bit of fun, writing them was probably going to be even more fun. I didn’t have to prove
myself, for a few reasons. First, I’d known Marc for a few years at MIT; we were both
involved with running the campus film program, so he knew that I was a pretty
hard-working and creative person. Second, Infocom was still quite small and informal,
with virtually no bureaucracy involved in such decisions. And third, in making sugges-
tions while testing games, I’d shown that I understood the game and puzzle design
process.
So what was your inspiration forPlanetfall?
My main interest as a reader, and as a writer, was science fiction, so it was a foregone
conclusion that the game would be SF. And since character interaction was what the
Infocom development system was weakest at, an environment like a deserted planet
seemed like a good idea. Beyond that, I can’t really say.
What were your design goals with the Floyd character?
The idea of having a single, very well fleshed-out non-player character was a very early
design focus ofPlanetfall. The Infocom games up to that point had usually had half a
dozen characters each, such as the wizard, genie, dragon, princess, and gnomes inZork
II. Because of the large number of such characters, all were rather thin. I thought that
by having just one other character (not counting the extremely brief appearances by
Blather and by the alien ambassador during the opening scene) I’d be able to make that
character more interesting and more believable.
I can’t remember how I got from that point to Floyd, although “cute robot” was a
very early decision. Perhaps the influence was theStar Warstrilogy, which was then
betweenEmpireandJedi. The character of Willis, a cute alien in Robert Heinlein’s book
Red Planet, may have been another influence.
Did you always plan to force the player to allow Floyd to be killed in order to
win the game?
No, that decision definitely came midway in the game design/implementation process.
Floyd was turning out to be somewhat more humorous than originally conceived, and
he was also turning out to be somewhat more sentimental a character than originally
conceived: rubbing his head against your shoulder, getting his feelings hurt, discover-
ing the remains of his old friend Lazarus, et cetera. It was clear that people were going
to be very attached to him, and at some point the idea just clicked that I could create this
really emotional moment.
Also — and this is a relatively minor influence on the decision, but still worth men-
tioning — at the time Electronic Arts was just getting started. They were running a
series of ads meant to establish their stable of game designers as artists. One of the ads
quoted one of their designers as saying something like, “I want to create a computer
game that will make people cry.” There was a little touch of a budding rivalry there, and
I just wanted to head them off at the pass.
174 Chapter 10: Interview: Steve Meretzky