FRANK ANSWERS TO THE TEN MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
(New Zork Times; Spring 1984; page 1-2)
Copyright 1984 (c) Infocom
Transcribed by Graeme Cree
1. WHY ARE YOUR GAMES SO DIFFICULT?
Although our games are interactive fiction, they're more than just
stories: they are also a series of puzzles. It is these puzzles that
transform our text from an hour's worth of reading to many, many hours'
worth of thinking. It is these puzzles that cause a player to suddenly
leap out of bed in the middle of the night and run to his computer because
he just thought of a possible solution to a problem.
The value of our games is that they will provide many hours of
stimulating mental exercise. if the puzzles were signifigantly easier,
then many people would no longer find them challenging. for those people
who find the level of difficulty TOO challenging, InvisiClues booklets are
always available to provide hints.
2. WHY ARE SOME GAMES MORE DIFFICULT THAN OTHERS?
It's often hard to tell how difficult a game is going to be until many
people begin playing it. During 1983, when we double the number of game
titles, we also began putting our games through much more widespread
play-testing. Because we try to incorporate any reasonable suggestions
from our testers, including suggestions for adding hints to problems they
found difficult, the 1983 games were generally a bit easier than our
earlier games.
Beginning later this year, we will be rating our interactive fiction
according to four categories of difficulty. We will continue producting
games in each of these categories in order to provide for everyone from the
neophyte to the hard-core fan.
3. WHY AREN'T HINT BOOKLETS INCLUDED WITH THE GAME?
Two reasons, the first being temptation. Even though the answers are
printed in invisible ink, the temptation to look up the answer to a problem
immediately after getting stuck would be too great for many people. After
all, one of the great joys of interactive fiction is the rewarding feeling
of finding a solution on your own after several hours of exercising the
logic and imagination centers of your brain.
The second reason is cost. If InvisiClues were included, the price
of the game would have to be increased slightly to cover this extra cost.
People who don't want or need the hint booklet would not be pleased to have
to pay this extra amount.
4. WHY DON'T YOUR GAMES HAVE GRAPHICS?
We have nothing against graphics per se. However, given the quality of
graphics currently available on home computers, we would rather use that disk
space for additional puzzles and richer descriptions. After all, as our
famous "brain ad" says, the world's best graphics generator is your own
imagination.
5. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY "RED HERRINGS" IN YOUR GAMES?
People accustomed to standard adventure games, where every item you
run across has one (and only one) purpose, may find our games a bit
disorienting. Some objects will have several uses, and many items will have
no purpose at all - "red herrings." Since the player has to determine not
only where something is useful, but even whether it is useful at all, this
increases the player's mental stimulation. In addition, these red
herrings add to the realism of the game. After all, if you really found
yourself stranded on a doomed planet or exploring an ancienc pyramid, is it
likely that every object you ran across would have one (and only one) use?
Hint: The answer is not "yes.")
6. WHY ARE THE PRICES OF YOUR GAMES SO HIGH?
One reason that our interactive fiction costs a little more than your
run-of-the-mill computer game is all the honing and perfecting that goes on
here at Infocom. Before you think this is starting to sound like one of our
ads, stop and think for a moment. Each of our games lasts hundreds of moves,
and at each move there are literally thousands of possible responses. Add
some magic, or some characters wandering around the game doing their thing,
and the result is staggeringly complex.
Infocom's interactive fiction programs are among the most complex
programs available for micro-computers (and that includes ALL programs, not
just entertainment programs). The writing and perfecting of an average
piece of Infocom's interactive fiction takes nearly a year, and even that
speed is only possible due to our powerful development system. (DEADLINE
author and Infocom V.P. Marc Blank is fond of saying that DEADLINE would
have taken five years to write without our development system - and then
it would only have been ready to run on ONE type of computer.) For
SORCERER, which was released a few months ago, nearly two thousand
individual "bugs" were located and fixed. These ranged from minor typos to
game-crashers. Right up until the day the disk masters were sent out we
were still arguing about whether a bat has paws, claws, or talons. But I
digress.
Another reason is our elaborate packaging, which costs a lot to design
and a lot to produce. (See the next question.)
One final reason our prices are so high is - that our prices aren't
that high! Fifty dollars may seem like a lot of money for a game, but
divide that amount by the 30 or 40 hours you'll probably be spending with
that game, and it actually works out to fairly inexpensive entertainment.
7. WHY ARE YOUR PACKAGES SO ELABORATE?
Because our games are more than games, they're fiction. The purpose of
the package and the many items you'll find inside them are to get you into
the mood of the game before you even put the disk into your drive.
Also, there's a pretty limited amount of space on a floppy disk. By
putting information into the documentation and packaging, we save room on
the disk for the important stuff - the descriptions and puzzles of the game
itself.
Finally, our packages are an attempt to discourage the piracy that is
devastating the software industry. The disk is merely the most important
item in a large portfolio of material that comprises an interactive fiction
game.
8. WHY ARE YOUR DISKS COPY-PROTECTED AND BACKUP-LIMITED?
As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, software piracy is a problem
rampant in our industry. When disks are copied for other than legitimate
back-up reasons, the producer is denied revenue (not to mention the fact that
it's illegal). On a wide scale, piracy results in higher prices as the
constant development cost must be spread over a smaller number of buyers.
Therefore, copy protection helps legitimate consumers like you, as well as
us, by foiling piracy.
9. WHY AREN'T YOUR GAMES LARGER?
People with more powerful home computers frequently ask us this
question. The answer is that we want our games to be available on a wide
number of systems. Our current size limit is around 110,000 bytes. If we
increased this limit, then our games would be unable to run on a number of
machines, including the Atari 400/800, the TRS-80 Model I, and the
Osborne 1. Of course, thanks to our ingenious ultra-neato compression
techniques, we get a heck of a lot into those 110,000 bytes.
10. WHY IS THE VOCABULARY OF YOUR GAMES SO LIMITED?
Hey! First of all, our games understand a HECK of a lot more words
than anything our competitors ever produced. Secondly, you're talking about
interactive fiction here, not some glorified Eliza program that pretends to
converse with the user but actually "understands" nothing that is being
said. Our games actually udnerstand every input they claim to understand.
These inputs fall within the rules outlined in the game manual, and if you
stick to these rules, you should almost never end up using a word the game
doesn't understand.
This problem is always more acute for people playing one of our mystery
games for the first time. Despite all the warnings in the manual, people
always want to grab Baxter, shake him, and ask him WHY WERE YOU RUNNING
DOWN THE HALL DURING THE SCREAMING? Or, WHERE WERE YOU AT 8:00 PM ON THE
NIGHT BEFORE THE MURDER? After all, this is how Columbo or Hercule Poirot
always questions the suspects. Well, if the game were to try to handle
every conceivable question of this complexity, it would occupy 20 disks and
take 15 years to write and test. Just play it by the rules, folks. Stick
to WHERE IS THE SMOKING GUN and TELL ME ABOUT DOCTOR BLANK.
*BONUS QUESTION*
11. WHY DON'T YOU PROVIDE A VOCABULARY LIST WITH EACH GAME?
If you think about it, including a list of all the words a game
understands would run the risk of giving away problems. Here's an example
that you shouldn't read unless you've completed ZORK I. What if you were
perusing the vocabulary list for ZORK I and you noticed the words ECHO,
ODYSSEUS, RAFT, or DIAMOND? The enjoymen5t of figuring out the Loud Room,
cyclops, pile of plastic, and coal mine problems has just been reduced by
these "give-aways."
Also, we like to remain enigmatic.
