<!--
	Title: Frank Answers to the Ten Most Frequently Asked Questions
	Source: The New Zork Times, v3(2)
	Date: Spring 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

1. **Why are your games so difficult?**

Although our games are interactive fiction, they're more than just stories:
they are also a series of puzzles. It is these puzzles that transform our text
from an hour's worth of reading to many, many hours' worth of thinking.
It is these puzzles that cause a player to suddenly leap out of bed in
the middle of the night and run to his computer because he just thought of
a possible solution to a problem.

The value of our games is that they will provide many hours of stimulating
mental exercise. If the puzzles were significantly easier, then many
people would no longer find them challenging. For those people who
find the level of difficulty too challenging, InvisiClues™ booklets are
always available to provide hints.

2. **Why are some games more difficult than others?**

It's often hard to tell how difficult a game is going to be until many
people begin playing it. During 1983, when we doubled the number
of game titles, we also began putting our games through much more widespread
play-testing. Because we try to incorporate any reasonable
suggestions from our testers, including suggestions for adding hints to
problems they found difficult, the 1983 games were generally a bit
easier than our earlier games.

Beginning later this year, we will be rating our interactive fiction
according to four categories of difficulty. We will continue producing
games in each of these categories in order to provide for everyone from
the neophyte to the hard-core fan.

3. **Why aren't hint booklets included with the game?**

Two reasons, the first being temptation. Even though the answers
are printed in invisible ink, the temptation to look up the answer to a
problem immediately after getting stuck would be too great for many
people. After all, one of the great joys of interactive fiction is the rewarding
feeling of finding a solution on your own after several hours of
exercising the logic and imagination of your brain.

The second reason is cost. If InvisiClues were included, the price
of the game would have to be increased slightly to cover this extra
cost. People who don't want or need the hint booklet would not be pleased
to have to pay this extra amount.

4. **Why don't your games have graphics?**

We have nothing against graphics per se. However, given the quality of
graphics currently available on home computers, we would rather use that
disk space for additional puzzles and richer descriptions. After all, as our
famous "brain ad" says, the world's best graphics generator is your own
imagination.

5. **Why are there so many "red herrings" in your games?**

People accustomed to standard adventure games, where every item
you run across has one (and only one) purpose, may find our games a
bit disorienting. Some objects will have several uses, and many items
will have no purpose at all —- "red herrings." Since the player has to
determine not only where something is useful, but even whether it is useful
at all, this increases the player's mental stimulation. In addition, these
red herrings add to the realism of the game. After all, if you really found
yourself stranded on a doomed planet or exploring an ancient pyramid,
is it likely that every object you ran across would have one (and only
one) use? (Hint: The answer is not "yes.")

6. **Why are the prices of your games so high?**

One reason that our interactive fiction costs a little more than your
run-of-the-mill computer game is all the honing and perfecting that goes
on here at Infocom. Before you think this is starting to sound like one of
our ads, stop and think for a moment. Each of our games lasts hundreds of
moves, and at each move there are literally thousands of possible responses.
Add some magic, or some characters wandering around the
game doing their thing, and the result is staggeringly complex.

Infocom's interactive fiction programs are among the most complex
programs available for microcomputers (and that includes all
programs, not just entertainment programs). The writing and perfecting
of an average piece of Infocom's interactive fiction takes nearly a
year, and even that speed is only possible due to our powerful development
system. (*Deadline™* author and Infocom V.P. Marc Blank is
fond of saying that *Deadline* would have taken five years to write without
our development system —- and then it would only have been ready
to run on one type of computer.) For *Sorcerer™*, which was released a few
months ago, nearly two thousand individual "bugs" were located and
fixed. These ranged from minor typos to game-crashers. Right up
until the day the disk masters were sent out we were still arguing about
whether a bat has paws, claws, or talons. But I digress.

Another reason is our elaborate packaging, which costs a lot to
design and a lot to produce. (See the next question.)

One final reason our prices are so high is -— that our prices aren't that
high! Fifty dollars may seem like a lot of money for a game, but divide
that amount by the 30 or 40 hours you'll probably be spending with that
game, and it actually works out to fairly inexpensive entertainment!

7. **Why are your packages so elaborate?**

Because our games are more than games, they're fiction. The purpose
of the package and the many items you'll find inside them are to get you
into the mood of the game before you even put the disk into your drive.

Also, there's a pretty limited amount of space on a floppy disk. By
putting necessary background information into the documentation and
packaging, we save room on the disk for the important stuff -— the
descriptions and puzzles of the game itself.

Finally, our packages are an attempt to discourage the piracy that
is devastating the software industry. The disk is merely the most important
item in a large portfolio of material that comprises an interactive
fiction game.

8. **Why are your disks copy-protected and backup-limited?**

As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, software piracy is a
problem rampant in our industry. When disks are copied for other than
legitimate back-up reasons, the producer is denied revenue (not to
mention the fact that it's illegal). On a wide scale, piracy results in higher
prices as the constant development cost must be spread over a smaller
number of buyers. Therefore, copy-protection helps legitimate consumers
like you, as well as us, by foiling piracy.

Also, remember that Infocom will replace any defective disks for no
charge within the first 90 days after purchase, and for a $5 charge after
that. However, since we use the highest quality disks, this isn't a
frequent occurrence.

9. **Why aren't your games larger?**

People with more powerful home computers frequently ask us this
question. That answer is that we want our games to be available on a
wide number of systems. Our current size limit is around 110,000 bytes. If
we increased this limit, then our games would be unable to run on a
number of machines, including the Atari 400/800, the TRS-80 Model I,
and the Osborne 1. Of course, thanks to our ingenious ultra-neato compression
techniques, we get a heck of a lot into those 110,000 bytes.

10. **Why is the vocabulary of your games so limited?**

Hey! First of all, our games understand a heck of a lot more words than
anything our competitors have ever produced. Secondly, you're talking
about interactive fiction here, not some glorified Eliza program that
pretends to converse with the user but actually "understands" nothing
that is being said. Our games actually understand every input they
claim to understand. These inputs fall within the rules outlined in the
game manual, and if you stick to these rules, you should almost never
end up using a word the game doesn't understand.

This problem is always most acute for people playing one of our
mystery games for the first time. Despite all the warnings in the
manual, people always want to grab Baxter, shake him, and ask him
WHY WERE YOU RUNNING DOWN THE HALL DURING THE
SCREAMING, or WHERE WERE YOU AT 8:00 PM ON THE NIGHT
BEFORE THE MURDER. After all, this is how Columbo or Hercule
Poirot always questions the suspects. Well, if the game were to try to
handle every conceivable question of this complexity, it would occupy 20
disks and take 15 years to write and test. Just play it by the rules, folks.
Stick to WHERE IS THE SMOKING GUN and TELL ME
ABOUT DOCTOR BLANK.

<p class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">* BONUS QUESTION *</p>

11. **Why don't you provide a vocabulary list with each game?**

If you think about it, including a list of all the words a game understands
would run the risk of giving away problems. Here's an example
that you shouldn't read unless you've completed *Zork I*: What if you were
perusing a vocabulary list for *Zork I* and you noticed the words ECHO,
ODYSSEUS, RAFT, DIAMOND? The enjoyment of figuring out the
Loud Room, cyclops, pile of plastic, and coal mine problems has just been
reduced by these "give-aways."

Also, we like to remain enigmatic.