Zork

I am soon going to watch a movie called "Get Lamp". I think it came out a couple of years back. It's about the evolution of text based video games. Most video games are obviously known for their flashy, vibrant imagery. Sure, earlier video games may look clunky to our eyes now, but back in the day, the image you see below was the pinacle of what was possible, at least to the public:

This is a still image from Atari Football from back in the early 1980s. It appears clunky now but i assure you that back in caveman computing times, it was godlike.

The C64 was no slouch when it came to video game imagery either, despite what computohistorians may tell you. I can remember being highly impressed by the graphics & action in Spyhunter. Heck, they even attempted to replicate the laser disc driven arcade oddity Dragon's Lair, albeit with greatly toned down graphics. Most of the people playing video games on the C64 probably took for granted the use of graphics in gaming.

Then along came Zork.

Was Zork* the first text-based video game? I have no idea, and frankly i doubt it. It doesn't matter, because to the thousands of folks who played games on the Commodore 64, Zork was the first text-based video game that they encountered. I would put forth that in the, uh, enlightened public's mind, this was a first.

Text-based video games are simple in concept. Instead of using moving images or pictures to drive the action, words are what creates the world of the game. Obviously early versions of text based games were fairly simplistic if not large in terms of coding. Most of them were probably similar to extravagant versions of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books. In Zork, you started out as someone exploring a small village, only to be eventually led into a vast dungeon underworld. Even at the time, the game had a Dungeons & Dragons like undertone to it.

One of the cool things about the game was that it could actually understand some fairly complex language. You weren't simply limited to things like "get lamp" or "get shield". You could get a little more descriptive that that if you chose, and the computer often surprised you with how much it comprehended. And...there was always that moment that every kid & adult likely tried - the one where you typed in a curse word or two. If i remember correctly, the game would give you a couple of warnings & then would eventually kick you out. I can't imagine the same thing happening in Call of Duty.

I recall attempting to create a text-based game for a grade 10 school project. I was moderately successful but quickly realized just how difficult it is to embed any sort of personality into the game.



*There were various versions of the game that came out. We'll just call it Zork.