<!--
	Title: Blank Leaves Infocom
	Source: QuestBusters, v3(4)
	Date: April 1986
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

Adventure enthusiasts can expect to see more new by-lines on Infocom games.
Mike Berlyn left the company last summer, and now Marc Blank, one of Infocom's
original implementers and co-founders, has departed. Blank, who co-authored <u>Zork</u>,
wrote <u>Deadline</u>, and designed the super parser that makes communicating with
Infocom adventures so easy, left the company in early January. "It was just time
to move on," says Blank, "I wanted to do other things." As Vice President of
Computer Software Development at Simon & Schuster Electronic Publishing, he is
now doing those other things in-New-York. Those things include: "artificial
intelligence, expert systems, sorting out new technologies like optical and disk
storage for Simon & Schuster." Some of his projects will be aimed at middle market
and corporate users. "Interactive fiction isn't a priority" at S & S, according to
Blank, but he says "what little they do I'll obviously look at. If there's a particularly
good title or license [such as <u>Star Trek</u>, a big hit for the company], then we'll do it"
According to the QuestBusters' Rumor Hotline, Blank's former office at Infocom
now displays a picture of Mark with a caption that says: "Blank intentionally left
this space."
