
Down From the Top of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc (2000) [pdf] - whost49
http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/infocom-paper.pdf
======
digikata
People are still creating new interactive fiction on range of old to modern
engines. See "The Interactive Fiction Competition"
[http://www.ifcomp.org/](http://www.ifcomp.org/) and look at past winners for
a taste.

~~~
fenomas
Since you mention that, let me give a shout out to Violet, my vote for best
short IF game of all time. Playable here:

[http://pr-if.org/play/violet/](http://pr-if.org/play/violet/)

Takes maybe an hour or two to complete, `hint` if you get stuck.

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numlocked
You can play a lot of the old Infocom text adventures here:

[http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/](http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/infocom/)

I highly recommend Planetfall.

(warning: Requires a somewhat-sketchy-seeming-but-harmless-i-think Java
applet. Chrome gives you a hard time about it, but if you create an exception
for the site in the java control panel (on OS X: settings->Java->security),
then you can play it in Safari)

~~~
ghaff
It's also not that hard to get your hands on the Z-Code files of Infocom games
and run them in a Z-Code interpreter. (Note, however, that they are still
under copyright. Also, for some games, you'll also need a copy of the original
docs or other material from the packaging as Infocom sometimes used info in
the docs, decoder wheels, etc. as a low-grade anti-piracy technique.)

Agree that Planetfall is one of the better ones. Steve Meretzky also wrote A
Mind Forever Voyaging which I really enjoyed although it's somewhat atypical
of Infocom games in a few ways.

~~~
david-given
...and if you're interested in doing more than playing games, there's assorted
abusive things you can do with the Z-Machine.

Here's an ANS Forth:
[https://code.google.com/p/zmforth/](https://code.google.com/p/zmforth/)

Here's Andrew Plotkin's infamous Lisp tutorial (complete with Lisp
implementation for the Z-machine):
[http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zweb/lists/](http://www.eblong.com/zarf/zweb/lists/)

I ported a C compiler to it, poorly, and made it play chess:
[http://cowlark.com/vbcc-z-compiler/](http://cowlark.com/vbcc-z-compiler/)

And, of course, you can design processors to run it on real hardware:
[https://github.com/charcole/Z3](https://github.com/charcole/Z3)

~~~
sehugg
And Graham Nelson's Inform 7 compiles to two different editions of the
Z-machine: [http://inform7.com/](http://inform7.com/)

------
panzagl
I think a lot of early game companies suffered from not really believing in
the market for games, that they were a placeholder until they could make
something more 'serious'. Even non-computer game companies like SPI and Avalon
Hill spent a lot of effort chasing corporate and military uses when in
retrospect they underserved their fans and customers.

~~~
nerfhammer
FTA, agreement with this among other reasons:

> The company made the decision to create business software long before the
> games business took off. From the start, Infocom’s founders had intended to
> do more than just computer games; they wanted to be the leading software
> developers for personal computers. They tossed around various ideas for
> their first product, which included medical, database, office, and
> educational software. However, Zork seemed like the most viable option at
> the time because a working prototype already existed, and Berez and Blank
> were willing to work for IOUs to make it run on personal computers.

> The decision to move beyond games was also driven by the higher profit
> margins in business software. The customers of business software were
> typically willing to spend more money than mass consumers. Infocom could
> therefore charge significantly more for its products. Whereas a copy of
> Lotus 1-2-3 listed for $495, each of Infocom’s games sold for $30 to $50.
> The profitability of business software had even directly affected Infocom:
> when Personal Software pulled out of the games publishing business to focus
> on VisiCalc and sold back the rights of Zork, it told Infocom, “…games have
> a limited market (6000 units average) and at a limited price (under $100),
> while business software sells regularly and more profitably.”

> Infocom’s employees strongly believed that the same talent and skills that
> had made them successful in the games business could be applied to making
> successful business software. Many employees had experience at LCS tackling
> and solving tough problems. They had made Zork to show that they could make
> a better parser and improve various aspects of Adventure. In a memo dating
> back to spring of 1978, Blank talks about office automation systems and
> remote data entry. Showing confidence in the company’s versatility, he
> wrote, “We have accumulated a great deal of expertise in these areas, having
> already implemented systems in each of these areas,and probably have a good
> idea of how to implement anything we choose along these lines.”

> Many of the founders also believed that Infocom needed to diversify its
> product line to continue to grow. In particular, Vezza believed that while
> the games made money, they would“ not last forever.” Vezza believed that
> consumers had fickle tastes. At any point, people might cease to enjoy
> Infocom’s games, abandoning them in favor of something else. The business
> products market, however, differed in that respect. Customers of business
> software tended to invest heavily into applications and stick with them for
> a relatively long period of time.

> Additionally, many Infocom employees believed that some of Infocom’s
> founders, and particularly Vezza, felt embarrassed to be part of a company
> that made computer games. Zork was just a way to raise enough money to get
> started. No one had intended it to become the centerpiece of Infocom’s
> business, nor did anyone expect it to take off and spawn so many titles. The
> embarrassment over the games made some employees eager to forge ahead with
> Infocom’s original goals.

------
jostylr
If you find this interesting, I recommend the digital antiquarian:
[http://www.filfre.net/](http://www.filfre.net/)

I look forward to his post each week. They are detailed, conversational,
historical, and insightful. His series on Trinity was simply fantastic, a
beautiful blend of game and actual history.

He covers more than just infocom games of the era, but one can tell he has a
great deal of fondness for their games. He has recently begun detailing the
end of infocom.

------
cmrdporcupine
[http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/csdemo/index.h...](http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/csdemo/index.html)
has screenshots and a downloadable copy of the 'infamous' Cornerstone database
that Infocom built.

It looks quality for the era it was built in.

~~~
sehugg
I picked up Cornerstone at a going-out-of-business computer store in 2000 or
so. They had probably had it on the shelf for 15 years.

------
at-fates-hands
Some things that jumped out at me while reading this article:

 _Stata offered to secure a $2 million three-year subordinated loan from the
Bank of Boston in exchange for options to buy $2 million in stock and a
position on the Board.52_

In 1983 2 million was a shit ton of money. By comparison, in 2015, it would be
around 5 million.

 _Infocom hired three product managers, who each had assistants and
secretaries under them_

A marketing manager with assistants and a secretary? Oh how things have
changed. If you were this guy in 1983, you had effectively made it. Today, if
you're a marketing manager, you'd be lucky if you weren't still stuck in a
cube.

~~~
myth_buster

      In 1983 2 million was a shit ton of money. 
      By comparison, in 2015, it would be around 5 million
    

I expected a difference of an order of magnitude or more...

~~~
Agustus
Current data is only available till 2014. In 2014, the relative worth of
$2,000,000.00 from 1983 is:

    
    
      $4,750,000.00  using the  Consumer Price Index  
      $4,060,000.00  using the  GDP deflator  
      $4,660,000.00  using the  unskilled wage  
      $5,240,000.00  using the  Production Worker Compensation  
      $7,000,000.00  using the  nominal GDP per capita  
      $9,540,000.00  using the  relative share of GDP  
    

It ranges from $4 to 9.5 million. [1]

1\.
[http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_sour...](http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_source=1983&amount=2000000&year_result=2015)

------
jsingleton
I remember playing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on an original Palm
Pilot. What a great game.

It turned 31 yesterday. You can play a version released last year here (no
Flash, no Java):
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-
hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition)

------
markbnj
I still have a copy of Zork I for PC in the original packaging, 5.25" floppy.
I should have grabbed the data back when I still had a working drive.

------
tlholaday
Cornerstone was a great tool, sigh.

~~~
mgalka
>"Cornerstone is the best program I have ever used"

Sounds like everything they built was really good. Read the piece, but still
hard to piece together why they failed.

~~~
ghaff
Essentially Cornerstone. They made large investments in developing, marketing,
and selling it and it basically flopped although it had a variety of
innovative features from a technology perspective.

Arguably they were also slow to branch beyond pure text adventure games but
the investments in business software were the bigger near-term problem.

~~~
at-fates-hands
Sounds like Cornerstone was ahead of its time.

~~~
ghaff
More like it was going up against very entrenched PC competition--especially
dBase which its usability advantages weren't sufficient to overcome.

------
ChicagoDave
There's an iOS with all of the games.

