Infocom co-founder Dave Lebling explains how he created Zork and blazed a trail for interactive fiction game development in a postmortem talk at GDC 2014
May 9, 2014
"Every time we turned around, someone would come up with an idea. Everything we came up with made more work for us!"
- Infocom co-founder Dave Lebling explains the haphazard design process of his classic adventure game Zork. Infocom co-founder and Zork creator Dave Lebling gave an excellent hour-long talk at GDC 2014 explaining, among other things, the creation of both the mainframe and microcomputer versions of Zork, the trials and tribulations of coding a cutting-edge text parser, and what it was like to experiment with self-publishing at a time when most PC games were sold in hand-packed plastic bags. It's well worth watching for anyone with even a passing interest in classic game design. We've taken the liberty of embedding the free video of "Classic Game Postmortem: Zork" above, but you can also watch it here on the GDC Vault.
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers. Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech
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