menus for a number of reasons. One, they were way more kludgey and time-consuming
than just typing inputs. Two, they were giveaways because they gave you a list of all
possible verbs and all visible objects. Three, they were a lot of extra work in imple-
menting the game, for little extra benefit. And four, they precluded any puzzles which
involved referring to non-visible objects.
Also, theSpellcastinggames went beyondZork Zeroby having full-on graphics.
Did you make any changes to the way you wrote and designed your games as a
result?
Not much. I think I could take any of my graphic-less Infocom games, get an artist to
produce graphics for each room, and retrofit them into Legend’s graphical engine. The
menu-driven interface would be more problematic than the graphics. Conversely, all
the games I did for Legend had a hot key which allowed you to turn off graphics and play
them like a pure old-fashioned text adventure. So the graphics were always just an
extra, not a mandatory.
In terms of the overall gameplay experience, what do you think was gained
and lost by the addition of graphics to the text adventures?
There’s the unending, pas-
sionate, almost religious
argument about whether
the pictures we create in
our imagination based on a
text description are far
more vivid than anything
created on even a high-res-
olution millions-of-colors
monitor. My own feeling is
that there are probably
some people who create
better images in their
imagination, and some whose imaginations are pretty damn feeble. Still, the change
resulted in adventure games moving in a somewhat lower-brow, less literary direction.
Second, there were some puzzles precluded by graphics. For example, puzzles that
relied on describing something and letting players figure out what it was by examina-
tion and experimentation. An example fromZork I: the uninflated raft that isn’t called
that, it’s called a “pile of plastic.” You have to examine it and find the valve and figure
out to try using the air pump, and only then do you discover that it’s a raft. In a graphical
game, you’d be able to see instantly that it was an uninflated raft.
Thirdly, and most importantly, graphics cost way waywaymore than text. As Brian
Moriarty puts it, “In graphic adventures, you have to show everything — and you can’t
afford to show anything!” As a result, graphic games have far fewer of everything, but
most important, far fewer alternate solutions to puzzles, alternate routes through the
game, interesting responses to reasonable but incorrect attempts to solve a puzzle,
fewer humorous responses to actions, et cetera. In other words, graphic adventures
190 Chapter 10: Interview: Steve Meretzky
Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer’s Appliance