It's essentially sheer luck that my first exposure to interactive fiction, as we call it today, was the first Zork. If I played anything prior to that, it didn't make enough of an impression for me to remember it. The uncle responsible for the hand-me-down Commodore 64, the first computer to belong to me personally, probably didn't think of himself as much of a gamer despite the prevalence of games in the collection of disks he sent along with the machine. He certainly considered himself a reader, though (as did I), so I'm sure Infocom all-text adventures were intriguing in ways other games were not. But even then, the simplicity of the original Zork made it a perfect fit for a kid discovering a medium, its bare-bones direct nature hiding a great deal of refinement beneath the surface - just like the world it depicts. Aside from your nameless adventurer protagonist, a few monsters, and a thief referred exclusively to by that title, there are no characters to keep track of, no plot to advance, no complex lore beyond what's required for the solving of puzzles. The central focus is on the interaction between the player and the text of the game world, and the parser that bridges the two. At the time, I didn't know that I was engaging with something that had already gone through years of gradual improvements since its birth on the PDP-10 mainframe in 1977. To use a modern vernacular, it "just worked." You typed in an action, and it either did what you wanted or you had to rephrase it in a different way. The descriptions, while straightforward, were evocative enough to my youthful imagination. In my first play session, I think I made it up to the troll - not exactly far, but not bad as a learning experience. (I'm sure I was eaten by grues more than a few times, however.) The game would take up a fair number of afternoon and weekend sessions, but before long I'd fallen in love with a subsequent Infocom adventure, Enchanter, which had a plot, a clear goal, and an emotional atmosphere for the player to engage with, rather than simply move through. Even at a young age, I could tell that the descriptions in Zork were primitive and functional - going for a similar effect, but roughly-sketched, like a tourist's guidebook. I can identify now that it felt more "video game-y" than later works, existing in the kind of cartoony un-reality we recognize in games with graphics and real-time operation. But I can also appreciate that, in the early days, this was very much the intent.
On the other hand, the sparse, opaque nature of the interface and invisibility of the narrator allowed for effects that would never have been possible with an in-person game, especially if the player was an avid, easily-swayed young reader with an overactive imagination. The legendary lurking grues may have been a necessity on the part of the creators to keep players from wandering around in the dark without sacrificing their agency any more than necessary, but their omnipresence made the shadows feel haunted and alive, an effect only bolstered by the randomized variety in the descriptions of your demise. (Sometimes, a grue would "slither into the room and devour you," and sometimes you would unwittingly "walk into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue." That second one, and its implications of the monster's intangible size, has particularly stuck with me.) We've talked before about the way that early games use implication conveyed through music and box/cabinet art as storytelling devices to compensate for the medium's structural limitations, and these monsters hiding around the game's borders work in a similar way. Not to mention the otherworldiness of interaction - are you talking with the game itself? Its creators? A noncorporeal being overseeing every aspect of the game's world (the "game's master", if you will)? It's a necessary component of interactive fiction, but that only makes it more spooky... even if the ghost in the machine is a smartass - something that would become commonplace in adventure games going forward, both textual and graphic.
Should the modern audience play Zork? Sure, even if that's my usual answer for classics for any variety. But they shouldn't just play Zork. It's foundational, and there's value in understanding the foundations of any medium. But foundations are important for the things built on them, and interactive fiction is a perfect example. It's one of the most active genres in indie game development, and I guarantee there's one out there to fit your genre interests and available investment of time. A lot of those were made by Infocom, literally on the structural foundation of Zork and its interaction and processing systems. Maybe Microsoft will choose to open those up to everyone, eventually, but there was never anywhere else to start but that first white house, that sword, and that lantern.
- B
Send questions and comments to neversaydice20@gmail.com... unlike Zork, we know what those words mean.
