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Zork Returning As a Browser MMO
Gamasutra reports that Jolt Online Gaming is teaming up with Activision to revive the Zork franchise in the form of a casual, browser-based MMO. The Legends of Zork website provides some basic background information: "The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries. A craze of treasure-hunting has swept through the remnants of the Great Underground Empire. The New Zork Times reports that trolls, kobolds and other dangerous creatures are venturing far from their lairs. Adventurers and monsters are increasingly coming into conflict over areas rich with loot. It's a dangerous time to be a newly-unemployed traveling salesman, but it's also a great time to try a bit of adventuring." Gamasutra also has a brief interview with Jolt's CEO, Dylan Collins. There's no word yet whether or not players are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Wow
You know both the men and the women will be eaten by the grue.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
...and you are likely to be spammed by a Grue!
(Joke stolen from Silly friend - couldn't resist... ;)
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
We already have Kingdom of Loathing. Why do we need any more than that for our grue and koblod fixes?
This is the same Jolt that owns the legendary Planetarion (http://www.planetarion.com/) browser game. They don't seem to invest a whole lot of money into Planetarion but apparently are creating an entirely new game. This is sad for me because I prefer science fiction and strategy over role playing and loved Planetarion back in the days. Jolt recently got bought by Omac Industries (http://omacindustries.com/). They also own Nation States, a popular nation simulation browser game.
Gee, someone should have thought of this YEARS AGO!
Oh wait they did.
I'm on dialup, so got tired of waiting for TFA to load. Maybe it's graphical and awesome and whatever.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Obligatory YouTube video.
The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries. A craze of treasure-hunting has swept through the remnants of the Great Underground Empire...
Sounds a bit too much like reality to me.
...that can survive being turned into a MMORPG. Most developers tend to think that making a game into a MMOG adds value, but I tend to think it's the reverse.
1. Are any of the people involved with the original in on this? I know TFA says that they were in contact with Activision regarding backstory, but that's not necessarily the same thing.
2. Will there be a Blackberry-friendly site? They mention the iPhone (booo! hiss!), so I assume there's a mobile version of the site, but they specified iPhone, not mobile, and I'm a paranoiac at heart.
When I read this headline in my feed this morning I almost wept. Zork was the first computer game I ever played (in 1985, at the age of 7), and I remember taking copious notes during play and somehow loving it.
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I am both excited and full of dread. This has a chance to be a great MMOG but my nostalgia and high expectations tell me it is likely to both be (1)Not true to the spirit of the original games and (2)less fun. Maybe I should just go hunt those down instead.
Just not for you.
In related news, Infocom (?) is giving away Zork I, II and III on their website. infocom-if.org
Now I'm definitely more likely to be eaten by a grue.
~AA
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/ beat them to it :D
...nuff said.
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
Sometimes when I look at web-based "MMOs", I feel like I'm in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
"The Great Underground Empire has recently fallen and the land is in disarray. The Royal Treasury has been sacked. The stock market has collapsed, leading even mighty FrobozzCo International to fire employees from throughout its subsidiaries
So it's reality based then?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
When was Zork ever "casual"? Cruel is more like it.
There is a twitter version (grugru) kinda working.
Even though the FrobozzCo has fallen on some hard times, I assure you that everything will be fine once we get our government bailout money.
-JBFrobozz
-It writes, rates, creates, even telecommunicates. Costs less, does more the Commodore 64. Compute's Gazette
Auto-Cannibalism will do nothing to improve your situation.
-Float!
Are probably pushing 50, probably 40 at least, right?
Is there really a good demographic to target with an MMO? I know there are people in that demo that play MMOs (I'm one) but overall I think you're getting a pretty small slice of the pie by going after that crowd with a nostalgia angle.
It can (regrettably) work for movies recycling old TV shows, but the time and money commitment for someone to partake of that is much, much less.
I just don't see it. I always figured those TV show remakes are easy to pitch to studio producers who might themselves be part of that nostalgia market.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
"You no take Candle!"
Cool. I first played Zork on a VAX at Bell Labs, right before Infocom was formally formed in 1979.
There's a great student paper (research project?) from MIT that quite nicely recounts the history of Infocom, the making of Zork, and their fall etc.:
http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/infocom-paper.pdf
(yeah, PDF sorry)
Abstract from the paper:
The success and failure of Infocom, a company founded by members of MIT's Laboratory
for Computer Science, resulted from a combination of factors. Infocom succeeded not only
because it made Zork, a text-adventure game, available on personal computers, but also
because it developed an effective system for supporting new platforms, maintained an
engineering culture that excelled at writing computer games, and marketed its products to
the right audience. Similarly, Infocom did not fail simply because it decided to shift its
focus to business software by making Cornerstone, a relational database. Infocom failed
for many reasons that were closely tied to how the company managed the transition to
business products. Behind the scenes, the transition created a litany of problems that hurt
both the games and the business divisions of the company. Combined with some bad luck,
these problems--not simply the development of Cornerstone--ultimately led to Infocom's
downfall.
Talk about coincidence. A number of the staff in my department at work got into a conversation about old games and brought up such classics as Zork and Planetfall. And then, on the bus home, another group started talking about the 'bad' old days.
Could it be that the gaming industry is suffering from remake-itis like Hollywood? Or does improved technology justify remakes?
... and misses. At least in the Adventure version; I haven't actually played Zork much.
However, as a newly unemployed travelling sales engineer, I may be in great danger of getting sucked in :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The first question clearly is going to be: Will Grues be a playable race?
Course ya do!
Apparently people haven't been satisfied with mere apostrophe abuse and have taken to hyphen abuse. Take for example:
newly-unemployed
One never, ever hyphenates with an adverb ending in -ly. It's already clear by the -ly ending that it is an adverb and that it will be modifying the word that follows. To join it with that word with a hyphen is redundant.
Meanwhile:
Eight Legged Freaks
Game Changing Performance
These terms should have hyphens. Without them, the former is about eight freaks with legs and the latter about a performance being changed by the game.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
> You can't get ye flask!
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Pugh is from Colossal Cave Adventure not Zork.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(computer_game)/
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
...what is a grue?
rj
'Fool.'
Back in the late eighties, I saw a short documentary about Infocom on TV. It was on the BBC (or maybe Channel 4) in the UK. Does anybody know if it still exists today online? I've looked for it a few times, but not had much success.
I'm familiar with the "Get Lamp" documentary which has been in production for a while, but not sure if the director has located this video.