~7 minute readVideo Transcript
Transcript: Dave Lebling and David Crane on The Computer Chronicles 1 Jan 1985
Transcribed by InvisiClues.org editors
This is a transcript of an eight-minute segment from the 21 January 1985 episode of The Computer Chronicles, which aired on U.S. public television from 1983 to 2002. In this segment, hosts Stewart Cheifet and Gary Kildall (founder of Digital Research) talk to Dave Lebling and Activision game designer David Crane about the future of computer games.
GARY KILDALL (Host)
Well, Stewart, before we get into another movie here, Ghostbusters -- it looks really interesting; I'm anxious to see what this looks like -- I'd like to talk to David a little bit about adventure games and what is an adventure game and what makes it so interesting for people. It's a world right now where we're going to graphics a lot, and it seems to be based on words, and then -- what is it?
DAVE LEBLING
Well, the wonderful thing about an adventure game that's based on words, of course, is that your brain probably can do a much better job of creating the pictures than the computer can with today's technology. And, so, our games are all text. You interact with the computer in words and the computer spits words back out at you. And, so there are no pictures at all, except the ones in your head, which are the best.
KILDALL
Now, these are the kinds of games that, well mostly, I guess, kids play with, and they go through different branching schemes and at every point yout get a chance to go north, south, east, and west and so forth. Are these games more sophisticated now? Who's writing them? Are they being written by authors, or what?
LEBLING
They're definitely getting more sophisticated and I wouldn't even say that they're mostly played by children any more. We have people from ages eight on up. As soon as you can understand the words, you can play it. It doesn't necessarily fade with age. A lot of adults enjoy them quite a bit.
And I guess what I'd say about the idea of branching is that it's more than just branching because it would be a very, very fuzzy branching thing if it was a branch. It's got directions; it's got verbs, and the verbs can be very complicated -- you can say things like things with direct objects and indirect objects. You can talk to other characters. You can ask fairly complicated questions like, "Where were you on the night of the murder?" And so it's more than just a simple branching scheme. It's a really, fairly complicated computer program.
STEWART CHEIFET (Host)
Now, David, to confirm what you said about age, by the way, I'm a great Zork fan, and all the other stuff, unfortunately, but I remember playing the old Scott Adams adventure games, you know, "Go north," you know, "Drop box", you know, and it's come such a long way now to the Zork type things and what's come after that. What has allowed that difference? I mean, how did it get so much better?
LEBLING
Well, one reason it got better, I think, is that Infocom at least has an extremely good development system and an extremely good parser built into the program. And the parser can understand very complex sentences. The more complex the sentence you can understand, the more complicated and more exciting the action in the game can be.
CHEIFET
OK. David Crane -- let's turn to the other side now of games here from adventure games with no graphics to your kind of thing which is loaded with graphics. First of all, of course, you are most well-known for Pitfall!, I guess, which was a video game cartridge type thing primarily. Do you think computer games are kind of going to go the way of video games or is this a different animal, that interest in them won't die?
DAVID CRANE
Well, there are going to be several different classifications of games going forward -- such as adventure games, there are strategy games, action games, aracde games. One of the most difficult aspects of the industry right now is categorizing games because everything crosses into other categories.
Ghostbusters, as a computer game, is an action game. But, unlike action games in the past which took place on one screen -- one pretty picture, there are so many different aspects to the game. In this game, you're starting a franchise with bank money. And several different screens where you plot courses through the city streets; and you drive through the city streets; and once you get there you have to catch the ghost; if you miss, they can slime you. It's on and on and on, and --
CHEIFET
Can we see here some of Ghostbusters?
CRANE
OK. Well, to begin with --
(FROM COMPUTER SPEAKERS)
Ghostbusters! A ha ha ha ha ha ha!
CRANE
The game begins with a screen which has no playability. It's a title page and if you watch for a little bit, we'll find a little bouncing ball comes along the screen and you can sing along with the game. If you don't feel like singing along, or if you don't have a crowd in your living room to yell, "Ghostbusters" at the appropriate time, the machine will do that for you.
(FROM COMPUTER SPEAKERS)
Ghostbusters!
CRANE
(Laughing) OK.
CHEIFET
When you hit the space bar?
CRANE
When you hit the space bar.
CHEIFET
(Laughing) Now, I understand it took you as long to write this opening frame as it did the rest of the game. Is that true?
CRANE
No, that's not really true. It's something that I wanted to have in the game and I didn't do it until the last week, actually, of the project because it's more important to me that the game plays correctly and that all the details are in it. But something like this is an added feature that I like to provide to the consumer.
CHEIFET
Now, David, let me ask you -- computer games have been very innovative in the Zork type things and Pitfall! and -- computer games have kind of led the way. Does it concern you that we're now kind of repackaging movies? I mean, has the game business now gotten to the movie business and the pop music business?
CRANE
Not in my opinion. It's been attempted many times before to make games out of movies and any kind of merchandising you can name. In fact, this game began before the movie Ghostbusters as a game of a very similar fashion -- of driving through the city streets, doing something once you get to the building, etc. But it was a game which was looking for a theme at the time. And, when Activision and Columbia Pictures got together, I saw this as an opportunity to lend a theme to a game, but its a game that people have told me they would enjoy playing whether there was a "Ghostbusters" name on it or not. So--
KILDALL
It is kind of attractive because of the connection. Can we go a little bit further with it and see what --
CHEIFET
(Laughing) You want to play this, I can tell!
CRANE
OK.
KILDALL
What are we doing?
CRANE
Well, I have just told it that I don't have an account number. If I had an account number, I could start with the same amount of money I ended the game with last time, which is a nice feature allows you to build upon you account. But once I have bought my Ghostbusters franchise with bank money, I'm going to have to have some equipment to work with. So I buy a car and begin to equip it with my little forklift --
KILDALL
(Laughing) I guess this comes out of your capital, right?
CRANE
OK. Buy a little ghost bait, you know, a ghost vacuum -- these are basically --
KILDALL
Those are useful.
CRANE
-- comic items because the game is a comedy. But you do have to have this equipment to play the game. And, once I have a fully-equipped car, I look at the city map screen. I have Ghostbusters headquarters right below me and the Temple of Zuul in the middle of the screen. But I see a flashing block, which says, "There is a ghost to catch," you know, "We've got a job to do here." Now, I'm able to drive --
KILDALL
(Laughing) Now, that's a made movie, right?
CRANE
I'm able to drive through the city streets. This will come in handy later, as I suck up roaming ghosts in my ghost vacuum, but here's my slimer! So I must set down a trap, take one man and point his streamer, another man here. When the ghost is between the streams, I'll catch him.
KILDALL
Ah, got him.
CRANE
Got him! Energize the trap. My men jump up and down for joy and the crowd yells --
(FROM COMPUTER SPEAKERS)
Ghostbusters!
CHEIFET
(Laughing) Ok, that's how they leave. We have just a little bit of time left. David Lebling, briefly, what do you see as the next challenge in adventure games, in that end?
LEBLING
I think the next --
CHEIFET
Maybe you could turn the sound down, Dave. Thanks.
LEBLING
I think the next challenge is probably more sophistication -- moving away from the straight puzzle-solving, you know, "you have to get this there" or "you have to do that" -- and into something that is a little more sophisticated, something that can do a real plot of a real novel. What we have now is sort of a short story kind of a form and more sophistication will come as we have more sophisticated parsers and programs to do it with.
CHEIFET
Well, I'm looking forward to more adventures games and certainly playing Ghostbusters!
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