Judith Pintar

Judith Pintar is a sociologist and author of interactive fiction. She is also a Celtic harp player and a composer of instrumental music.

Pintar is the author of CosmoServe, an IF that simulates the interface of Compuserve Information Service (CIS), the first major online service provider before and during the early years of the World Wide Web. The game was written using an early game design system for IF, Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) developed by Mark Welch and David Malmberg, and won the 5th Annual Softworks AGT game-writing contest in 1991. The following year Shades of Gray: an Adventure in Black and White, a game co-authored by a team of Compuserve Gamer’s Forum members, for which Pintar was the principle designer, won the 6th Annual AGT contest in the group category. Shades of Gray is “generally considered the finest AGT game of all time.” The collaborative authorship of the game is referenced as an example of the kinds of creative possibilities that emerged within the early online IF community. Both games were published in a book and CD by David Gerrold, Fatal Distractions: 87 Of the Very Best Ways to Get Beaten, Eaten, Maimed, and Mauled on Your PC, (Waite Group, 1997).

Pintar received a Master’s Degree in Anthropology and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a concentration in science and technology studies, and an area focus on the former Yugoslavia. She is the author, with psychologist Steven J. Lynn, of Hypnosis: A brief history. Currently she teaches in the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics at UIUC and is a faculty affiliate at the Illinois Informatics Institute where she teaches the design and programming of Interactive Fiction.

One of the first musicians signed by the New Age record label Narada Productions in the 1980s, Pintar released three recordings of original music for Celtic harp on their Sona Gaia imprint. Selected compositions were also included on several Narada compilations. Her recordings are now owned and distributed by Universal Music Group.

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