Table of Contents - Interactive Fiction

My experiences playing the Infocom canon and dissecting some of the mechanics within the games.

Infocom was founded in mid-1979 and specialised exclusively in works of interactive fiction built using their proprietary programming language Zork Implementation Language (ZIL). After compiling, these games would run on a system-specific interpreter, which allowed Infocom to release ports to different systems very quickly. Such an interpreter could be used for all ZIL games across a platform rather than requiring the porting of each one individually.

Unfortunately, year-on-year sales tended to trend downwards slowly for the company. While Infocom's text input parser was leaps and bounds ahead of competitors, and with both the quality of their narratives and the depth of in-game systems improving over time, the growing gaming market became increasingly focused on graphics and action and largely left interactive fiction behind. In 1986, Infocom was purchased by Activision and, just three years later, was shut down.

Infocom leave behind a rich legacy of games — most of which experimental in one or more ways — and their influence can be felt both in their contempories and in modern popular culture.