[Fien]

Before the first person shooter there was the second person thinker.

I’ve just finished watching Jason Scott’s documentary Get Lamp about the history of interactive fiction. At some point game developer Mike Berlyn says: People would see Zork and they’d go: “I’ve got to have me one of them, that’s all. Who do I make the check out to.” Yep, that’s exactly how it was for me back in 1986 when I got myself an Atari ST, played my very first King’s Quest game and bought my very first Infocom text adventure, complete with “feelies”. I realize I can never explain this to the generation that grew up with computers, but a game which responded intelligently to my text input was Pure Magick.

I think it was Agustin Cordes, the developer of Scratches, who passionately defended the text adventure in a thread at JA, eight or ten years ago. He claimed that interactive fiction can do everything that graphic adventures can do, and more. I’m still inclined to agree with him. As much as I love eye candy, there are far too many beautiful cookie-cutter adventures around nowadays. IF can offer more in the way of depth, story, puzzles, humor, emotion, excellent writing, different paths and endings, etcetera. Trinity is easily one of the most touching adventures I have played. Adam Cadre’s original and innovative Photopia blew me away. They stand the test of time.

We stick our graphics where the sun don’t shine. (Infocom)

Get Lamp is a wonderful trip down memory lane for fans of the text adventures that dominated the 80s. So many familiar names, Mark Blanc, Dave Lebling, Brian Moriarty, Steve Meretzky, Amy Briggs, Don Woods, Bob Bates, Mike Dornbrook, Stue Galley, even John Romero is there. Adam Cadre, Nick Montfort, Peter Nepstadt, Andrew Plotkin. And many more. Infocom ruled back then and throughout the documentary the emphasis is on the Rise and Fall of Infocom. The interesting details of their financial downfall and the relations with Activision were new to me, although I bet you can find the info all over the Internet if you look for it. (Did you know that Activision was on the brink of bankrupcy and the big profits on Lost Treasures of Infocom were a godsend?) It’s not like there haven’t been any interviews in black-and-white with the implementors before. But seeing those guys on film and hearing them reminisce about the good old days is something else.

On the downside: unfortunately, no Magnetic Scrolls and no Graham Nelson, one of my favorite IF developers. During one of the interviews Steve Meretzky looked like he was going to cry. IMO, that should have been edited out, it is too embarassing. Marc Blank’s story about his 8-year old daughter not knowing what Zork was (wow, really?) didn’t add anything. But that’s just me nitpicking.

Of course the documentary oozes nostalgia and it’s pricey, so it isn’t for everyone. Two DVDs of interviews and lots of interactive extras, including a thoughtful no-spoilers option. Plus a big, heavy coin, a tribute to the old Zorkmid. I paid $49 dollars, shipping to the Netherlands included. For me, well worth it.

http://www.getlamp.com/

I feel like reinstalling my “Lost Treasures of Infocom” and replay A Mind Forever Voyaging. Or try a new one, like Suspended.

[zobraks]

It's nice to hear about "Get Lamp" from someone who was there from the start and who can write about IF with emotion and insight.

Thank you for the wonderful news, Fien.

[Trunkyo]

A few of us have been talking about this DVD in this thread (skip to the last two pages). I'm planning on splurging on it myself (my birthday is coming up!)

[shezcrafti]

Can't wait to see this, gonna order it asap. Thanks for sharing it!

O/T: I took a peek at the Director page and learned that Jason Scott also did a documentary series about early bulletin board systems called BBS: The Documentary. Really interested in seeing that one as well.

[tsa]

I played only a few text adventures back in the day, and I finished even less of them. Three in fact: The Beyond, a Dutch text adventure based on a horror movie, the first installment of Sorcerers Get All The Girls, and The Pawn. So for me there is not much memory lane to walk over. I saw part of the documentary (non-interactively), and because of my limited knowledge of the subject's history, it's sometimes a bit hard to follow. Also the fact that not all history is covered is a bit annoying. Why did all those companies crash at the end of the 1980s? But maybe that will be revealed to me later. What I did like very much is the entousiasm with which the people who are interviewed tell about the subject. Also the fact that blind people were interviewed is nice. Text adventures are just about the only games they can play on a computer, I guess. Furthermore, I never knew that there are people with a Ph.D. on interactive fiction! I will certainly try to find their theses and read them.

My coin has nr. 2554. What's yours?

[Venkman]

The BBS Documentary is great. I love all that old PC history stuff. The book Hackers from the '80s is also awesome - a good chunk of it is a history of early Sierra, Ken and Roberta, etc. The place in the timeline where the book ends and leaves Sierra is fascinating looking back.

Haven't seen Get Lamp yet. FYI, if you really can't afford it you are legally allowed to download/copy it. He releases his stuff under Creative Commons or whatever. I've looked, and it doesn't seem like anybody has made a torrent of Get Lamp yet - but they are legally in the clear to do so. Jason Scott actually posted positively on the Pirate Bay comments for the BBS Documentary torrent (you can get one with all the special features). He made all of his money back almost immediately on the BBS Doc btw.

It would be incredible if he announced a Sierra doc next. On a related note - isn't it a no-brainer that HBO should commission a Ken Burns style video game history documentary series? They could air it after their regular Sunday programming, it's appealing to a lot of that audience, and it's cheap as hell.

[nomarch]

Watched it a few days ago, thoroughly enjoyed it

[Fien]

Zobraks, yes it does feel like I was there from the start, but the truth is that I wasn’t. Infocom ruled in the first part of the 80s. When I discovered adventures, Sierra was a rising star and developing King’s Quest III, but Infocom had already been taken over by Activision and, with hindsight, was definitely on its way out. Of course I didn’t know that at the time and even if I had known, I was only interested in the long rows of marvelous adventures you could find in bookstores.

Tsa, “why did all those companies crash at the end of the 1980s?” The market changed as more and more people bought a home computer. I think the key words in the two quotes I put in bold are shooter and graphics.

The Pawn by Magnetic Scrolls is one of the many text adventures I couldn’t finish. Too hard and not very interesting. I have a vague memory of wandering around carrying a dead adventurer for no good purpose. Most Infocom games were extremely hard as well, but a little less unforgiving. BTW, I’ll take the opportunity to recommend Photopia. Free game, very short, downloadable at Adam Cadre’s site. Interactive fiction, all story and no puzzles to speak of. There are worse ways to spend two hours. If you decide to play it, do not, under any circumstances, watch the part of the documentary about Photopia, It will spoil the entire story for you.

My coin says 1897. I read on Jason Scott’s site back in July or August that he’d ordered only one thousand coins. But he already ran out of coins in the first weeks and apologized that people had to wait for their copy of the documentary.

Venkman, I don’t know what he said about legally downloading it. Creative Commons can be quite restrictive too, depends. Also, see his post about the torrent of Get Lamp that was released: http://inventory.getlamp.com/2010/10...ages-at-flair/

Anyway, it’s great that he has already sold so many copies. I can understand (up to a point!) poor students downloading the documentary for free. But I would be shocked if middle-aged people with a steady income, the very people who enjoyed playing text adventures in the 80s, did the same thing.

[tsa]

Originally Posted by Fien

Tsa, “why did all those companies crash at the end of the 1980s?” The market changed as more and more people bought a home computer. I think the key words in the two quotes I put in bold are shooter and graphics.

You and I know that, but my friend, with whom I will watch the documentary tomorrow, probably doesn't. And that's the main thing I have with the documentary: it's great to watch all the interviewed people talk about the jobs or games they loved, but the historical context is pushed into the background quite a bit. I think the documentary would have been quite a lot better if there was a voiceover explaining what happened when, and what type of other games were in existence at the time. As you also mentioned, Fien, the documentary focuses very much on Infocom. But after Infocom was dead, the text adventure genre was not nearly in hybernation or whatever you might call its current state yet. That started somewhere in the end of the first half of the 1990s, and there was a big interstitial period before the text adventure disappeared completely from the shelves in the computer shop. I can imagine that Mr. Scott had enough of making interviews after a certain time, but I think leaving this whole part of history away without even mentioning it is a big omission and a disappointment for many viewers.
Having said that, I loved the cave where it all allegedly started was shown, and watching the enthousiasm of all the people in the documentary. I also was pleasantly surprised to find out that people have written assertations about adenture games, and I will surely try to find those and read them. All in all I think the documentary is certainly worth its money, despite its flaws.

[Fien]

Belated reply, sorry. I watched parts of the documentary again last night, just for fun. It does cover both commercial and independent text adventures. If you watched the interactive version you may have missed the second part, with people like Plotkin and Granade. After Steve Meretzky talks about the IF industry as a “shooting star” just like youth itself etcetera., we get this long shot of his sad face. And then the camera zooms in on an interactive computer screen with 3 clickable options. One of them is the modern era of IF. Pretty easy to miss.

You may be right that the documentary is not explicit enough for viewers who are unfamiliar with text adventures, although the timeframe is in place and dates are mentioned. It’s kind of hard for me to put myself in the shoes of your friend. The many screens which are a feast of recognition for me – Infocom box covers, Granade’s site, Nick Montfort’s Twisty Little Passages – won’t mean anything to non-fans. I don’t know what kind of audience Jason Scott had in mind, but I assume he was aiming at people who have fond memories of IF.

[tsa]

Originally Posted by Fien

Belated reply, sorry. I watched parts of the documentary again last night, just for fun. It does cover both commercial and independent text adventures. If you watched the interactive version you may have missed the second part, with people like Plotkin and Granade. After Steve Meretzky talks about the IF industry as a “shooting star” just like youth itself etcetera., we get this long shot of his sad face. And then the camera zooms in on an interactive computer screen with 3 clickable options. One of them is the modern era of IF. Pretty easy to miss.

Ok, so I will have to look into that. Thank you.

You may be right that the documentary is not explicit enough for viewers who are unfamiliar with text adventures, although the timeframe is in place and dates are mentioned. It’s kind of hard for me to put myself in the shoes of your friend. The many screens which are a feast of recognition for me – Infocom box covers, Granade’s site, Nick Montfort’s Twisty Little Passages – won’t mean anything to non-fans. I don’t know what kind of audience Jason Scott had in mind, but I assume he was aiming at people who have fond memories of IF.

That must have been it. But even then I still think a voiceover would have improved the documentary.

[orient]

I watched the documentary last night. As someone with extremely limited knowledge of Interactive Fiction, I enjoyed it, but found the reliance on interviews a little tiring towards the end. The director done a fine job of crafting a narrative with the interview footage, but I would have liked to see much more footage and memorabilia from the era instead of a bunch of people just sitting in their houses reminiscing.

Overall though, really enjoyable and worth a watch for anyone interesting in the subject.

[Idrisguitar]

just saw it, im an adventure game newbie and it really educated me on its evolution and roots, and the interviews were all pretty good. i especially liked the "rant" by the guy who basically said the best graphics can get is basically text and i kind fo agree,

i have started playing photopia, its not challenging but im interested to see where this story goes (although im a bit lost on the overall narrative right now, i expect that was the author's intention.)

its enjoyable right now i guess, but basically right now im feeling like id rather just read the story because my inputs aren;t really providing me with wonder or any real sense of reward because of the lack of challenge.

but yeah im enjoying the story and will deffo complete it soon. (unless its really long)

i love reading books, (probably my favourite form of entertainment) i should love IF tons, so ill report back after phtopia to see fi i want to try out some more.

[Fien]

Originally Posted by Idrisguitar

its enjoyable right now i guess, but basically right now im feeling like id rather just read the story because my inputs aren;t really providing me with wonder or any real sense of reward because of the lack of challenge.

No challenge, no rewards. Something else. Experienced by me and other players, but of course there is no guarantee that you will have the same experience. Not everybody enjoys the same things. Yeah, I know I'm kicking in an open door here. The difference between reading a story and being part of a story is clearly illustrated in the 6 minutes on DVD 2 devoted to Photopia (the extras DVD has not been torrented, at least not by FLAiR).

i love reading books, (probably my favourite form of entertainment) i should love IF tons, so ill report back after phtopia to see fi i want to try out some more.

I'm interested in your opinion of Photopia when you've finished it, but don't make the mistake of thinking it is representative of the genre and that most text adventures are all story and have no puzzles to speak of. There's as much variety in IF as there is in graphic adventures. Most Infocom games for instance were very hard.

[stepurhan]

Originally Posted by Fien

Most Infocom games for instance were very hard.

From my recollection of the games (and I do have one of the collections on CD here somewhere) that's a bit like saying most water is very wet.

My favourite(!) Infocom moment was in The Lurking Horror. If you walked out through the fire door halfway down one of the corridors it automatically locked behind you, leaving you to freeze to death in the snowstorm raging outside. Best of all, you didn't die right away. You had a few moves available to find there was no way back in.

Though come to think of it, there were worse fates than that in that game. They really knew what horror meant when they wrote that one.

[Fien]

Originally Posted by stepurhan

From my recollection of the games (and I do have one of the collections on CD here somewhere) that's a bit like saying most water is very wet.

Wishbringer isn't hard though. A Mind Forever Voyaging isn't either. I'm currently replaying it and it is still as good as in the 90's.

The Lurking Horror was a nice game. Short, but nice. And I vividly remember going outside in the snow blizzard several times, because I was convinced I should be able to get somewhere.

PS: Didn't you have to get out later, on the roof or something? I think I had to find gloves, boots, scarves and other stuff before I ventured out again.

[Fien]

Just for the fun of it, this is what Steve Meretzky says about his A Mind Forever Voyaging in the documentary:

"I wanted to show people what a warmongering Christian Right pandering, environmental trashing, rights trampling asshole Reagan was. And of course the game was so succesful we never had another President like that. "

God, I love those Infocom guys.

[stepurhan]

There were places you had to go outside but the problem with the fire exit is you couldn't go onwards (no landmarks) and you couldn't go back (locked door). I think you could get some stuff to keep you warm but mainly you had to not take too many actions in any of the outside locations.

As you say, they did do a handful of easier games. I think Wishbringer and Seastalker (both of which are in the collection I have, which I can't lay hands on at this moment) were both aimed at children and thus slightly less punishing. AMFV is on the same CD but, while I know the premise, I've never played it so I'll bow to your experience on that one.

They had such interesting ideas though, not all of which would work in a graphic adventure. The AI consciousness freely roaming of AMFV and the human consciousness operating through robots of Suspended. The word play of Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of it. The personalisation of Bureaucracy (where everything is your least favourite colour and an answering machine message tells you your current girlfriend has dumped you. All information provided on the opening "Registration Card")

Text adventures are still alive and well by the way. The 2010 Interactive Fiction competition is happening right now.

[tsa]

Originally Posted by Fien

Just for the fun of it, this is what Steve Meretzky says about his A Mind Forever Voyaging in the documentary:

"I wanted to show people what a warmongering Christian Right pandering, environmental trashing, rights trampling asshole Reagan was. And of course the game was so succesful we never had another President like that. "

Nope. They got one who was even worse than Reagan

[textfiles]

I won't argue against the various statements about the movie, since obviously my opinion and choices is what got into the film. But I figured I'd drop a few facts in for the heck of it.

I absolutely hate voiceover narration and will never use it. As someone who has watched hundreds of documentaries, nothing tells me "we didn't really track people down" or "we just don't want to work out the editing". So that was a specific choice and I stand by it.

The phrase "the cave where it allegedly all started" is wrong. It's where it started, period.

I don't cover the games industry because there are, last I checked, over 38 million documentaries that are boring capitalist narratives about A buying B and B declining in sales. Didn't want to make that movie - let Bloomberg or G4 have a go at it. They like those.

The balance of interviews and illustrations is always a tricky one. I'll leave it at that.

Finally, the movie is licensed creative commons - attribution - noncommercial.