Podcast appearances and mentions of Steve Meretzky

My guest today is the American video game developer Steve Meretzky. Born and raised in Yonkers, New York, he attended MIT, where he earned a degree in construction management. In 1981, after two years spent working in the construction industry, a friend asked him if he would like to become a tester for Infocom, a publisher that specialised in interactive fiction. He agreed and was soon invited to write a game of his own, the science fiction game Planetfall.After he included a reference to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the game, my guest was invited to collaborate with Adams in adapting the novel into a best-selling game. In 1988 he wrote A Mind Forever Voyaging, an ambitious and politically charged work that stretched the boundaries of what a video game could do ––and saw him become one of the first interactive fiction writers admitted to the Science Fiction Writers of America.After stints working for Blue Fang Games, Playdom and King, he is currently VP of design at the mobile games company PeopleFun.LINKSBBC Documentary from 1985 takes us inside Infocom.Play 30th Anniversary Edition of Hitchhiker's Guide in your browser.Google's AI experiment with Zork...Hire Ed Hawkins to voice your game. Be attitude for gains. https://plus.acast.com/s/my-perfect-console. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Das Textadventure Planetfall von Infocom darf als Paradebeispiel für das goldene Zeitalter der Textadventures gelten, es vereinte die von Infocom gewohnte Rätselqualität mit einer interessanten Prämisse, einem humorvollen Background und einer besonderen Innovation: Besonders bemerkenswert ist der virtuelle Begleiter Floyd, ein Roboter, der das Spiel nicht nur auflockert, sondern auch eine gewisse emotionale Tiefe hinzufügt. Chris und Gunnar sprechen über das Gameplay und die Entstehung von Planetfall und seinem Nachfolger Stationfall. OT-Fassung: Diese Folge enthält O-Töne des Entwicklers, die auf Deutsch übersetzt und von Dennis Richtarski neu eingesprochen wurden. Und eine übersetzte Passage aus dem Spiel. Wer das alles lieber auf Englisch hätte, findet die Version mit englischen O-Tönen bei Patreon (ohne Paywall). Interview: Parallel zu dieser Folge ist das Interview (englischsprachig, aber mit deutscher Zusammenfassung am Ende), das wir für diese Folge mit dem Entwickler des Spiels, Steve Meretzky, gemacht haben, erschienen: ohne Paywall auf Patreon und Steady. Infos zum Spiel: Thema: Planetfall Erscheinungstermin: August 1983 (USA) Plattform:MS-DOS, später alle anderen Plattformen der Ära Entwickler: Infocom Publisher: Infocom Genre: Text-Adventure Designer: Steve Meretzky Podcast-Credits: Sprecher: Christian Schmidt, Gunnar Lott - mit Einspielern von Steve Meretzky Audioproduktion: Johannes DuBois, Christian Schmidt Titelgrafik: Paul Schmidt Intro, Outro: Nino Kerl (Ansage); Chris Hülsbeck (Musik) www.stayforever.de

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we take a short break from our series on Metroid Prime to catch up on the mail bag. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary. Issues covered: GoldenEye, Republic Commando influences, tracking data in games, informing your decisions, figuring out what to do with your data, Arecibo radio telescope, feeling like we're in the game, a favorite multiplayer mode, socially playing GoldenEye, choosing weapons for Dead Space, keeping your enemies closer in Dead Space for tension, what's with all the remakes, why you might do a remake, not enjoying older media, training your new generation of creators, likening GoldenEye 007 to a heist, quicktime events, systemic approaches to spectacle, players knowing they are playing a boring game, feedback through animation, "breaking the game," acceptable frame rates, not feeling the 60Hz, picking a goal and sticking with it, taking a village to fix frame rate, finding the frame rate that makes sense for your game, new funding models, GamePass and 150 million monthly active users, hidden objectives in games, the fun of discovering an objective, cost accessibility and game sales. Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: GoldenEye 007, gonsalet, DOOM (1993), Quake, MDK, Outlaws, Nintendo 64, Nintendo Switch, Republic Commando, Halo, Rainbox Six: Rogue Spear, SWAT 4, Irrational Games, Ken Levine, Freedom Fighters, IO Interactive, Star Wars, Unreal, Alex Epton, Deus Ex, The Walking Dead, The Art of Live Ops, Maple Story, World of Warcraft, Steve Meretzky, Infocom, Sam Bates, Sean Bean, Contact, Assassin's Creed, Brett Baptist, Blarg42, Dead Space, Capcom, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, System Shock, Callisto Protocol, Ian Milham, Shadow of the Colossus, Medi-evil, Link's Awakening, Call of Duty, Daron Stinnett, Electronic Arts, Michael, Arkham Asylum, God of War, Dark Souls, From Russia With Love, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Warzone, Fortnite, Rare Studios, Grant Kirkhope, mysterydip, Tears of the Kingdom, Skyrim, Eric Johnston, Starfighter, Breath of the Wild, Microsoft, Activision/Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, Artimage, Jedi Starfighter, TimeSplitters 2, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.  Next time: Back to Metroid Prime Twitch: brettdouville or timlongojr, instagram:timlongojr, Twitter: @timlongojr and @devgameclub Discord  DevGameClub@gmail.com

Jahre, bevor Harry Potter Zauberer-Schulen hip gemacht hat, brachte Steve Meretzky mit seiner Trilogie rund um den jungen Ernie Eaglebeak das Thema bereits auf heimische Bildschirme. In seiner Spellcasting-Reihe dreht […]

Steve Meretzky is an American video game developer best known for creating Infocom games in the early 1980s, including collaborating with author Douglas Adams on the hit interactive fiction version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the comically titled Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Later, he created the Spellcasting trilogy, the flagship adventure series of Legend Entertainment. His keen wit, prose, and coding skill made him one of the first interactive fiction writers admitted to the Science Fiction Writers of America. He has been involved in almost every aspect of casual game development, from design to production to quality assurance and box design.

Callie Smith and Drew Cook welcome guest Aaron A. Reed to discuss his 50 Years of Text Games project as well as 1985's A Mind Forever Voyaging. Aaron's experiences as both reader and author lead us to some great exchanges and insights into Steve Meretzky's classic game about art, political witness, and as-yet unexplored possibilities in computer games. Aaron's current project, 50 Years of Text Games, is a history of interactive text as told in essays, images, and infographics. See below for more information, including Aaron's sample book chapter about A Mind Forever Voyaging. We're looking forward to seeing the final product! 50 Years of Text Games: Kickstarter page A Mind Forever Voyaging sample chapter New to Gold Machine? This podcast (Gold Microphone) is a spinoff from Drew Cook's project to play and document every Infocom game. You can find that content (still in process) at Gold Machine. Drew Cook and Callie Smith come together here to have less formal conversations about the joy of playing these classic games. Get in touch! Drew and Callie don't monetize any content from the Gold Machine project. The best way to reward our efforts is by reaching out. Start a discussion, suggest a game, or leave a nice review someplace. We started these IF projects to meet people and have some rewarding IF conversations. golmac@golmac.org Drew's Twitter: @GolmacB Callie's Twitter: @golmac_callie

Michael Dornbrook Interview Part 1   He was there at the birth of Infocom, founded the Zork Users Group, the first hint books, and stayed on through thick and thin.   Michael Dornbrook is an industry legend and he sat down for a mammoth interview with me.  The first half covers his background, the founding of Infocom, his involvement, the creation of InvisiClues, some pretty aggressive advertising and the first signs that something may not be right in the house that Zork built.   Links: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,52777/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldornbrook/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathematical_Competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infocom https://www.filfre.net/2012/07/the-zork-users-group/ https://www.mobygames.com/company/infocom-inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCorp https://typewriterdatabase.com/1923-underwood-5.10903.typewriter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Meretzky https://www.filfre.net/2012/07/the-zork-users-group/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InvisiClues https://www.filfre.net/2013/03/the-top-of-its-game/ http://www.chrishecker.com/Can_a_Computer_Make_You_Cry%3F https://www.mobygames.com/game/fooblitzky https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/24/apple-launched-macintosh-on-january-24-1984-and-changed-the-world----eventually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams

The Famous Computer Cafe This is a podcast episode featuring three interviews with people who created a radio show that did hundreds of interviews. The Famous Computer Cafe was -- not a restaurant -- but a radio program that aired from 1983 through the first quarter of 1986. The program included computer news, product reviews, and interviews. The program was created by three people — who were not only the on-air voices, but did all the work around the program: getting advertisers, buying air time, researching each day's computer news, booking interviews -- everything. Those three people were Andrew Velcoff, Michael Walker (now Michael FireWalker), and Ellen Lubin (later Ellen Walker, now Ellen Fields.) For this episode of Antic, I got to talk with all three of The Famous Computer Cafe's proprietors. There were several versions of the show, which aired on several radio stations, primarily in California. A live, daily half-hour version allowed phone calls from listeners. Taped versions (running a half-hour and up to two hours) also aired daily. The show started in 1983 on two stations in the Los Angeles area: KFOX 93.5 FM and KIEV 870 AM. In 1985 it began airing in the California Bay Area: on KXLR 1260 AM in San Francisco and KCSM 91.1 FM in San Matro, and KSDO 1130 AM in San Diego. Also in 1985 a nationally syndicated, half-hour non-commercial version of The Famous Computer Cafe was available via satellite to National Public Radio stations around the United States, though it's not clear today which stations ran it. To me, the most exciting thing about the show was the interviews. The list of people that the show interviewed is a who's-who of tech luminaries of the early 1980s.  But not just computer people: they interviewed anyone whose work was touched by personal computer technology. musicians, professors, publishers, philosophers, journalists, astrologers. The cafe aired interviews with Philip Estridge, the IBM vice president who was responsible for developing the PC; Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates; Atari Chairman Jack Tramiel; Bill Atkinson, developer of MacPaint; Infocom's Joel Berez; Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek; musician Herbie Hancock; Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts; author Douglas Adams; Stewart Brand, editor of the Whole Earth Catalog; psychologist Timothy Leary; science fiction writer Ray Bradbury; synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog; and pop star Donny Osmond. The list goes on and on and on. By mid-1985, the show had run more than 300 half-hour interviews. Here's the bad news. Those episodes, those interviews, are lost. Today, a recording of only one Cafe episode is known to exist. That show, which aired January 2, 1986, includes an interview with Rich Gold, creator of the Activision simulation Little Computer People; a call-in from tech journalist John Dvorak; and commercials for Elephant Floppy Disks and Microsoft Word. The entire 29-minute episode is available at Internet Archive, with the gracious permission of the show's creators. It's an amazing time capsule -- which survived because Rich Gold, interviewed on the program, saved a cassette of that show. Perhaps, somewhere, there are hundreds more episodes waiting to be re-discovered — if someone has the recordings. If you do, contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com. The good news is that transcripts of six interviews do exist (and are now online): Timothy Leary, Donny Osmond, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky; Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series; Tom Mahon, author of Charged Bodies; and Jack Nilles, head of the University of Southern California Center for Futures Research. Check this episode's show notes, at AtariPodcast.com, for links to the one episode, the six transcripts, and the cool Famous Computer Cafe logo. You'll hear the interviews in the order in which I recorded them. First up is Michael FireWalker, then Ellen Fields, then Andrew Velcoff. The interview with Michael FireWalker took place on May 27, 2020. The interview with Ellen Fields took place on June 1, 2020. The interview with Andrew Velcoff took place on July 3, 2020. Special thanks to fellow researcher Devin Monnens, and the Department of Special Collections at Stanford University. This podcast used excerpts from the one The Famous Computer Cafe episode that is known to exist. That episode, now available at Internet Archive, was digitized by Stanford University (the physical tape is in their special collections located in the Stanford Series 9 of the Rich Gold Collection (M1510), Box 2.) If you have any other recordings of any Famous Computer Cafe episodes, please contact me at antic@ataripodcast.com. The Famous Computer Cafe 1986-01-02 episode The Famous Computer Cafe interview transcripts The Famous Computer Cafe ads, photos, articles

I mean, it's Steve Meretzky, one of the greatest game writers and puzzle designers of all time. He's also served as VP of Games at King, VP of Creative at GSN, and VP of Game Design at Playdom/Disney. Steve is a hilarious creative force for good, and in this interview he shares stories and insights from his wide ranging and impactful career making games. Interested in contacting or working with Steve? You can find his LinkedIn profile in the show notes.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “text adventure” computer game was designed by Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky. It was released by Infocom in 1984. The game allowed you to play through part of the story as Arthur Dent, and then as other characters. Bobby Blackwolf joins us as our special “gaming expert” guest! Please […]

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was released by Infocom as a “text adventure” computer game in 1984. It was designed by Douglas Adams himself along with Steve Meretzky. Please send us your comments, questions, requests and complaints. You can reach us at britishinvaders@gmail.com, and you can find us on the British Invaders Facebook Group. […]

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide and one man responded the only way he knew how: by channeling his horror into a video game. My favorite video game. So let's leap through time as the artificial intelligence Perry Sim and see what A Mind Forever Voyaging tells us about our present moment. Bibliography and Further Reading I could not have written this piece without the website The Digital Antiquarian and its many excellent articles about Infocom and Interactive Fiction by Jimmy Maher See in particular his series of posts on A Mind Forever Voyaging, beginning with this article. This post also draws on Jason Scott's documentary about text adventure games, Get Lamp, more information about which can be found at the official website. See also "A Mind Forever Voyaging - Interview with Steve Meretzky", EUROGAMER.de, 2013 If you'd like to play A Mind Forever Voyaging for yourself, you can play it online, or you can legally download the game file on Github (click on "COMPILED") which can be played with numerous interpreters that can be found cataloged on the Inform Fiction website. For this piece I played the game again on my Mac using the interperter Gargoyle.

Join us to chat with Steve Meretzky, a true titan of text adventures. Find Steve online at: - boffo.us (http://boffo.us/) Special Guest: Steve Meretzky.

Steve Meretzky has been called the Steven Spielberg of adventure games, and the funniest man in the game business. Seeing his name on a game box is akin to seeing The Beatles on an album cover, and his resume reads like a best-of compilation. In this week's episode, this game design all-star talks about what LiveOps looked like back in 1982 and the importance of using data throughout the game design process.Support the Show.

The Infocom Source Code Episode: The Specialness of Infocom, The Craft, The Z-Machine, Z-Machine Glories, Full Sentences and Every Platform, GET LAMP, The Infocom .ZIP File, A Release, Stu Galley, Github, The Clones and Branches, Steve and Kevin have a chat. An episode about the release of the Infocom Source Code on Github. It's currently available on the HistoricalSource collection there: https://github.com/historicalsource  The ZIL Language is now having a little renaissance and I hope to see some actual games come out of it. Until then, I'm not kidding - type in the name of any Infocom game and you can probably be playing it within seconds. I recommend a walk through the document Steve Meretzky wrote at Infocom to explain the ZIL source code here: https://archive.org/details/Learning_ZIL_Steven_Eric_Meretzky_1995  Here's the video of the chat with Steve and Kevin: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/416801231 

Jetsetter Kevin Savetz flies to the GitHub lair on Skullcrusher Mountain to interview Steve Meretzky about what it was like to make games in the 80s.

Jetsetter Kevin Savetz flies to the GitHub lair on Skullcrusher Mountain to interview Steve Meretzky about what it was like to make games in the 80s.

To release a game, or to not release a game? That is the question. Well, certainly for Blizzard back in the mid-nineties. Their foray into the adventure genre didn't exactly go to plan. The idea, to expand more on the Warcraft universe, was a good one. The game's formulation was not. Adrian is here to tell Rob and Dylan all about this fascinating story that transcended the globe. What do you mean Russia and Korea can't work together??? Check out our follow-up Q&A with Warcraft Adventures' consultant Steve Meretzky here. Fancy discussing this podcast? Fancy suggesting a topic of conversation? Please tweet us @arcadeattackUK or catch us on facebook.com/arcadeattackUK All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.

Fredrik discusses VR with Noah Falstein of the Inspiracy (and previously companies such as Google and Lucasfilm games). We talk about where VR is today, which platforms are good today and what might happen going forward. VR might be on the verge of a big breakthrough but there is still a lot left to be discovered, from ways of controlling experiences to entire new genres. Recorded on stage at Øredev 2017. Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS! Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive. If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! Links Noah Falstein Lucasfilm games Indiana Jones and the last crusade Noah’s keynote - “The real, the virtual, and the cortex” Noah’s second presentation - Lucasfilm games and the rise of Lucasarts Habitat The Habitat promotional video Club Caribe Quantum link The QWERTY keyboard The OS X dock Google Spotlight stories Pearl Special delivery - by Aardman animation The Simpsons VR episode A nice (360) flight over Pyonyang James Cameron’s Avatar sequels Games for health 40 predictions for VR/AR through 2025 Dataglove Jaron Lanier Apple Newton Polybius Jeff Minter Virtual virtual reality Portal The lost bear Steve Meretzky Planetfall The Sims Doom Castle Wolfenstein Katamari damacy Memory palaces Alphago and Alphago zero The holodeck Dream park, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes Ready player one Black mirror Titles Nobdy had ever experienced that I become a character in the computer? A realtime, constant back and forth A version that doesn’t allow you to do most of the fun stuff It demos well Still looking for the killer apps in VR The grammar of VR storytelling The Spielberg or Lucas of VR An “of course” moment Something came along and ate the flower I’m tired of watching things eat eachother The Pixar movies of 2020 Hard plastic is actually preferable As scary as they need to be A robot named Floyd We were discovering entirely new genres Put that house into VR Page number 27: things you find in a kitchen

In which I do a Let's Play of classic text adventure, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! Journey of the Sorcerer by Eagles, redone by Joby Talbot; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Infocom (mainly Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams).

Handtuch und Bademantel sind wir zusammen mit Arthur Dent auf der Suche nach echtem Tee. In der Herz aus Gold benutzen wir den Unendlichen Unwahrscheinlichkeitsantrieb, um Arthurs gesunden Menschenverstand zu entfernen. 1000 Tode sterbend, texten wir uns durch das Text-Adventure von Douglas Adams und Steve Meretzky.

Christian Schmidt und Gunnar Lott unterhalten sich diesmal über das Spiel Superhero League of Hoboken, das Genie von Steve Meretzky und über die Firma Legend Entertainment, das sind gleich drei Namen, die keiner kennt. Dabei ist Legend sogar die Lieblingspielefirma des Herrn Lott.

The Game Developers Conference has come to an end and I’ve put together a fantastic roundtable to recap the show. On the show I have Brent Lassi from VirginWorlds.com, Michael Zenke from Slashdot and Massively.com, and Michael Gordon Shapiro from MikeMusic.com (and the man responsible for the Gaming Steve theme song). Mike even sings a bit of his theme song on the show … something to behold. Enjoy! Gaming Steve Episode 71 Program Game Developers Conference Day 3 Recap How on earth did one guy create an MMORPG with a player base of 1.8 million people? The Chronicles of Spellborn is still alive and kicking. What are Cryptic Studios and Jack Emmert up to? What did game designers rant about this year? Why do game developers dress so poorly? What crazy game did Steve Meretzky design at this year’s Game Design Challenge? WebWars: EVE sounds freaking awesome. Why is Age of Conan – Hyborian Adventures going for an M-rating? Why is GDC the place to be if you want to get into the game industry. Finally, we get all goofy after three intense days. Download the show (56 minutes): Gaming Steve Episode 71 (MP3). Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3). Add the Gaming Steve Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator.