<!--
	Title: (INSIDE GAMING) Here's a Real Game Doctor, Mark Blank!
	Author: Arnie Katz
	Source: Electronic Games, v2(6)
	Date: August 1983
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

There seem to be just about as many ways to become a creator of
games as there are people inventing the videogames, computer simulations,
coin-ops and stand-alone devices we all love so dearly. Many of the
biggest names started out in other fields of endeavor, only to end up
making a handsome living out of what started as a hobbyist's interest
in electronic gaming.

Mark Blank, the 28-year-old force behind the three-disk **Zork** series and
**Deadline** (all published by Infocom), may well have reached his chosen
profession by the most circuitous route possible. Certainly,
he's the only man in the world who holds both a degree from Albert Einstein
Medical College and an Arcade Award (for *Deadline* as Best Computer Adventure
Game).

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/eg-inside-gaming-marc-blank/deadline-packaging.jpg" alt="Deadline Packaging">
	<figcaption class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">DEADLINE</figcaption>
</figure>

Mark first encountered computers while going to high school in his home
town of Teaneck, NJ in the early 1970's. "It was an IBM 1130," Blank
recalls fondly, "the kind that input data on punch cards." He
put together a few little games for his own amusement, but did not become a
dyed-in-the-wool computerist, for the simple reason that he didn't own his
own machine.

Mark's next significant brush with the computer field came during his
freshman year at M.I.T. in 1972. He took a computer course, again involving
the IBM 1130, and found his interest slowly growing greater and
greater. "Things were really different then," he points out. "My teacher
showed me a three-foot-square cube near the machine one day, and I was
really impressed that it could hold 8K of memory. These days, our games
contain many times that amount of information."

Although he also took a course in artificial intelligence as a junior, what
really set Blank on the road he has traveled so far, was landing a research
project involving computers at M.I.T.. One project led to the next and, even
after Mark went on to Albert Einstein in 1977, he continued to do consulting
work for M.I.T..

The event that had the greatest impact on his career, Blank
believes, was the introduction of the original *Adventure* by Crowther and Wood
for the PH 10 system. "We used to spend all our time playing the game,"
B1ank says. "Dave Lebling, Tim Anderson and I felt really
satisfied when we finished *Adventure*, but we didn't know where to go next
for more of the same."

Thinking that they could build an even better game on the foundation
laid down by *Adventure*, the trio began work on what would eventually
see the commercial light of day as **Zork I**. "The original version had 10 or 12
individual problem situations," says Blank, "and input was in the traditional
verb-noun format since we used a two-word parser."

Over the ensuing 18 months, the game was greatly enlarged and decked
out with all sorts of sophisticated enhancements. "What drove us was
the desire to present more and more challenging problems for the players,"
says Blank. One of the key additions was the introduction of so-called "interrupt
routines" which cause certain events to occur in response to other
events taking place.

The parser has also come in for repeated overhaul. "We've redone it
six times, " the designer explains, "to add things like adjectives and noun
clauses." These changes led the way to today's state-of-the-art Infocom
system.

<div style="display: flex; justify-content: space-between;">
	<figure style="width: 45%;">
		<img src="/public/img/articles/eg-inside-gaming-marc-blank/infocom-line.jpg" alt="Zork I-III, Deadline, and Starcross packaging">
		<figcaption class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">INFOCOM LINE</figcaption>
	</figure>
	<figure style="width: 45%;">
		<img src="/public/img/articles/eg-inside-gaming-marc-blank/starcross-zork-iii.jpg" alt="Starcross and Zork III packaging">
		<figcaption class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">STARCROSS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ZORK III</figcaption>
	</figure>
</div>

Although Mark *does* get a chance to play many of the popular home arcade
action games -- and likes the coin-ops at his local game parlor -- his personal
preference is for games which place heavy emphasis on unraveling very
enigmatic situations. "When I'm working on a computer game," he
says, "I create the problems first and then go on to development." Having
some top-notch adventure game designers at Infocom helps a great deal in
this regard, because no problem situation gets put onto a disk until several
people have helped to fine-tune it. "I don't enjoy the cut-and-slash
adventures as much as the ones that stress problem-solving, because the
fight-fight-fight can get repetitious as the player battles against essentially the
same monsters."

That's why most of the games on which he has labored give the player
little or no incentive to fight. You've got to *think* your way through a Mark
Blank creation.

One of the hallmarks of the Infocom line is that all the adventures utilize
text only without illustrations. This is a question Mark has pondered quite a
bit personally and, as he told **Electronic Games**, it has been the subject of
"some arguments around here." Although he hasn't dismissed the idea
of increasing the visual component of his games -- Infocom will be doing
some non-adventure programs with graphics in 1983.

"Pictures or not, adventures are inherently verbally-oriented," Mark
asserts. "The challenges to the player are verbal in nature, and in that light,
I'm not sure how much the illustrations actually help. You can describe things
better in words than you can show them in the simple drawings used in
most computer games."

<figure class="float-right-narrow">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/eg-inside-gaming-marc-blank/marc-blank.jpg" alt="Headshot of Marc Blank (with his name misspelled in the caption)">
	<figcaption class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">MARK BLANK</figcaption>
</figure>

Working as a team with new Infocom addition, Michael (**Cyborg**)
Berlyn, Mark is helping to put the finishing touches on a really novel
adventure program currently going under the title, **Suspended**. It's going
to be a boardgame/computer game hybrid which casts the player as a
disembodied brain hooked up to a mammoth computer.

"The problems players must solve will not be all that difficult in themselves,"
warns Blank, "but getting things done efficiently will be the real
challenge."

And where does Mark see the adventure gaming field heading a little
further along? "I think that, over the next year or so, we are going to see
games with much more sophisticated interaction and complex situations.
There'll also be more attempts to introduce characterization, even in the
viewpoint character, so that the heroes and heroines in the game will
develop as they have adventures and experiences."

When those more sophisticated and challenging adventures do reach the
retail stores, it's a safe bet that the designer of at least a few of them will
be ol' Mark Blank.
