GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary
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- čas přidán 9. 03. 2011
- Google Tech Talk (more below)
March 7, 2011
Presented by Jason Scott.
ABSTRACT
Jason Scott will talk about making the documentary and we'll be screening some portion of the film.
www.getlamp.com/
In the early years of the microcomputer, a special kind of game was being played. With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. In a world of Quake, Half-Life and Halo, it is expected that a successful game must be loud, fast, and full of blazing life-like action.
But in the early 1980s, an entire industry rose over the telling of tales, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing. Like living books, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them.
They were called "computer adventure games", and they used the most powerful graphics processor in the world: the human mind.
Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory. These players have carried their memories of these text adventures to the modern day, and a whole new generation of authors have taken up the torch to present a new set of places to explore.
Get Lamp is a documentary that will tell the story of the creation of these incredible games, in the words of the people who made them.
Speaker Info:
Jason Scott ( www.getlamp.com/director.html )
Jason Scott is a digital historian and archivist who specializes in early microcomputer history and dial-up bulletin board systems. He is the webmaster of textfiles.com, a collection of BBS-era textfiles that has been open to the public since 1998. In 2001, he began filming a documentary about BBSes called "BBS: The Documentary", an 8-episode mini-series about BBSes spanning 25 years and totalling five and a half hours in length. This documentary series was released on 3 DVDs in early 2005. He has been playing text adventures since he was 10, and to this day does not understand why the rod scares the bird. - Věda a technologie
I think text adventure games on ebook readers is a match made in heaven. Amazon could make this go commercial if they started offering those on their kindles.
The problem currently is that most E readers are super slow or have bad touch capabilities but if the hardware side is improved, we can definitely have these sorts of games there. Also i must mention, Choice based games like, Visual novels or games where you select 1 of 4 choices to interact with a story are getting very popular. With the advent of better NLP techniques and machine learning algorithms we can have text based games that don't have the limitations earlier ones did.
@@Sherrygamespvtltd Sure they are slow. But you also don't need very much computational power to do a text-based game. Besides most people are using devices like iPads with a Kindle app on it to do their e-reading. Or they use iBooks. And so you can make engines that work on those devices. Apple and Amazon are always looking for new markets to capitalize, if you do the groundwork making an engine on those platforms, they would be pretty quick to add them to their apps as plugiins.
@@jd9119 the best fit currently would be android devices with e ink displays, which are mainly made in china to my knowledge
Anyone else remember where just the name Scott Adams would fill you with awe? I used to just read the adverts imagining what they could be like if I ever had the money to try them. Finally I played Adventureland, The Count, and Pirates Cove on the Vic20. I treated them with such respect, mapping everything out in my best writing. What special times they were.
I know it was 2 years ago, but I played those Vic 20 games by Scott Adams, all of them. Lot of fun and imagination.
Film starts at 7:45, for those interested!
Thanks.
@alysdexia From what I can tell it's purely the documentary itself, but for some reason the music that plays during one of the segments (the montage segment about adventure games) goes quiet in that version. I'm guessing they took it out to avoid copyright strike although I don't think that was necessary.
Thank you!! Not all heroes wear capes...
Love this documentary used it for a school project and fell in love. I was born in 1992 so I didn't get to see the text adventure craze. I've always had a strong imagination however and take great interest in this! :)
Straight up, this is one of highest quality thought provoking, enticing documentaries I have ever seen. It makes you think, and that is a good thing. TY all that interviewed, the producer/director, etc and of course historically to those no longer with us and unwilling to participate. Its perfect, well done!
Aw
18:07, 22:50, 43:23, 44:51 Audience laughs.
My absolute favorite moment is 44:51. That is awesome.
Loved Infocom but I seem to have more vivid memories of Scott Adams' adventures. I recall dying a lot in Savage Island. :/
This is great. Seeing and listening to heroes if my youth!
I bought this DVD set and was not disappointed.Very good production value, extremely insightful and LOTS of extras. I played IF games in the late 80's back in high school on my C64. Loved Infocom and couldn't wait for the next issue of "New Zork Times", later the "Status Line". One issue had a pic of Amy and a write up on Plundered Hearts. Instant crush.
For any spectrum users from back in the early 80s, I still have Adventure A, B,C and D
on the original cassettes.
I still play one every couple of years on a speccy emulator on my laptop.
My Adventure C is the earlier version with the naughty lady android before it was noticed and removed from sale.
This is a great video.
Interactive fiction isn't dead though, and im not talking about visual novels.
There's this type of IF, that's sort of a combination of text adventures and webcomics. The author writes and draws a story in chunks at a time, and in between these chunks, the readers give 'commands' for what the characters should do next. The author then uses these commands in the next chunk, and the readers see what effect their actions have.
This type of IF is usually called "quests" or "forum adventures"(because they're usually run on a forum) and they're quite enjoyable to follow.
I haven't watched it yet, but I will tonight. I'm a maker of games myself, and I was very inspired/enthralled by text adventures when growing up. Thank you for creating this!
Thank you for allowing it to be viewed here. This brings back memories of my early college days in the late eighties. When I played a handful of Broderbund tittles (all of which escape me in the haze of trendy chemical amusement) but I remember the fun of the puzzles and mazes and the richness of some of the text. Again, Thank you.
53:29 That thought experiment of directly accessing the imagination is beautifully poetic in it's circularity and ironically satisfying in its conclusion.
Lex Fridman
Really enjoyed watching not only the documentary but the Q&A after. Just recently had a friend tell me about Inform and recommended I watch this to get some inspiration, and it fucking worked. Thanks for this tech talk.
I remember playing Dungeon/ Adventure off the cal poly mainframe in 1980..
Those puzzles were so clever... I was so addicted.. IF games such as the Zork series,
Infidel, Ballyhoo, Trinity, planetfall, stationfall, hitchhikers,Cutthroats, etc.. were so awesome...
> GET LAMP
You now have the lamp.
> CLICK LIKE BUTTON
You like this video. Thanks for the feedback!
> ADMIRE JASON SCOTT'S BEARD
That's a fine beard, isn't it?
I learned to touch type in 1983 as a 13 year old kid on the horrible spongy ZX Spectrum keyboard playing Planet of Death, Inca Curse, The Hobbit, Eye of Bain et al. I still have that sundial from Trinity. As a 51 year old chap, I’ve just put 4 hours into Ghost of Tsushima. Some things never change! If you like video game documentaries, check out High Score on Netflix, it’s excellent!
This is amazing! Outstanding documentary.
Only twice in my life have I been addicted to a game. It was a text adventure in both cases (Planetfall and Deep Space Drifter.) Thanks to the creators of great IF and to the maker of this documentary. (Also loved the BBS one!)
My first game was Suspect. Then I discovered BBSes and found Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and so on there. I never took a single note playing any of those games in order to solve them. I kind of think of that as cheating.
@@jd9119
Understandable. I took notes when I had to, and I guess I never considered it cheating bc I figured the designers had notes for themselves (I assume). I got frustrated with Zork, but was absolutely addicted to Starflight for the space exploration part. My next fav were most of the Sierra On-line games.
If anything, what the Interactive Fiction model did was provide an "outline" for all adventure/dungeon-crawler games to follow. Think about it: Anyone who's played,say, the Final Fantasy series for example, you can see that in your mind as a text adventure easily. The same holds true for all the others to follow, except now they have graphics.
Dungeon crawler games were directly inspired by the tabletop version of Dungeons and Dragons. So were adventure games. Two branches from the same route. Rogue and Beneath Apple Manor are dungeon crawlers that existed before adventure games.
Movie starts at 7:50 if you want to skip the talk at the beginning
Wow. I grew up playing everything from Zork to Leather Goddesses of Phobos and more. Thanks Google for sharing this and thank you PaulSoares for leading me here.
Oh my god! This documentary is so impressive and awesome. There is a lot of emotion in it. I really enjoyed watching it. At some points of the movie I was about to cry. Unfortunately I am not sure if this video is a original post but I really hope so. IF is responsible for my career choice. MUD's and text adventures tought me so much. I've spent more than a year of playtime and also developed my own MUD. Thanks for the review of this great, unique, noteworthy era of computer gaming history.
Sad to see such a classic genre of games die out like text adventures. Nowadays it's all about first person shooters and stuff like that. There's something special about that black screen computer screen, and immersing yourself in a game world just through text. I love games that make you use your imagination like old adventure games do.
If it has no mass market, it doesn't mean it's dead.
Great documentary, thanks to the creator. My only disappointment was no Graham Nelson! :-) But so brilliant to see all the heroes of my youth talking about their passion.
He doesn't like publicity as such.
Wow I can't believe I watched this whole thing, it's 2am now and I gave it a thumbs up
I think there should be an Infocom reunion, and they should do another game set in the Zork universe. With packaging complete with feelies etc.
Oh yes. My wallet shall remain open for that.
Legend Entertainment, was founded by the guys from Infocom. And in the 90s they tried to advance IF technologically, by developing a better UI, adding illustrations, sound, music. I think, those advancements were largelly ignored by IF scene, unfortunately.
@Weebo DX I mean the great feat that Legend did, is while keeping pure text-parser IF engine at its core they improved the interface by adding an optional GUI, and presentation by addiing illustrations and sound.
Either Activision wouldn't allow it or they'd stick their fingers in it and fuck it all up.
@@alexxx4434big competition from companies like Sierra On-line... I loved those games
99% of scenes contain a lamp making me obsess about typing "get lamp" lol
I tried to count how many lamps that was included. Some was hard to spot at first as they blend in with the surroundings. :)
I watched several game-related documentaries, but this is the best by far. This is the 4th time I'm going to watch it.
I think the text adventure game that came out a couple of years ago called "Stories Untold" reignited interest in a new generation ! Check out "Stories Untold" if you guys haven't already !
100% agree 👍 The House Abandon is my favourite, but the whole wider Stories Untold game/story is fantastic. Did you see that someone made a horror short film based on it? It's more inspired by than based on, but still cool.
@@BananaTV1978 No i wana see it na !!!!!!
@@stevenaguilera9202 For your viewing pleasure.... 🙂
czcams.com/video/CQJYtxgM0NM/video.html
There's several, including a port of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They still find a way to captivate me and are a truly wonderful experience to be able to play as you travel.
After 40 years, I finally finished Zork I, but not without lots of internet help.
Amazing video. Thank you very much!
This was a wonderful documentary. Both sad and hopeful. Thank you for posting this.
Ahh takes me back.. The games I remember best are ofcourse from Infocom.. And from Level 9.. Snowball and Lords of time etc.
i never played any IF games, but great watch! loved learning about the infocom days and about IF games.
glad to see the genre making somewhat of a resurgence with new devices and more exposure from the internet.
Wrote a text adventure my Freshman year in college using QuickBASIC on a PC clone. Interesting stuff.
The world is a better place because of people like this, loved it! Interesting and fascinating at the same time.
@3dwardXP
I've just taken a couple of shots to illustrate. The first is of Jason Scott walking across the front of the room.
This is actually 60i fields per second. When properly deinterlaced, it looks quite fluid at 60p.
The second is not precisely 'interlacing' but 'telecine' as the movie itself is 23.976fps 'film' framerate being upscaled to 1080i for the HD recording of the tech talk. I'm surprised the interlace was preserved when converted to 720p.
ompldr org /vOTk2bQ
ompldr org /vOTk2bg
this was fantastic and got me interested in something i knew nothing about. awesome!
I am surprised there is such a big documentary for text adventures, but do you know one for the later era of graphic adventure and discussing maybe the future of adventures? Text adventures are so unknown to most, I might have played and finished one or two and that with graphical screen not pure text, but the golden era is of graphics adventure and because they kinda died (not entirely) it would be good to have a good documentary with perspective on that era and the evolution from text to graphics and graphic to today. I tried to search and didn't found anything. So, I am surprised there is one at text adventures but not later era.
I played Zork I at the Radio Shack in South Weymouth, MA everyday after school. I managed to get a score of 220, the highest anyone could figure out at the time. Our school got two TRS 80 IIIs that year leading me to skip woodshop class every day for the rest of the year.
Also where I got my IRC nick, GrueLurks lol.
Thanks in a million.Great content.
Those three documentary ideas sound awesome, C64 data cassette FTW! I couldnt afford a HDD lol, I was 12.
Had both of those and Planetfall for the Atari 800 when I was a kid. Great games, fond memories. :)
@3dwardXP I think it was the initial recording and conversion before being uploaded to CZcams. I've uploaded a few videos myself and seen enough as well, to have a pretty good hunch that with CZcams, at least with 720p, its 'pixels in = pixels out' Lower res transcodes get blended together. That's why the 480p one has more of a blur. With 1080i or 1080p, i think youtube detects framerate; if 60p it keeps progressive. 30p it thinks is 60i, and deinterlaces, even when it shouldn't. (guessing)
Greedy Gulch was the first text adventure I played, but went on to play Colossal later on. Mountains of Kett later on and then of course on to Zork & Infocom...
I enjoyed this long video. I enjoy playing (and creating) modern-day interactive fiction. I even play old Zork and Colossal Cave Adventure every now and then. If there's one thing they forgot, it's mention of the word "xyzzy," including the XYZZY Awards.
Nice video man!
Simple - Let amazon and online book retailers support IF - both through purchases, and through their E-Readers :)
I have a couple questions -
1. Why didn't Crowther want to do the interview?
I would have liked to hear his take on things.
2. Why didn't any of the Infocom programmers finally release the interpreters and other 'inside' code?
After seeing how much love there is on the hobbyist side, and that it's not really a 'moneymaker' anymore, you'd think they would want to get that stuff out to be preserved.
1. He said Crowther doesn't really like to talk about that long ago past, he views it as talking about kindergarten.
2. Activision bought Infocom in 1986, they got the whole company, lock stock and barrel, and that would have included any code or tools that were used to make the games. I would have like to hear the infocom guys talk more about what the actual process was for making a game, though. From the notes they showed of Meretzky, it looks like they basically designed it all on paper, and then they had someone to do the acutal programming of putting it into their game engine. I don't know if the game writers actually did any programming at all or if they had someone else for that
I think the biggest WTF? I ever encountered in text games was The Hulk. I had to write to Keith Campbell at C&VG to get help. The solution for finding whatever it was I was looking for was "Lift Dome" (where dome was a large building). Naturally.
I like the Garth Marenghi fella with the Leisure Suit Larry games in protective bags. Fight the power, my brother!
I LOVE THIS MOVIE...sorry for yelling but I truly love this movie and love text adventure games and I love programming in basic.
I always thought this was just taking the concept behind D & D and adapting it for the computer. I wonder if there is a connection?
The closest thing to this type of game I have played is Disco Elysium. I hope the folks who loved these games in this documentary have had the chance to play it, as I think they would love it, or at least respect it. I think it’s a literary masterpiece.
Can I order the DVD if I live outside the US?
I can't help but wonder...how would Interactive Fiction do if you made it playable on a Kindle, or put it through the iPhone app store?
22:06 I believe him!
While pure, only words, text based interactive fiction (IF) is so niche it's basically a zombie nowadays, there is a very slight variant that is alive and well. Visual Novels are that variant that is alive and well, and they are text adventures with very basic still pictures to go along with the text. If you are interested in IF, maybe think about adding pictures to help the narrative along. And your dead forgotten games can breath again.
And offer the text only based version alongside the Visual Novel for the gamer on the go. Same exact game, with or without pictures, as the user chooses.
Legend Entertainment did that to IF (see their Gateway dilogy)- they added better UI, pictures, music, sounds, while keeping true text-based core.
And... it seems that got largely unnoticed/unappreciated by the scene, as I've seen nothing like that ever since. IF scene got stuck in old Infocom era, which isn't bad per se, but is too archaic for a larger audience, bigger than a very small niche. I think Legend's IF was the peak of IF genre (at least technology wise), and then it stopped advancing.
I'm feeling that resurgence of IF with its further developments is upon us, as we had enough of graphics craze for some part of people to get tired of it. As they say, your imagination is the best graphics.
Gotta pick this up at the website. I LOVED Infocom and had a huge crush on Amy from a picture of here in The New Zork Times....may have been The Status Line. Can't remember if it was before or after the lawsuit.
//walk forward
//get lamp
//cram in butt
This will be a feature in my text adventure, I must have it.
DaveyGB, you'll definitely want to check out Inform instead of BASIC (Google 'Inform 7'). It's not as general-purpose as BASIC, but it's much more suitable to creating text adventure games... for one, you don't have to do any low-level parser engine development (you just have to teach the parser about specific words and terms your game uses), which makes it much faster to get a working game together; two, your game will play on any Z-Machine compatible IF player (eg Frotz, Parchment...)
Bravo sir!
I have just one question... How does a 720p video have INTERLACING!?
18:40 Scot Adams !! "We're not worthy!"
Three, there's an excellent tutorial built-in that'll take you through making your first game, and four, there are lots of plugins and libraries that handle things like "locks and keys", non-player character behaviour, etc.
If you're learning mostly to learn a general-purpose language, these days you'd be better off with Python than BASIC.
Considering the modern usage of AI and LLM's, I wonder if a modern IF adventure using a LLM as a parser, because the LLM understands the "world" in its entirely could it make a new version of IF?
@junkfood66 Frotz for the iPad is awesome, even better with a bluetooth keyboard. Most modern IF games are available for free, and if you can find the original Infocom games (not hard) online. I'm sure there's an Android version out there as well. Frotz is an open source IF engine.
Love this film.
Drinking game idea: Take a drink every time you see a lamp
+Jeffrey Hunt You'd be drunk by the end of the film. Nice. Haha
@@MadelinePearson Drunk? You'd be dead XD
@OBSysteme I agree with you. I myself am learning basic so that I can write my own games. I feel like they over looked the new text game fans.
i mean if they were so inclined they could put out commercial products on digital distribution platforms like itch dot io, Steam & etc. and judge for themselves & see if it's worth it or not. On another note, i enjoyed watching the documentary, it was fun learning about the beginning of text adventure games.
The narrative of this content is exceptionally captivating. A similar book I read provided a multitude of enlightening perspectives. "A Life Unplugged: Reclaiming Reality in a Digital Age" by Various Authors
I've played 'Leather Goddesses of Phobos'. It was a kinky, space/planethopping quest/puzzle game from the '80s. Infocom was eventually bought by Activision.
Well my last video of 2014 teachs you how to make a text-based game on MS-DOS to Windows 8. If anyone is interested in learning how to make a game( Aventure Text Game, or Something Texted based) check it out!
@mystica55121234
i don't see any interlacing at 720p
I love lamp
I like how one of them defined "reading" as a subculture... reading is absolutely essential and can't be avoided in life, but in a way, his erroneous statement is true on so many levels.
The thing is, reading by itself is obviously a normal human function, the problem is reading for your own enjoyment. Few people still go out there to buy books or even comics, somehow the act of reading has been reduced to an obligation/chore that brings nothing but boredom.
17:45 Sounds like ChatGPT story repeated itself.
Interactive Fiction hasn't truly gone out in my opinion, look at VNs and dating sims for example. They all ask for a hell of a lot of reading.
There will always be people who love to read. But you also need to ask yourself if people would really strain their eyes reading on a screen instead of reading ink from a paper. I figure, if people would want to read on a screen, there might as well be some pretty pictures tacked as a bonus. It's just what computers are meant for nowadays.
@OBSysteme ha! I totally agree, as i'm sure you know :)
good stuff, altho im shocked that theres no references to pen and paper role playing games which is basically the same thing just through another medium. These were certainly the games that led us (me and my buddies) to try those rpgs as a kid to begin with.
Is the cave adventure still downloadable?
3:54 Please talk closer into the mic.
Yeah, that's true - incredibly limiting. Well, unless you bought the DVD from GETLAMP.COM - then you'd have seen the 40-minute Infocom-only Featurette, the 30+ short films and features explaining all manner of text games, and the introduction to text games it has for people new to the genre.
@doctorfrog
the video didn't flicker once for me!
Anyone remember the old webpage The Old Infocome Shoppe?
Great documentary, but should rather be called ''Adventure Games - the US story'. There is no proper introduction or mention of the hundreds of European adventures. Especially from UK: Level 9, Magnetic Scrolls, Melbourne House, Channel 8 and lots and lots of other companies. They were all in English language AND they used a much better technological approach than Infocom regarding compressing text and also including graphics IN ONE LOAD (no multiloads due to Cassette being so popular in Europe). I have the utmost respect for Scott and I really liked his previous project on BBS, but considering he spent 4 years making this documentary he could have done much more to make a wholesome documentary on the subject of Adventure games. Also I missed more on the packaging regarding Infocom. It was mentioned, but as a collector of computer games from the 80's I'd like to hear more about who was involved in the whole process of making the game. Why they made them the way they did, etc.
I focused on US companies because I know the limits of my budget and capabilities.
There are additional discussions on Infocom, Caving, and other subjects on the DVD.
It's still the best documentary I've seen on adventure games, period, so don't beat yourself up by my comment bro. :) It was a really great insight into the window that text adventure games were (and still is to people that are aware of them). Those interviews was very interesting to hear.
What are you talking about, isn't MURICA.... ¬the world¬ ?
@mystica55121234
yea definitely see what your saying with those shots, maybe its the youtube compression and not the source material? video stuffs aren't really my forte.
29:40 Smooth.. using VLC there are we?
31:07 It's Pat!
Magic
Bill Hicks with a beard that happened to make a documentary on an esoteric subject.
i my opinion text adventures need to rise up again.:)
plus text adventures deverse its own game console.
To me it wasn't so much playing a game or solving puzzles as it was figuring out how a deranged adventure game designer's warped logic works. It's not about what a rational person would do. It's about putting things together that would only go together in some drug induced reality. One of many rules would be that a weapon is rarely used to kill anything, not even the angry looking squirrel that's blocking your path for some reason. Instead you need to backtrack to some other areas to find a piece of bread, a construction hat, a pair of pantyhose and some other junk that will somehow go together to make a trap. For some reason the pantyhose will work as a drawstring for the trap, but the ball of twine in your inventory won't work since you need it to make a canoe.
>GET LAMP
You get the lamp.
>GET MAD
Make life take those lemons back!
wheres paulsoaresjr i dont see him on my quick search???
I'm a gaming "nerd" if you want to call it that, but I've only played Sierra graphical adventures and on, so this is hardcore even for me haha.
John Romero looks so young