, without a par- ticular purpose. Also, I find horror stories that have a logical solution at the end rather bor- ing. It’s only really scary when there is no real end. That way, the evil can strike again at any time. When there’s a real end, you close the book and you

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