The Activision thing finally landed. Which means MS owns Infocom, via an impressive 40-year chain of buyouts, takeovers, and shakeups.
Now I formally put forth the plea:
Microsoft should put all of Infocom’s IP under a Creative Commons license. Or donate the rights to a nonprofit which can do the same. Let’s bring all these legally-shaky fan sites and collections into the light.
Released today (finally): the digital edition of "50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon," a 600+ page book exploring the many fascinating histories of interactive fiction. (And as a bonus, the physical edition started shipping in the UK/EU today too, with rest of world orders not far behind...) #InteractiveFiction#Games#BookLaunch https://aareed.itch.io/50-years-of-text-games
I guess people have already talked about the Infocom interpreter source code (https://github.com/erkyrath/infocom-zcode-terps) which I posted a few days ago. Nonetheless, slightly late, here’s my explainer post:
I am looking for authors/writers/narrative designers to join a short virtual group discussion to chat about aspects of your craft— especially managing scope and combinatorial explosion on larger projects.
Pinkunz, a wonderfully creative, generous, and supportive member of the #InteractiveFiction community was in a terrible accident that destroyed his car and landed him in the hospital. What with this being the US, it has left him and his wife in a precarious position.
Please donate to their GoFundMe if you can, and/or signal-boost it.
If you know someone at Microsoft who would be interested in the grand opportunity for #InteractiveFiction preservation that today's merger has—as a side effect!—granted the company, please get in touch with me, @zarfeblong, or another @IFTF person. (I stepped down from IFTF leadership earlier this year, but I'm still active within it.)
Hello! I've made my very first game. It's a short game about a botanist banished to the moon for attempting to create sentient plant life, crafted in Bitsy.
We're a non-profit whose goal is to support #InteractiveFiction, narrative games, text adventures, MUDs, etc.!
We're launching a microgrants program to fund cool projects that align with our mission - which includes cataloguing and preserving (we're maintaining IFDB and IFArchive!). If you have an idea for a project that might require some $, see if it'd fit our guidelines, and don't hesitate to apply!
My decades-long friend and colleague Zarf (@zarfeblong), with whom I have co-founded many projects in the world of #InteractiveFiction and digital games, just got laid off.
This means that you have the opportunity to hire one of the most creative, empathetic, diligent, and wide-ranging minds in the field of software-driven narrative.
It's important to me that you consider the possibilities that this opens up for your game studio. #Fedihire
Our new game jam is Bring Out Your Ghosts. This is a place for old, forgotten WIPs, abandoned projects, and the like - the ghosts and detritus of game development. You can either submit incomplete projects, or revisit and finish one of your old WIPs!
Neurocracy, a sci-fi database-style interactive narrative, is doing a one-week-per-episode live run. In this form it’s essentially an online forum RPG, playing in a custom app which combines a forum and a Wikipedia-of-2049-AD site.
But... Inhumane was the second Infocom parody I wrote. The first was labelled Enchanter 2. (I wrote it before the release of Sorcerer in 1984.) Even more juvenile, I assure you.
In case you missed it, I've released a companion book to "50 Years of Text Games!" Featuring chapters on fan favorite text games like Planetfall and A Dark Room, deep dives into neat microgenres like type-in books or one-room games, and a detailed timeline of #InteractiveFiction history. I've just posted a quick video tour of the book if you're curious what's inside! https://youtu.be/PaeOVCCIFfg#retrogaming#retrocomputing
For the Third Quadrennial Ryan Veeder Exposition for Good Interactive Fiction, nine of us got together and wrote an entire huge, mysterious, funny, beautiful island in text adventure form. Welcome to Moondrop Isle:
Congratulations to the two Best in Show ribbon winners, @autumn for Social Democracy: An Alternate History and Agnieszka Trzaska for The Trials of Rosalinda.
You can play both of these, plus all the other games (including mine) here: