Chapter 10 Interview: Steve Meretzky ...............
Chapter 10 Interview: Steve Meretzky .................
In the early 1980s, Infocom’s games were quite unique — so much so that the
company preferred to call them something else entirely: interactive fiction.
Infocom’s titles were totally separate and distinct from the arcade game clones
and derivatives that so many other computer game companies were publish-
ing at the time. Infocom’s interactive fiction appealed to an entirely different
and more sophisticated group of computer game players. The games’ content
was surprisingly literate and professionally made, with a consistent level of
quality that has never been matched. Their text-only nature gave them a liter-
ary quality that lent them some degree of respectability, enough to garner a
review of the gameDeadlinein theNew York Times Book Reviewand the
admission of two of Infocom’s implementors, Steve Meretzky and Dave
Lebling, into the Science Fiction Writers of America as interactive authors. The
Book Reviewhas certainly never reviewed a computer game since, and the
SFWA subsequently changed its rules to prevent the inclusion of any more
interactive authors. Steve Meretzky remains one of Infocom’s greatest talents,
having worked both on one of Infocom’s best-selling games,The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy, and on one of its most respected,A Mind Forever Voy-
aging. Since the demise of Infocom, Meretzky has continued the literary tradi-
tion in adventure gaming — first with a string of titles for Legend Entertainment172