Infocom
 |
|
| Industry | Entertainment/Business software |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 22, 1979 by MIT |
| Defunct | May 5, 1989 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
|
Key people
|
Dave Lebling Marc Blank Albert Vezza Joel Berez Steve Meretzky |
| Products |
Zork series |
Zork series
Planetfall series
Leather Goddesses of Phobos series
Deadline
Z-machine
Cornerstone
Computer game version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Infocom was a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone.
Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979 by MIT staff and students led by Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Albert Vezza, and Joel Berez and lasted as an independent company until 1986 when it was bought by Activision. Activision finally shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom Zork brand. Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002.
The name was later registered by Oliver Klaeffling of Germany in 2007, which itself was abandoned the following year. The Infocom trademark is currently held by Pete Hottelet's Omni Consumer Products, who registered the name around the same time as Klaeffling in 2007.
Infocom games are text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted. Generally the program will respond by describing the results of the action, often the contents of a room if the player has moved within the virtual world. The user reads this information, decides what to do, and enters another short series of words. Examples include "go west" or "take flashlight".
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