- This topic has 27 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 17 years, 5 months ago by
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I saw this while googling King’s Quest.
http://www.matthewmurray.net/Old/KQTruth.html -
I remember that guy from Prodigy about 14 years ago. He was always a big fan of Infocom’s games….
BTW, I think A Mind Forever Voyaging is perhaps the greatest computer game written from a plot development point of view. Steve Meretzky himself is in the science fiction writers hall of fame.
I don’t necessarily look at the article as Sierra bashing. Ken himself admitted in The Roberta Willams Anthology that Infocom’s games were a lot more developed and detailed because they didn’t use graphics. And I’m sure that appealed to a lot of people at the time. I think I’ve seen somewhere on that guy’s website, where he says how much he loves a lot of the original Sierra games, but was disappointed with the move to non-parser interface. I’m sure he’s entitled to his opinion…and many people share that view….it doesn’t make them evil…
JT
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I remember the first game I saw was Zork. My brother was printing out pages and pages on track feed paper. It was alot like ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books. I remember sound blaster had a good text parser in ‘Dr Staboto’. I’m not sure on the spelling.
Some of the games I thought were ground breaking were not Sierra’s: Mean Street, Ultima (Avatar), Street Fighter II.
The guy has all the rights to his believes but I don’t see how Zork influenced future games? It was one of the originals and has a great place in history. -
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‘I remember that guy from Prodigy about 14 years ago. He was always a big fan of Infocom’s games….’
It’s funny, but I remember his name from Prodigy, too. I think he was involved with a petition against Sierra’s icon interface when it first came out. I still have a printed e-mail from that around here somewhere. I think it’s packed in the basement somewhere. Ahh… the good old days. 🙂
Off topic… It’s hard to believe that Prodigy was once the leader of online service providers. I remember the day they started to lose ground was the day they switched from monthly pricing to hourly pricing.
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I also remember him designating Ken’s brother John, as a ‘anti-infocomrade’ because John had suggested remaking some of Infocom’s text-adventures as 3-D Graphic adventures.
When I asked Ken about that a few years later, he said the idea was never seriously considered.
In my opinion Remaking Text Adventures is almost as bad as remaking classic films.
JT
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i dont think zork games have been influencial at all. if they had, we would have seen a lot more adventure games that had magnificent stories, but the norm really seems to be stories that were just ok, but include good graphics and sound. In that sense, kings quest was definetly more important. i think most gamers would rather see something than read about it. thats just the way most people are, otherwise books would be more popular than tv. i guess it should be that way, but it’s not.
i think its unfair to compare the two since they are entirely different styles though. i mean, to say kings quest was lacking because it included graphics and sound is just dumb. i think the biggest problem i have with playing old text only games is that i have to ask the parser what is around and what things look like just so i can get a feel for what is going on. not only did you have to solve a puzzle, but you usually had to ‘discover’ the puzzle first, i dont like that. in a kings quest game, everything is presented for me to become a part of. i feel like i am in daventry, but i didn’t get that feeling from zork. it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words.
i dont know, maybe my mind is less imaginative than the zork lovers. i guess it does remove something from the experience if you just give the player everything and not make them imagine it for themselves. i am a big final fantasy fan, and i do feel that way about the newer games. i think they are too detailed. back in the mid 90s, you had a little sprite guy that represented your character, but you also had a more detailed image of that character in you mind. now, they are so detailed it leaves nothing to the imagination. i guess i think some place in between ALL text and ALL graphics is where i prefer games to be. maybe thats why i spend most of my free time playing 15 year old sierra games.
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Zork, like all the other Infocom Games were highly descriptive and detailed. The PLOT was always the highest priority on their games. Very similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure Books.
King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II were both drawn on Sierra’s original graphic text adventures, which I’m sure were highly influenced by Scott Woods’ ADVENTURE. KQ 1 and KQ2 were both treasure hunt games.
Space Quest I was written in between KQ 2 and KQ3, and that was the time when Plot became a much more important detail in Sierra’s games.
In my opinion Infocom’s games were more in-depth and detailed, and true to the term Interactive Fiction. But this style appealed to a limited audience and therefore the market did not lost very long, and the company went out of business.King’s Quest III and King’s Quest IV, combined good plot elements (less borrowed from traditional fairy tales) and still were challenging to gamers. That’s why they’re my favorite of the series. Imagine if the Icon system had been in place for KQ4 and how much easier reaching the Whale’s uvula would be. That would have removed the entire challenge to the puzzle if you could simply click the feather on the uvula.
I still believe Sierra made the right decision to go with the Icon system in the nineties, because times were changing. Just like B/W TV gave way to color.
Unfortunately nothing that was done from that point on in the KQ series made everybody happy. Some people complained that KQ5 was too linear and not challenging enough. So, KQ6 was written with two possible endings (reminds me of the Dynamix adventure games, Rise Of The Dragon and Heart Of China gave those options). KQ7 was written and designed to be easier and more family friendly, but that still bothered some people, so KQ8 was designed as a Action/RPG hybrid….And that of course brought the biggest outcry from fans, so it seemed nothing Roberta pleased everyone, but I doubt she cared about making everybody happy.
I prefer the traditonal orginal Sierra games, but I still play the Icon based ones. Space Quest V is my favorite Space Quest game, but of course there is the abysmal Space Quest 6. Personally, I hated the move to a single cursor….
although I liked Dynamix’s Adventure games and it was pretty much one cursor if I recall…I’ll have to go take them out of storage and play them -
Remaking text adventure games into graphical ones poses the same
‘challenge’ as making a book into a movie. Why does everyone always say
‘the book was better?’ Because when you’re reading, it’s YOU that’s
drawing the world, what the trees look like, how big the hills are,
what the wolf looks like… so when you see the movie, it’s not at all
like what you imagined.I find when I watch a movie first and then read the book, I get the
opposite feeling: the movie was better. Since I already know what
everything is supposed to look like, I’m eager to skim through all the
descriptive narration.As for the icon bar, I have a love/hate relationship with that. There
are some instances like the KQ4 example mentioned, where it would take
away from the gameplay. Though I couldn’t imagine games like Sins of
the Fathers or Dagger of AmonRa without them. Larry 7 was a nice
hybrid, although it could have been better implemented. (Like, have a
parser at the bottom all the time, perhaps?)-Tom.
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Which is exactly why despite some good reviews, I would never buy any Activison’s graphical Zork games. The world that was created by Blank & Lebling (the authors), just could not be done justice by the corporation that bought them. Although, I did buy Leather Goddeses Of Phobos 2, because it was written by it’s original author. Although in hindsight it was worse than Leisure Suit Larry 4!!!
The majority of the time when another author takes over a series that someone else has created, they just can not duplicate the genius of the original.
I saw LSL:Magna Cum Laude last night for the PS2 at Gamestop. I was tempted to destroy the thing on principle, but I can’t afford the penalty fines…
Now there’s a petition that should be circulated…VU needs to stop trashing the image of Leisure Suit Larry and the legacy of Al Lowe!!!!!!!
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Hm…seems to me there are some pretty serious misconceptions about text adventures going around this thread…
Zork, like all the other Infocom Games were highly descriptive and
detailed. The PLOT was always the highest priority on their games.
Um…what!? Zork had no plot, to speak of. Gather treasures. Put treasures in trophy case. That’s…about it. Later Infocom games did have more developed plots, yes, but Zork, not so much.(Highly descriptive and detailed, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with plot.)
In my opinion Infocom’s games were more in-depth and detailed, and true
to the term Interactive Fiction. But this style appealed to a limited
audience and therefore the market did not lost very long, and the
company went out of business.
Nope. A limited audience? Infocom’s games were massive hits! And at the time Infocom went out of business, its games were still selling extremely well. The company went out of business not because its games weren’t selling, but because of some unrelated bad business decisions. (Like sinking all its capital into a piece of business software called Cornerstone that bombed completely.) And by that time, Infocom had managed to establish enough of a monopoly on text adventures that when it went under there was no one else around to pick up the slack.Maybe text adventures could still be sold today, if someone were willing to put enough money into advertising them to pique the public’s interest. Maybe not; maybe today’s gamers are too fixated on graphics. Either way, though, it’s a mistake to say that Infocom went bankrupt because text adventures stopped selling. It would be more accurate to say that text adventures stopped selling because Infocom went bankrupt.
As far as which was more influential on future games, though…well, actually, I’m going to say King’s Quest, but not for the reasons you might think. I’m going to say King’s Quest because Zork wasn’t the first text adventure anyway. Dungeon / Colossal Cave was. If Zork hadn’t been made, someone else would certainly have followed in Colossal Cave’s footsteps. (In fact, I think someone else did; I’m not sure I’m remembering right offhand, and don’t want to bother to check the chronology right now, but I think the first Scott Adams adventure games (not the Dilbert Scott Adams; different guy) predated Zork in the commercial arena, so Zork wasn’t even second.) Whereas King’s Quest basically pioneered a whole new genre (the graphic adventure).
However, if you were to ask whether Colossal Cave or King’s Quest was more influential…that might require a different answer. Colossal Cave was the first adventure game; without it King’s Quest would never have happened. (Sure, you could argue that someone else might have invented the text adventure later…but then again, by the same token, you could argue that if King’s Quest hadn’t come along, someone else might have invented the graphic adventure later, too, so that argument really isn’t worth much.) So by that token, there might be grounds for saying that Colossal Cave was more influential. Still, as I said, King’s Quest did pioneer a whole new genre itself, and I think really it doesn’t make sense to say either of those games is more influential than the other. They came at different eras (so to speak), and were influential in different ways, and trying to claim one over the other as more influential smacks of the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges.
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I hope everyone is aware that Colossal Cave inspired Roberta Williams to start making computer games? I had never played the game myself. So there is a connection between Colossal Cave to Mystery House and latter to King’s Quest. One leading to the other. Zork not being mentioned!
I wonder what was the big influence for 3D polygon games. Dynamics? -
Actually:
Infocom failed because they made a major committment to business software, and stopped making games. They were on top of the world, and decided that there was more money doing accounting software, and just stopped doing games.
The accounting software failed, and that was the end of infocom.
Too bad…
-Ken W
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That’s Right!!
CORNERSTONE!!!
Somebody sent me a copy of it about 10 years ago…bad bad idea….that was the beginning of the end…many of the original designers started leaving in 86., then Medagenic bought them and used them as a label for things like Battletech, and Mines Of Titan…
Shame though, since Zork Zero and Journey (two of the last original games they made) were brilliantly written by Meretzky and Blank, resprectively. Meretzky, did some work for Legend and Activision, before starting his own company, and Blank started his own software company as well.
I heard somewhere that Zork Zero was the first game to incorporate VGA graphics (although there’s only 10 or so pictures and they are all when you read the encyclopedia).
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Well, yes Infocom’s game were massive hits at the time. I mispoke. I guess I was thinking about the type of people that would play them today. I love them, but I really can’t see people today playing them. People today are spoiled by 1000 channels of Cable and 4 GHz Processors.
With the EXCEPTION of Zork, Infocom’s games were primarily highly plot detailed and many of the puzzles were next to impossible to solve. SPELLBREAKER??
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Definitely I agree that King’s Quest was more influental….Graphical Adventures were more prevaliant, and lasted longer…
My viewpoint wasInfocom’s text adventures provided a story and plot depth that to this day no other company has equaled. But that’s okay because most people don’t care about those things, they want graphics and action. Just like the percentage of movie watchers outranks people who read books.
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With the EXCEPTION of Zork, Infocom’s games were primarily highly plot
detailed and many of the puzzles were next to impossible to solve.
SPELLBREAKER??Actually, I thought Spellbreaker’s plot was pretty weak (though it certainly had more plot than Zork); I’m not a big fan of the jump-around-between-disconnected-areas type of game. (If you were just naming Spellbreaker as an example of a game with horrendously difficult puzzles, though, I’ll agree, and they weren’t all difficult for the right reasons…) And while some of Infocom’s other games did have better plots, I wouldn’t say in general that all of Infocom’s games aside from Zork were ‘highly plot detailed’. Still, though, yes, most of Infocom’s games did have much more plot than Zork; I’m not denying that. I was only responding to a post saying that Zork, specifically, had plot as a high priority. Infocom’s later games, yes. Zork, no.
I guess I was thinking about the type of people that would play them
today. I love them, but I really can’t see people today playing them.I’m not so sure text adventures couldn’t be successfully sold today, if they were marketed right. But it would take some creative marketing to get the public interested in them, and I doubt any major company is going to be willing to take the risk to revive the genre when there are so many other genres they can develop that people are already drawn into. So I guess we’ll never know.
Definitely I agree that King’s Quest was more influental….Graphical Adventures were more prevaliant, and lasted longer…
Again, though, King’s Quest probably would never have existed if text adventures hadn’t come first, so does it really make sense to say that the text adventures were less influential? (I’m not referring here to Zork specifically, though; again, Zork wasn’t the first text adventure.) Like I said, I don’t think there’s much point in asking whether the first text adventure or the first graphic adventure was more influential; they represent very different stages in the industry, and influenced it in different ways. Which was more influential isn’t really (in my opinion) a meaningful question.
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Yes, I just picked Spellbreaker at random because of its enormous difficulty….
As far as my comment about the games succeeding today, I based that on the looks I recieved at school (I’m going back to get Teaching Credentials) when I’ve pulled up and played a text adventure (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy) online….
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i think text adventure games came first only because of the limitations of hardware at the time. i’m not sure about the date of the first infocom game, but i’m sure full color graphics or raster graphics were either not possible on mainstream hardware, or at the least very difficult. or maybe the people that created them were already playing text games and just created their own because that’s all they thought was possible. and this is where i give HUGE credit to Ken, who programmed some of the very first graphical games in history. that is an AMAZING feat, and people should definetly show him the proper respect for that. yes Roberta designed it, but Ken made it work. i think that is why ken was such a good software company ceo, because underneath it all he is a great programmer. during the last 3 years i have been studying low level graphic drawing routines in C and Assembly in hopes to one day write a book on the subject. Believe me, what Ken achieved in the early 80’s is no small feat. everyone considers kings quest 1 and the like to be amazing, but mystery house was no less impressive. those early Sierra games were then just as important and amazing as doom3 and the oblivion are today. Ken and his peers started the video game push to realism that still hasn’t been quite achieved yet today more than 25 years later. i spent all day playing oblivion for the xbox 360 on a 56 inch plasma :), and we are definetly close now though. In my mind, Ken is right up there with Jack Bresenham, John Carmack and the people at Industrial Lights and Magic/Pixar. the people at infocom didn’t really do anything special as far as technical achievments go, in fact their efforts were extremely weak in that area, but they did do innovative things for interactive fiction. Sierra, on the other hand, did pioneer work in the graphics, sound, and story areas of the industry. somebody should write a real history book about computer gaming history(i know there are some, but they dont satisfy me), and Ken’s Sierra should definetly be a whole chapter.
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BeyondZork (1987) had a color mapping system, but no true graphics.
Zork Zero was the first with graphics and they were 256 Color VGA.
Journey And Arthur followed in 1989 and they also had graphics. I believe Shogun did also, but have yet to play that one. Those were the last three text adventures released by Infocom.
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I’m pretty sure Infocom created the complex sentence parser system, but I could be mistaken. It seems like a small thing, but text adventure games usually used a simple verb/noun system, but Infocom games allowed for elaborate commands to be used. So they had their own technical achievements.
I like Infocom games, especially the detective games like Witness and Suspect. And Return to Zork is one of my favorite games of all time. Yeah it had really cheesy acting, but it was amazing back then and it had an excellent story and good interface. I consider the opening movie to be one of the best ever in a game. It combines the familiar old text adventure style of Zork with the epicness of the new era of cd-rom gaming.
As for the Star Wars question. I never heard of Star Wars being the first game to have graphics, I’m sure that’s false because Pong predated it for one among lots of other games. Unless there’s some technical reason those aren’t considered ‘graphics.’
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Sorry, I ment ‘Spacewars’.
Spacewars, 1st video game, developed by Steve Russell at MIT for the PDP-1.
IMG_3229.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar -
While I agree that the complex sentence parser was sort of an achievement at the time, I don’t think it was that important, and certainly not influencial. I can’t think of a single mainstream game that came out in the last 15 years that used such a system, except for infocom games, which by the end were not really mainstream anymore. In fact, games that require simple text input are hardly ever seen, let alone the ability to type in full sentences.
I want to point out that I do like infocom games, and I’m not trying to bash them, but I just don’t think they were influencial or technoligicaly important. Early Sierra games were.
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