Infocom

One of the seminal IF companies of the 1980s, which was also responsible for the Z-machine, Infocom was formed by ten members of MIT's Dynamic Modelling group in 1979. It was best known for a number of games including Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The company merged with another game company, Activision, in 1986. In 1989 Activision effectively dissolved what was left of Infocom. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark around 2002 (though not the copyright to the games); Pete Hottelet of Omni Consumer Products LLC acquired the trademark in 2007.

The Imps

Authors of games at Infocom were called Implementors, or Imps.

• Dave Anderson
• Michael Berlyn
• Marc Blank
• Amy Briggs
• Liz Cyr-Jones
• Stu Galley
• Dave Lebling
• Steve Meretzky
• Brian Moriarty
• Jeff O'Neill

Additionally, there are authors and collaborators who may or may not have been called Imps but who contributed to the writing of Infocom products:

• Douglas Adams
• Bob Bates
• Jim Lawrence

Links

General Info

• The Infocom Documentation Project - cleaned-up game documentation.
• The Infocom Gallery - scans of original product material.
• The Infocom Homepage.
• Two separate sites called Infocom - The Master Storytellers.
• invisiclues.org - notable for a wide collection of contemporary articles about Infocom, and an online Infocomics player.
• The Museum of Computer Adventure Game History's page.
• The Infocom section on Paul David Doherty's Adventure Page.
  • Infocom Fact Sheet - History, list of all game versions etc.
• The Infocom Bugs List.
• The Obsessively Complete Infocom Catalog, by Andrew Plotkin.
• historicalsource on GitHub includes Infocom game source code, recovered from the "Infocom drive".
• The Infocom Cabinet: Binders and Folders of Infocom, Inc. (1981-1987) - digitized scans of internal company material.
• Down From the Top of Its Game - The Story of Infocom, Inc. A detailed report from 2000 by Hector Briceño, Wesley Chao, Andrew Glenn, Stanley Hu, Ashwin Krishnamurthy, and Bruce Tsuchida. (Mirror.)
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe.
• Infocom page - at Lysator.
• infocom.elsewhere.org - mostly mirrors of other sites.
• Infocom material at the IF Archive.
• Infocom at Wikipedia.
• Infocom page at MobyGames.
• Infocom games (archive) on Baf's Guide.
• Infocom at TV Tropes Wiki.
• Infocom at Zork Wiki.

Discussion

• Infocom Trivia Quiz (archive) by Graeme Cree. From XYZZYnews #5.
• You Know You've Played Too Much Infocom When... (archive) by Doug Atkinson. From XYZZYnews #6 (archive).
• GeekList: Fond memories of nights spent typing (a look at Infocom's games) - at BoardGameGeek.
• Discussions about Infocom and its history on the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup.