The History and Future of Zork

Matt Barton writes "I thought folks might be interested in my History of Zork feature on Gamasutra. I interviewed three of the original 'imps' for the piece (you can read the full interviews online) as well as Nick Montfort (author of Twisty Little Passages) and Howard Sherman (president of Malinche Entertainment). The article covers the original trilogy, as well as Enchanter and the later Activision games such as Zork: Grand Inquisitor."

Comments

A couple of comments...

[slashwritr]

Good article, although I found the interviews more interesting (since there was less editorial and more of a peek into the minds of such IF pioneers as Meretzky and Lebling).

Some comments about the article itself:

Zork is not obsolete; merely under appreciated. Underappreciated? Perhaps by the newer generation of gamers. Practically everyone from my generation knows what Zork is. Heck, the author even contradicts himself in later statements:

It's quite likely that no computer game in history has ever inspired as much prose as Zork... and

To say that Zork is an influential adventure game is like saying the Iliad is an influential poem... If it's under appreciated, how can it inspire more prose than any other game in history? How can it be called influential? Make up your mind.

Perhaps Zork is not the past of gaming, but its future. As someone who's played nearly every Infocom game out there, I'd be happy if that company or any of its authors made a comeback; however, it's quite unlikely, and IF will be a niche market for the forseeable future (I'm happy to be part of that niche). I doubt that many people are going to sit still long enough to read a lot of verbose text, even if the parser is as intelligent and as witty as HAL or Deep Thought.