Infocom sells a cave of words to computer owners

What happened

The mainframe original had grown out of an appetite for something larger than the first cave program, and trimming it for machines with a fraction of the memory forced hard editing. What survived was a game that responded to reasonably natural instructions, distinguished between similar objects, and answered nonsense with dry wit instead of an error. Rival products accepted two-word commands and repeated a single refusal message. Infocom's writers treated the reply to a failed attempt as part of the writing, which made a text-only world feel attentive.

The company also solved a distribution problem that plagued everyone selling software at the time. Rather than rewriting each title for every incompatible computer, its programmers defined an imaginary machine and wrote one small interpreter per real one, so a single story file could run almost anywhere. Boxes came with printed maps, brochures and props, partly for atmosphere and partly to discourage copying. For several years the catalog was a plausible answer to anyone asking whether a computer could hold literature.

The world at the time

Home computers in 1980 were slow, short of memory and mutually incompatible, with graphics that ranged from crude to nonexistent. Buyers were largely hobbyists who typed programs out of magazines. Software sold in plastic bags at computer stores, and the notion that a company might be known for the voice of its games was new.

What it changed

Interactive fiction thrived for most of the decade before graphical adventures pushed it aside commercially, then survived as an enthusiast form supported by free authoring tools and annual competitions. The portable interpreter trick reappeared throughout computing. Several of the company's writers moved into other studios, and its puzzle standards still frame arguments about fairness in design.