<!--
	Title: Infocom & TSP team up for Infocomics
	Author: Infocom staff
	Source: The Status Line, v7(1)
	Date: Winter/Spring 1988
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

Both Infocom and Tom Snyder Productions are located in North Cambridge,
Massachusetts. As the pigeon flies, the companies are about a half-mile from
each other. But thanks to "no left turn" signs, a shopping center, a
dump-turned-park, and a couple of life-threatening rotaries, you have to journey
miles in seemingly wrong directions to drive from one company to the other.

Similarly, Infocom and Tom Snyder Productions (TSP) are philosophical
neighbors separated by a labyrinthine medium. Both companies protect
unique corporate cultures that encourage creativity, and both are known for
producing innovative, high-quality software. Yet Infocom is the king of
all-text adventure games, while TSP is the renegade frontiersman of educational
software. What brought the companies together was their shared daring
to develop a whole new kind of product.

<figure class="float-right-half">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/infocom-tsp-team-up-for-infocomics/lane-mastodon-screen-shot.jpg" alt="Lane Mastodon Screen Shot">
	<figcaption><em>Lane Mastodon faces the anti-dieting fanatic Blubbermen. This illustration and many more are from the electronic pens of TSP’s artists Doug McCartney, Bob Thibeault and project leader, Peter Reynolds.</em></figcaption>
</figure>

## Games for students

TSP was founded in 1980 by Tom Snyder (no relation to the TV talk-show
personality of the same name). While teaching fifth grade, Tom made
his geography and history lessons more fun by devising simulations and games
for the students. Soon he was using his home computer to keep track of all the
class information, and eventually he was designing educational software for
both students and teachers.

Tom doesn't have his Ph.D. in education (in fact, he says his academic record
is "below average"). He's a rock-and-roll musician and a self-proclaimed
computer nerd; yet he is considered one of the country's leading educators. He
has strong convictions, trusts his instincts, and with his talented staff, he
has built a successful and well-respected company.

Though TSP has produced mostly educational software, it has dabbled
before in the entertainment market with *Puppy Love*, where players teach tricks
to an electronic dog, and *The Other Side*, a multiplayer game similar to
*Diplomacy*.

## Ten years of experience

Infocom brought to Infocomics ten years of experience in interactive storytelling.
TSP brought the technology, the artists, and the idea to tell a story
through graphics. Computers today are capable of displaying graphics of extraordinary
detail and color. Most software developers, let loose like kids in a
candy store, spend lots of time and disk space trying to "max out" the graphics
capabilities. (This craze hit a peak recently when the publisher of a new
game boasted "The graphics in the boot-screen take up more disk space than
everything else put together!") TSP, as usual, bucked the trend, focusing its
efforts on *using* the pictures, not just showing them.

TSP designed highly evocative, minimalist, comic-book-style line drawings,
which can move or transform. Thus, even though each Infocomic has hundreds
or thousands of images, there's plenty of room for a long, rich story.
The result: graphics which *tell* and *are* the story, rather than "paintings" which
mask, over-whelm, or are irrelevant to the story.

## Like editing a film

Infocom and TSP were equal creative partners in the development of Infocomics.
Together they kicked around ideas for each story. Infocom drew a
"flowchart" diagramming the criss-crossing paths of each character in the
story, and wrote a script for each scene in the flowchart. TSP then used the
script and flowchart as a foundation, adding new ideas as the pictures were
drawn. Each week TSP gave a work-in-progress disk to Infocom, and like the
editing of a film, both companies worked together to improve both the
text and graphics, right up to the last minute.

Infocom and TSP are proud of the first three Infocomics: *Lane Mastodon
vs. The Blubbermen*, *Gamma Force in Pit of a Thousand Screams*, and
*ZorkQuest: Assault on Egreth Castle*.
