
Loom: How Brian Moriarty Proved That Less Is Sometimes More - doppp
http://www.filfre.net/2017/02/loom-or-how-brian-moriarty-proved-that-less-is-sometimes-more/
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EliRivers
Apropos of nothing much, and as much so that it's recorded somewhere as to
tell people, at the recent Thimbleweed Park bash in London, I asked Ron
Gilbert about the "Ask me About Loom" badge ("button" in US vernacular) a
pirate wears in "The Secret Of Monkey Island" and the accompanying glowing
praise said pirate delivers. Ron Gilbert assured me that this was a poke (in
good humour, I'm sure) at Brian Moriarty, who was taking himself very
seriously at the time.

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Baeocystin
It is an interesting article, but I think the rose tint of nostalgia is a bit
too strong.

Loom was an attempt to push gaming forward and explore new territory, and for
that it deserves commendation. But it failed in the primary goal of any
storyteller, which is to make the listener/reader/participant _care_ about
what happens in the world. It was a dreary and dull experience.

From the wikipedia page, a quote from the creator of Loom:

"Contrary to popular belief, the Loom sequels were not abandoned because Loom
didn't sell well. Loom has sold more than half a million copies in various
formats since it was published in 1990. The reason the sequels weren't made is
because I decided I wanted to work on other things, and nobody else wanted to
do them, either."

The final sentence, I think, is most telling.

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cousin_it
Loom was the single most formative game for me as a child. Though I readily
agree that it didn't make me care much about the game world. To me that
doesn't even seem like an important goal of art. A more interesting goal is
offering the viewer a new way of relating to the real world, and Loom somehow
succeeded at that for me, much more than Sleeping Beauty that it cites as an
influence. There are many other fun perspectives that I've absorbed through
art, but Loom was among the first.

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socrates666
I get you. Very similar experiences.

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speeder
I was surprised when the article mentioned Loom in the 80s, I remember playing
it and it feeling more recent.

Then the article explains the sad story of how the game failed to become a
massive hit, and its design lessons went on ignored for years...

I personally think Loom has one of the finest adventure game interfaces I have
ever used. I also loved its tone, for some reason I am just not that
interested in comedy.

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digi_owl
The wikipedia article claims it was released in 1990.

The article is more about the man behind the game, Brian Moriarty, than the
game itself, as he moved from Infocom (of Zork fame) to then Lucasfilm Games
(later Lucasarts).

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mxstbr
If you liked this and haven't read it yet definitely check out Masters of
Doom![0]

It's about the two John's (Carmack and Romero) and how they created Doom,
Quake et al. and why id Software broke up eventually. Very fascinating, highly
recommended book!

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cult...](https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155)

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joeguilmette
I met Brian Moriarty in 2000, shortly after he bailed from HearMe. He played a
role in The Crucible, which my father directed at Pacifica Spindrift Players.

He took on the role of Reverend Parris shortly before the play opened, taking
over for a junior actor in over his head. I was 15 at the time and was taken
with the ease in which Brian slipped in to the role.

He brought the production together and was a stabilizing force. My father
recently passed away, so seeing Brian's name here brought on a rush of
memories from the play.

I looked around and found the playbill from the show:
[http://www.pacificaspindriftplayers.org/shows/2000/the-
cruci...](http://www.pacificaspindriftplayers.org/shows/2000/the-crucible-2/)

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sosuke
Loom was amazing, one of the first games I remember finishing and the ending
was very intense. I still have it on 5.25" in the original box.

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Al-Khwarizmi
I have it in 5.25" double-density disks (360 KB/disk) and I remember it being
awful to play, because it would very often ask for protracted sequences of
disks with repetitions (e.g. when going from one screen to another it could
ask for disks 2,3,2,3,6,4,1,2,3,1,2,3, or things like that). I had other games
that had the same number or even more disks, but they asked less often, for
much shorter sequences, and always or almost always without repetitions.
Probably the content in those was distributed taking that into account, while
in Loom the 5'25" DD version was just an afterthought and they just
distributed the content into the diskettes arbitrarily.

This was so frustrating, and felt so gratuitous (because games with way more
disks behaved much better) that I didn't get very far in the game and I have
always had a negative view of it since then (probably the fact that I have
always been a fan of text interfaces and of deaths in adventure games didn't
help either, but the disk issue was really a deal-breaker).

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twiecki
Brian Moriarty gave a great talk in 2015 about his story of Loom with many
interesting behind-the-scenes infos:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1aVDael-
KM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1aVDael-KM) Towards the end he also says
he'd be excited to do a Loom sequel with the right studio.

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digi_owl
Heh, it seems i will not be short any reading material any time soon (been
working my way through the epubs of this earlier articles as bedtime reading).
His earlier stuff has given me insight into a world i only glimpsed the tail
end off as a young kid visiting relatives.

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mseepgood
Brian Moriarty is now Professor Moriarty at the Worcester Polytechnic
Institute.

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forgottenacc57
Brian Moriarty wrote some of my favorite adventure games of all time.

He's a creative genius.

