~11 minute readThe GameSIG Adventure Games Conferences
As you sit in front of your trusty computer, trudging through twisty little passages all alike, or fighting it out with a band of Orcs, have you ever thought "Gee, I wish I could talk to the person who wrote this game"? Getting in touch with most software authors could be thought of as an adventure in itself. You could pick up the phone, but it's likely you wouldn't get through to the person you want. A letter might be better, but game designers usually have little time to answer fan mail. Yet, for some game players, talking to the people who write games is almost as easy as activating a modem.
CompuServe's Games Special Interest Group (GameSIG) is the place where, among other activities, adventure players from all across the country get together to swap hints, find out the latest information on new games, and just chat about their favorite adventures. It's also the place where members have an opportunity that comes only rarely to most game players: the chance to talk to some of the biggest game designers in the business.
LORD BRITISH
The evening of June 14th, 1984, there was an air of excited anticipation on the SIG. That night, the guest speaker was Lord British, author the marvelous "Ultima" series. As you might suspect, the conference area was jammed with eager people, hoping for the chance to talk to him. They were not disappointed.
In the beginning, Lord British had the floor to himself. To a hushed audience, he gave some details about his current project, Ultima IV. This one, he said, was going to be bigger than any Ultima before it. Most likely, it would cover at least both sides of two diskettes, and would be far more complex than any game he had ever written.
Graphics would be greatly improved, and the animation far superior to that of Ultima III. The maps would have much more detail in them, and monsters in combat would be able to move individually now, where before they all moved in synch with each other. But this Ultima would not be one of mere hack and slash; the very concept of the game had changed. In previous Ultimas, there had been an evil character to defeat. Now, however, the goal would be different: personal development of the player-character. To quote Lord British: "The object will be to develop one of your characters into an Avatar. This will take your players on a journey of eight parts, where each part is as complicated as any previous Ultima". Wow! Eight games in one!
Having dropped this little bombshell, Lord British went on to tell how transacting with people and merchants in towns would be much improved. Where before, most of the "stock characters" said little beyond a mere grunt, now they could carry on a full, if brief, conversation. And it was here that Lord British dropped his second bombshell.
There would be a lot of towns, and each of them would need a lot of these "nonplayer characters". It would be a great help, said Lord British, if the SIG members could give him a hand with this chore. To that end, he had written up a little sheet (with instructions) for everyone to fill out and send to him. By completing this sheet, a person would actually create a "non-player character" for Ultima IV! Naturally, this was a sensation! How often does one get to take part in the creation of a major computer game? While the members buzzed over this little item, Lord British took a break (his fingers were starting to come loose), and a list of questioners was made (it was a looong list!).
Throughout the rest of the evening, Lord British fielded quite a few queries from inquisitive members. Most of the questions, as you might expect, were about Ultima IV. The SIG members were hungry for details, and they wanted to know it all!
Lord B., however, kept a few things up his sleeve. "I had best not tell directly of the plot", he remarked, "for fear of telling too much!". He also mentioned that parts of the game changed day by day as he worked on it. New ideas, new wrinkles, all sorts of neat stuff occurred to him as he worked Ultima IV. So, even if he told them anything now, it might not be that way by the time the game was finished.
Still, there were things he could talk about. Ultima IV would be available by Christmas, for a variety of machines. The Apple version would come first, to be soon followed by Atari, C-64, IBM and MacIntosh. Music lovers would be in for a treat: many new musical scores were being planned for the game, and a new synthesizer had been purchased to create the background music.
Not all questions were about Ultima IV, of course. For example, one member wanted to know if Ultima (any Ultima) would ever have transferable characters, as Wizardry did. It's hard to "say good-bye" to characters developed over the course of the game; players tend to become rather fond of them.
While such transfers are not in the foreseeable future, there is still hope: "When I have perfected a role-playing system, and use the computer fully, only then will I branch out and make scenarios", replied Lord British.
The questions continued far into the night. Finally, as the clock approached one A.M., the conference was regretfully brought to a close. There were still so many things to say, questions yet to be asked, but it was time for Lord British to leave. However, he promised to return for another conference late in the fall, when the workload on Ultima IV eased a bit.
MICHAEL BERLYN
The conference with Lord British was a rousing success. And there was more to come! One month later, on July 18th, GameSIG members had the opportunity to meet one of Infocom's top game designers, Michael Berlyn, author of Suspended and Infidel.
Once again, the conference area was packed. All across the country, people were glued to their terminals as Mike nonchalantly took the floor and began describing how games were written at Infocom.
"We start with an idea", said Mike. "Lacking that, we go to Zayres, K-MART or Macy's to shop for one....". With an idea in mind, the background of the game is then worked out. Once that's been done, the details of the game are filled in.
As an example, Mike cited Zork I. "The whole thing started with the white house. There was no kitchen table, no bag smelling of hot peppers, and DEFINITELY no garlic! Those things were added after the environment. Once the environment was written, and some objects added, the game was well on its way".
Nor are all games written from beginning to end; sometimes, an adventure starts at the finish: "When I started to write Infidel, there was no tent. As a matter of fact, I started writing the thing at the ending. Yes, I started writing at the last set of rooms".
From there Mike went on to tell of some amusing things that can happen when writing games under Infocom's sophisticated development language. He related an incident from Starcross: "Give something the wrong characteristics, like Dave Lebling did in Starcross, and you get a situation like this: Next time you play, go into the lab and type BEAM, OUT. Well, because Dave had given the beam the quality of being a person, it could be talked to and directed!"
Mistakes of this nature, said Mike, tend to be made when you're working with about a megabyte of code. In spite of intensive debugging, some oddities do slip through. Infocom knows about many of them, but there are still a few zany things that can happen in these games. "Just try anything that comes into your head.... anything that sounds ridiculous. It may work!".
Regardless of these little slips, the development language (called ZIL for Zork Implementation Language", is remarkably smart, and takes a great deal of the programming load off the shoulders of the game writers. "The language doesn't make you do tiring programming tasks like declaring variables, it does that for you. It's also fairly intelligent about the background universe. For example, when I wrote Infidel, I didn't have to 'program' what it meant to look around a room. The game system automatically knew what 'look' meant, and how to do it. It also knew that if there was no light there, that you couldn't see. It really impressed me when I first started working with it".
After explaining some more about the rigorous testing procedures used on Infocom games (and they go through A LOT of testing!), there was a short break -- Mike's fingers were getting sore (a hazard of online Conferences) -- and the list of questioners was made.
One of the first things everyone wanted to know was: What's corning next? Mike was prepared for this one, and mentioned two games that should be coming out during the fall: Cutthroats, a murder mystery, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an adventure based on the book of the same name. A sequel to Sorcerer (title currently undecided) would be corning out eventually.
Other games were also in the works, but Mike politely declined to give details on them, except to say of one: "The only thing we know for sure is that it is breaking every rule ever written about adventuring".
Mike went on to remark that all of Infocom's games are designed and written strictly by in-house people; no outside submissions of any kind are accepted from anyone (much to the disappointment of a few budding programmers present). It does simplify things for Infocom, since all their writers/designers are salaried; there is no provision for royalties in any form.
In answer to another question, Mike said that he is essentially a self-taught programmer; he took a course in BASIC while in college, and learned the rest on his own. After getting caught up in programming, he wrote a game (Oo-Topos), and started a software company of his own. He and his partners in the venture did not quite see eye-to-eye, and so Mike left to join Infocom. When asked if there would ever be graphics in an Infocom game, Mike was quite adamant that there would never be any in an Infocom adventure game. However, he did leave open the possibility that someday, Infocom might do something with graphics, other than adventure games.
Finally, after many more questions, the conference came to an end in the early morning hours. As before, no one really wanted it to stop, but everyone was (a little) satisfied to know that another conference would be held later in the year.
So, Lord British in June, Michael Berlyn in July. Could there, perhaps, be something coming in August? The answer to that was a resounding "Yes!", when the series of special summer conferences closed out on August 22nd with none other than Scott Adams, of Adventure International (yes Virginia, there really IS a Scott Adams!).
SCOTT ADAMS
Another crowd was waiting to hear the man who got micro adventure gaming started. "I'm credited", Scott told them, "with writing the first microcomputer adventure. This is true. Also, my company, Adventure International, is now the oldest software house I know of that has continually published to the retail market".
Scott then talked about his latest venture, the Questprobe series. "Last year, AI and Marvel Comics signed a 10-year license. We will be publishing adventure games built around all of Marvel's characters, including Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc". He went on to say that the first six have been partially sub-licensed to Commodore for distribution, and the first title in the series, "Hulk", should be out some time in September, with Spiderman to follow in November.
All the games in this line will have fullscreen graphics. And, starting with the second Questprobe, they will have something else: a full-sentence parser, which he called SAGAPLUS. While Scott said that his parser would not be as detailed as that of Infocom, most players probably wouldn't notice. He gave an example: "You can do something like the following: Pickup all the gems then climb the walls and go east and look in the crib and get it".
This announcement was met with murmurs of approval, and Scott mentioned he was thinking of re-releasing his first 13 adventures with the new interpreter. When he asked the audience if they thought this was a good idea, they responded with a unanimous "Yes!!".
During the question-and-answer session that followed, Scott revealed that he plans to bring out his first 14 adventures for the IBM, with both full graphics and the new SAGAPLUS parser (this in addition to the Questprobe series, which is also scheduled for the Apple and Atari).
Also on the list of soon-to-come titles is "Buckaroo Banzai", an adventure based on the movie of the same name. This will have graphics, but Scott didn't say if it would also have the new parser.
One member noted that, after Adventure–12 (Golden Voyage), Scott had not written a new game for a long time. He asked if Scott would be writing any new ones, and received this reply: "It was a very busy time running and managing Adventure International! We grew from a $0 per year company to multi-million dollar per year company in only a couple of years. But now I'm back to my love Adventure writing once again!".
One interesting fact that came out during the conference is that Scott doesn't play other adventure games. When someone asked him to comment on Infocom and other games, Scott remarked "The only Infocom I played was original Zork on a mainframe. I loved it! I've not played anyone else's adventures since, as I don't want to be unduly influenced by someone else's games".
Scott also pointed out a distinction between his numbered adventures and those in the "Other Venture" series. Numbers are reserved for the games written by Scott himself; unnumbered games are written by other authors, many of them freelance. As a matter of fact, AI has on file over 80 software authors from around the world who do work for them.
More questions. There are always more questions, but never enough time to answer them all. Despite the pleas of the audience, the hour was late and the conference came to an end. And, like the other guests, Scott promised to return for another conference in the future.
So, the GameSIG members were happy. They'd had the chance to talk with some of the people who had provided them with many hours of enjoyment (and frustration!), and they could look forward to more in the future. In one way, going to the SIG is adventure of it's own: you never know who you might meet!
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