<!--
	Title: The GameSIG Adventure Game Conferences
	Author: Scorpia
	Source: Computer Gaming World, v4(5)
	Date: October 1984
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<img class="float-left-half" src="/public/img/articles/cgw-the-gamesig-adventure-game-conferences/user-cartoon.jpg" alt="Cartoon of an impressed Compuserve user">

As you sit in front of your trusty computer, trudging through twisty little
passages all alike, or fighting it out with a band of Orcs, have you ever thought "Gee,
I wish I could talk to the person who wrote this game"? Getting in touch with most software
authors could be thought of as an adventure in itself. You could pick up the
phone, but it's likely you wouldn't get through to the person you want. A letter
might be better, but game designers usually have little time to answer fan mail. Yet, for
some game players, talking to the people who write games is almost as easy as activating
a modem.

CompuServe's Games Special Interest Group (GameSIG) is the place where, among
other activities, adventure players from all across the country get together to swap
hints, find out the latest information on new games, and just chat about their favorite
adventures. It's also the place where members have an opportunity that comes
only rarely to most game players: the chance to talk to some of the biggest game designers
in the business.

## LORD BRITISH

The evening of June 14th, 1984, there was an air of excited anticipation on the SIG.
That night, the guest speaker was Lord British, author the marvelous "Ultima"
series. As you might suspect, the conference area was jammed with eager people, hoping
for the chance to talk to him. They were not disappointed.

In the beginning, Lord British had the floor to himself. To a hushed audience, he
gave some details about his current project, Ultima IV. This one, he said, was going to
be bigger than any Ultima before it. Most likely, it would cover at least both sides of
two diskettes, and would be far more complex than any game he had ever written.

Graphics would be greatly improved, and the animation far superior to that of Ultima
III. The maps would have much more detail in them, and monsters in combat would be
able to move individually now, where before they all moved in synch with each other.
But this Ultima would not be one of mere hack and slash; the very concept of the game
had changed. In previous Ultimas, there had been an evil character to defeat. Now,
however, the goal would be different: personal development of the player-character.
To quote Lord British: "The object will be to develop one of your characters into an
Avatar. This will take your players on a journey of eight parts, where each part is
as complicated as any previous Ultima". Wow! Eight games in one!

Having dropped this little bombshell, Lord British went on to tell how transacting
with people and merchants in towns would be much improved. Where before, most of
the "stock characters" said little beyond a mere grunt, now they could carry on a full,
if brief, conversation. And it was here that Lord British dropped his second bombshell.

There would be a lot of towns, and each of them would need a lot of these "nonplayer
characters". It would be a great help, said Lord British, if the SIG members could
give him a hand with this chore. To that end, he had written up a little sheet (with instructions)
for everyone to fill out and send to him. By completing this sheet, a person
would actually create a "non-player character" for Ultima IV! Naturally, this
was a sensation! How often does one get to take part in the creation of a major computer
game? While the members buzzed over this little item, Lord British took a break (his
fingers were starting to come loose), and a list of questioners was made (it was a looong
list!).

Throughout the rest of the evening, Lord British fielded quite a few queries from inquisitive
members. Most of the questions, as you might expect, were about Ultima IV.
The SIG members were hungry for details, and they wanted to know it all!

Lord B., however, kept a few things up his sleeve. "I had best not tell directly of the
plot", he remarked, "for fear of telling too much!". He also mentioned that parts of the
game changed day by day as he worked on it. New ideas, new wrinkles, all sorts of neat
stuff occurred to him as he worked Ultima IV. So, even if he told them anything now,
it might not be that way by the time the game was finished.

Still, there were things he could talk about. Ultima IV would be available by Christmas,
for a variety of machines. The Apple version would come first, to be soon followed
by Atari, C-64, IBM and MacIntosh. Music lovers would be in for a treat: many new
musical scores were being planned for the game, and a new synthesizer had been purchased
to create the background music.

Not all questions were about Ultima IV, of course. For example, one member
wanted to know if Ultima (any Ultima) would ever have transferable characters, as
Wizardry did. It's hard to "say good-bye" to characters developed over the course of
the game; players tend to become rather fond of them.

While such transfers are not in the foreseeable future, there is still hope: "When
I have perfected a role-playing system, and use the computer fully, only then will I
branch out and make scenarios", replied Lord British.

The questions continued far into the night. Finally, as the clock approached one
A.M., the conference was regretfully brought to a close. There were still so many
things to say, questions yet to be asked, but it was time for Lord British to leave.
However, he promised to return for another conference late in the fall, when the
workload on Ultima IV eased a bit.

## MICHAEL BERLYN

The conference with Lord British was a rousing success. And there was more to
come! One month later, on July 18th, GameSIG members had the opportunity to
meet one of Infocom's top game designers, Michael Berlyn, author of Suspended and
Infidel.

Once again, the conference area was packed. All across the country, people were
glued to their terminals as Mike nonchalantly took the floor and began describing
how games were written at Infocom.

"We start with an idea", said Mike. "Lacking that, we go to Zayres, K-MART or
Macy's to shop for one....". With an idea in mind, the background of the game is then
worked out. Once that's been done, the details of the game are filled in.

As an example, Mike cited Zork I. "The whole thing started with the white house.
There was no kitchen table, no bag smelling of hot peppers, and DEFINITELY no garlic!
Those things were added after the environment. Once the environment was written,
and some objects added, the game was well on its way".

Nor are all games written from beginning to end; sometimes, an adventure starts at the
finish: "When I started to write Infidel, there was no tent. As a matter of fact, I
started writing the thing at the ending. Yes, I started writing at the last set of rooms".

From there Mike went on to tell of some amusing things that can happen when
writing games under Infocom's sophisticated development language. He related an
incident from Starcross: "Give something the wrong characteristics, like Dave Lebling
did in Starcross, and you get a situation like this: Next time you play, go into the lab
and type BEAM, OUT. Well, because Dave had given the beam the quality of being a
person, it could be talked to and directed!"

Mistakes of this nature, said Mike, tend to be made when you're working with about
a megabyte of code. In spite of intensive debugging, some oddities do slip through.
Infocom knows about many of them, but there are still a few zany things that can happen
in these games. "Just try anything that comes into your head.... anything that
sounds ridiculous. It may work!".

Regardless of these little slips, the development language (called ZIL for Zork
Implementation Language", is remarkably smart, and takes a great deal of the programming
load off the shoulders of the game writers. "The language doesn't make you do
tiring programming tasks like declaring variables, it does that for you. It's also fairly
intelligent about the background universe. For example, when I wrote Infidel, I didn't
have to 'program' what it meant to look around a room. The game system
automatically knew what 'look' meant, and how to do it. It also knew that if there was
no light there, that you couldn't see. It really impressed me when I first started working
with it".

After explaining some more about the rigorous testing procedures used on
Infocom games (and they go through A LOT of testing!), there was a short break -- Mike's
fingers were getting sore (a hazard of online Conferences) -- and the list of questioners was
made.

One of the first things everyone wanted to know was: What's corning next? Mike
was prepared for this one, and mentioned two games that should be coming out during
the fall: Cutthroats, a murder mystery, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an
adventure based on the book of the same name. A sequel to Sorcerer (title currently
undecided) would be corning out eventually.

Other games were also in the works, but Mike politely declined to give details on
them, except to say of one: "The only thing we know for sure is that it is breaking every
rule ever written about adventuring".

Mike went on to remark that all of Infocom's
games are designed and written strictly by in-house people; no outside submissions
of any kind are accepted from anyone (much to the disappointment of a
few budding programmers present). It does simplify things for Infocom, since all their
writers/designers are salaried; there is no provision for royalties in any form.

In answer to another question, Mike said that he is essentially a self-taught programmer;
he took a course in BASIC while in college, and learned the rest on his own. After
getting caught up in programming, he wrote a game (Oo-Topos), and started a software
company of his own. He and his partners in the venture did not quite see eye-to-eye,
and so Mike left to join Infocom. When asked if there would ever be graphics in an
Infocom game, Mike was quite adamant that there would never be any in an Infocom
adventure game. However, he did leave open the possibility that someday, Infocom
might do something with graphics, other than adventure games.

Finally, after many more questions, the conference came to an end in the early morning
hours. As before, no one really wanted it to stop, but everyone was (a little) satisfied
to know that another conference would be held later in the year.

So, Lord British in June, Michael Berlyn in July. Could there, perhaps, be something
coming in August? The answer to that was a resounding "Yes!", when the series of
special summer conferences closed out on August 22nd with none other than Scott
Adams, of Adventure International (yes Virginia, there really IS a Scott Adams!).

## SCOTT ADAMS

Another crowd was waiting to hear the man who got micro adventure gaming
started. "I'm credited", Scott told them, "with writing the first microcomputer
adventure. This is true. Also, my company, Adventure International, is now the oldest
software house I know of that has continually published to the retail market".

Scott then talked about his latest venture, the Questprobe series. "Last year, AI and
Marvel Comics signed a 10-year license. We will be publishing adventure games built
around all of Marvel's characters, including Spiderman, Hulk, Fantastic Four, etc". He
went on to say that the first six have been partially sub-licensed to Commodore for
distribution, and the first title in the series, "Hulk", should be out some time in
September, with Spiderman to follow in November.

All the games in this line will have fullscreen graphics. And, starting with the second
Questprobe, they will have something else: a full-sentence parser, which he called
SAGAPLUS. While Scott said that his parser would not be as detailed as that of Infocom,
most players probably wouldn't notice. He gave an example: "You can do something
like the following: Pickup all the gems then climb the walls and go east and look in the
crib and get it".

This announcement was met with murmurs of approval, and Scott mentioned he
was thinking of re-releasing his first 13 adventures with the new interpreter. When
he asked the audience if they thought this was a good idea, they responded with a
unanimous "Yes!!".

During the question-and-answer session that followed, Scott revealed that he plans
to bring out his first 14 adventures for the IBM, with both full graphics and the new
SAGAPLUS parser (this in addition to the Questprobe series, which is also scheduled
for the Apple and Atari).

Also on the list of soon-to-come titles is "Buckaroo Banzai", an adventure based on
the movie of the same name. This will have graphics, but Scott didn't say if it would also
have the new parser.

One member noted that, after Adventure–12 (Golden Voyage), Scott had not written
a new game for a long time. He asked if Scott would be writing any new ones, and
received this reply: "It was a very busy time running and managing Adventure International!
We grew from a $0 per year company to multi-million dollar per year company in
only a couple of years. But now I'm back to my love Adventure writing once again!".

One interesting fact that came out during the conference is that Scott doesn't play
other adventure games. When someone asked him to comment on Infocom and
other games, Scott remarked "The only Infocom I played was original Zork on a
mainframe. I loved it! I've not played anyone else's adventures since, as I don't
want to be unduly influenced by someone else's games".

Scott also pointed out a distinction between his numbered adventures and
those in the "Other Venture" series. Numbers are reserved for the games written
by Scott himself; unnumbered games are written by other authors, many of them
freelance. As a matter of fact, AI has on file over 80 software authors from around the
world who do work for them.

More questions. There are always more questions, but never enough time to answer
them all. Despite the pleas of the audience, the hour was late and the conference came
to an end. And, like the other guests, Scott promised to return for another conference
in the future.

So, the GameSIG members were happy. They'd had the chance to talk with some of
the people who had provided them with many hours of enjoyment (and frustration!),
and they could look forward to more in the future. In one way, going to the SIG is
adventure of it's own: you never know who you might meet!
