<!--
	Title: (Inside the Industry) Infocom's West Coast Move Stirs Controversy
	Source: Computer Gaming World, 9(9)
	Date: September 1989
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

The dismantling of **Infocom** as an east coast subsidiary
of **Mediagenic** offers mixed signals regarding the
future of the storytelling division. To many industry
observers, moving **Infocom** to the Menlo Park headquarters
of Mediagenic was inevitable. The failure of
*Cornerstone*, the database produced by **Infocom**,
necessitated an infusion of capital. The acquisition of
the company which was once synonymous with interactive
fiction became inevitable. **Infocom**'s corporate
functions were assimilated by **Mediagenic** in a
gradual evolution designed to reduce overhead and
streamline operations. In addition, **Infocom**'s inability to
get new products out in 1988, tremendous research
and development costs in upgrading the development
system, and technical snafus with regard to releasing MS-DOS
SKUs during the initial roll-out of new products in
1989 took its toll on the viability of the Massachusetts
subsidiary.

Herein lies the dispute. Sources inside **Infocom**
believe that **Mediagenic** pulled the plug just when
the money invested in graphics development (admittedly,
more difficult and expensive to implement than
the original projections) had started to pay off. Background
sources suggest that the entire Mac II development
system is paid for, but except for Marc Blank, there
is no real indication that it will be used. In addition,
there are leaks about a completely new parser that may
never be used. ZIL (Zork Implementation Language),
the current development system, is functionally dead.

However, Rob Sears (General Manager for **Infocom**),
insisted that it would have taken more than
two years for the east coast subsidiary to recoup its losses.
He noted the MS-DOS problems and suggested
that the consolidation *might* not have been necessary if
the IBM SKUs could have been released initially. Nevertheless,
he has noted that Duncan Blanchard, a wizard
Macintosh programmer, moved to the west coast to
join **Mediagenic**'s Technology Group. Duncan is allegedly
working on a hybrid technology between ZIL and
future storytelling projects.

Of the 24 people who were employed at the time of the
east coast shutdown, twelve were asked to make the
move to the west coast and five accepted. Of the five,
Donald and Elizabeth Langoisey are working on a hypercard
story. Donald is a computer artist who has
worked on some of the latest **Infocom** products and
Elizabeth wrote two stories for the *Infocomics* series.
Joe Ybarra, VP of Entertainment at **Mediagenic**, expressed
great hope in the hypercard product, suggesting
that it would be more of an adventure and less of a
simple exploratory toy (like *Manhole* and *Cosmic
Osmo*). The new direction in the company's approach to
storytelling products was made clear when Ybarra suggested,
"We cannot continue, in the marketplace,
living off products that take eight hours to learn to play
well and up to 200 hours to complete."