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ey must feed an elderly man who reveals himself as the dungeon master and shows them the doorway leading to the final hallway after the player solves the final puzzles and accesses the treasury of zork the dungeon master appears and transforms the player to look like himself signifying the player s succession to his position before he vanishes ending the trilogy the 1977 version of the game is mostly similar to zork i but includes several areas puzzles and treasures that became part of zork ii as well as the puzzle room and the endgame that became part of zork iii additionally after the player finds and stores all 32 treasures the dungeon master invites the player to the tomb of the unknown implementor leading to the endgame development edit inception edit marc blank in 2018 bruce daniels in 2009 and dave lebling in 2010 tim anderson marc blank bruce daniels and dave lebling began developing zork in may 1977 the four were members of the dynamic modelling group a computer science research division at the massachusetts institute of technology mit laboratory for computer science anderson blank and daniels as students and lebling as a research staff member 12 their work was inspired by colossal cave adventure a text based game that is the first well known example of interactive fiction and the first well known adventure game adventure was immensely popular among the small population of computer users of the time and a big hit at mit in early 1977 13 by the end of may players had managed to completely solve it 8 the four programmers began to design a game that would be a better text adventure game with inputs more complex than adventure s two word commands and puzzles less obtuse 8 they believed that their division s mdl programming language would be better suited for processing complex text inputs than the fortran code used in adventure 8 14 the group was familiar with creating video games blank and anderson had worked on a multiplayer trivia game called trivia 1976 and lebling was heavily involved with maze 1973 a multiplayer first person shooter and the first 3d first person game ever made lebling first created a natural language input system or parser that could process typed two word instructions anderson and blank built a small prototype text game to use it 8 12 zork s prototype was built for the digital equipment corporation dec pdp 10 mainframe computer the only system that supported their programming language 8 while lebling took a two week vacation anderson blank and daniels designed an adventure game concept which anderson and blank then developed as an early version of zork this prototype contained simple versions of many concepts seen in the final game including puzzles and locations according to anderson it took time for people to learn how to write good problems and lebling s first uncomplex parser was only almost as smart as adventure s the game was unnamed so the group chose zork as the file name one of several nonsense words used around the lab at the time in a variety of contexts 2 15 anderson later said that the group often used the term for programs still in development the group referring to themselves as the implementers continued working on the game after lebling returned adding features and iterating on the parser through june 1977 8 grues were added to replace pits that would kill players in the dark while play testing lebling noticed that his character fell into a pit while in the attic of the house the name grue was taken from the works of jack vance though the design of the monster was original to zork 12 lebling contends that adventure was one of zork s only influences as there were few other games to emulate at the time although the game s combat is based on dungeons dragons lebling said the other developers had never played it 16 he also thought of the parser and associated text responses as taking on the role of the dungeon master from a dungeons dragons game trying to lead the player through a story solely by describing it this had also been the idea behind the parser in adventure 4 17 creation edit the developers did not announce their game while it was in development but a lack of security on the mit systems meant that anyone who could access the pdp 10 computer over the arpanet could see what programs were being run as a result a small community of people many of whom had been involved in playing and contributing to trivia would snoop on the system for new programs they found the new zork adventure game and spread word of it under that name 12 18 this community dozens or possibly hundreds of players according to lebling interacted with the developers as they created the game playtesting additions and submitting bug reports 16 18 the implementers added a command transcript feature to keep track of what commands players tried to use unsuccessfully 16 by the end of june the game was approximately half the size of the final zork and had a substantial community of players for the time the group added locations such as a volcano and coal mine and soon shifted their efforts to improving the game s engine and adding the ability to save the player s progress in the game following user requests they also added the ability for the game to run on pdp 10 computers running different operating systems tenex and tops 20 which were much more popular than the incompatible timesharing system operating system the mit computer used these users then set up a mailing list to distribute updates to the game the developers returned to creating new content in the fall of 1977 adding the alice in wonderland section and a system for fighting enemies 18 around this time community member ted hess at dec decoded the protections the group had made for the source code and another dec employee bob supnik created a port of the game to fortran this port released in march 1978 opened the game to a wider set of players without access to a pdp 10 mainframe 18 19 at the time the team had decided to give the game an actual name besides zork and chose dungeon this name was used for the fortran version which was spread through the dec users group as one of its most popular pieces of software tsr hobbies claimed the title violated their trademark for dungeons dragons and the developers reverted to their original title 18 over the course of 1978 the team added the bank and royal zork puzzle museum sections along with some puzzles and ideas suggested by players the last puzzle was added in february 1979 though the team continued to release bug fix updates until the final update in january 1981 anderson attributes this to the team running out of ideas and time and having run out of space in the one megabyte of memory allocated for the game 18 very little of the game was planned ahead of time nor were aspects of the game specific to one developer instead whenever one of the developers had an idea they liked that developer would add it to the game developing the concept and writing the text to go with it according to lebling blank ended up focusing mostly on the parser anderson on the game code blank and daniels on new puzzles and lebling on descriptions of locations 16 anderson says that blank wrote 40 or 50 iterations of the parser and describes daniels as designing puzzles that were then largely implemented by the others he credits blank with vehicles and saving and lebling with the robot grues and the fighting system 18 to immerse the player in the game the developers decided not to describe the player character removing any accidental descriptions or gendered pronouns 16 the text responses to the player s commands were frequently opinionated and sarcastic a design choice that mirrored the group s speaking patterns the team felt it would both make the system feel less like a computer and also train the player to write commands in a way that the parser could understand rather than ways it would misinterpret 4 infocom edit in 1979 anderson blank lebling and five other members of the dynamic modelling group incorporated infocom as a software company for members to join after leaving mit 15 no specific projects were initially agreed upon and infocom had no paid employees but discussions were focused on developing software for smaller mainframe computers 15 20 blank and joel berez came up with a plan to make zork work on personal microcomputers which were then beginning to become popular and which would greatly expand the audience for the game although microcomputers had very limited memory space compared to mainframe computers they felt the project might be viable using floppy disks and a custom programming language if the game was cut into two pieces 20 the pair worked on the project through the summer and fall of 1979 without pay as the new company had the funds for only the computers they ported the game to a new zork implementation language zil which would then be run on a standardized z machine software based computer for each type of microcomputer they wanted to release zork or other zil based games on they could write an interpreter program that could run the z machine instead of rewriting each game lebling divided zork in half to create standalone episodes modifying the game s layout to improve its flow and disconnecting locations now in separate episodes 20 by the end of 1979 berez had been elected the company s president the core game was complete but it had been run only on decsystem 20 and pdp 11 mainframe computers infocom purchased a trs 80 personal computer early in 1980 which could run the game after blank and scott cutler created an interpreter program infocom began preparing to release the first section under the title zork the great underground empire part i mike dornbrook who had never played the game tested it as an audience surrogate he felt that the game would be wildly successful and develop a cult following and urged infocom to produce tie in products like maps hints and shirts the rest of the company was not convinced enough to start producing any such add ons but they did add an object in the game that gave an address for players to mail in for maps and hints in case it proved popular 20 the game now complete the company began looking for a professional publisher with store and distributor connections they felt this was preferable to self publishing berez approached microsoft who declined based on the game competing with microsoft adventure 1979 their version of adventure microsoft ceo bill gates was a fan of zork but by the time he heard of the proposal infocom was in negotiations with another publisher personal software one of the first professional software publishing companies personal software agreed to publish the game in june 1980 sending the company an advance payment zork the great underground empire also known as zork i or just zork was published for the trs 80 in december 1980 since personal software declined to publish the 1979 pdp 11 version of the game infocom sold some copies earlier in the year after announcing it to pdp 11 user groups lebling later recalled that about twenty floppy disk copies were sold directly with anderson s typewritten manual 4 20 by the end of 1980 an apple ii version of zork i was completed and sold through personal software infocom began receiving requests for hints and maps as predicted and berez began handling map and poster orders while dornbrook wrote customized hints for players in september 1981 he founded the zork users group as a separate company to handle all mail order sales and hint requests 20 21 infocom eventually produced hint booklets with progressive answers to questions written in invisible ink branded as invisiclues 20 22 meanwhile lebling worked on converting the second half of zork into zork ii but in the process thought up several new puzzles for the game 20 although as late as december 1980 he told byte that it would be a two part game it soon became clear that the second half would not fit into the allotted space 7 as a result the game was split again into zork ii the wizard of frobozz and zork iii the dungeon master 20 according to lebling splitting the game into episodes led to different atmospheres zork i was focused on exploration and adventure style gameplay ii had more of a focus on plot and added magic spells to the base game and iii was less straightforward with time sensitive aspects 16 marc blank constructed zork iii and added gameplay changes such as the modified point system to move the game away from straightforward dungeon exploration 12 zork ii was offered to personal software in april 1981 and the contract was signed in june but infocom grew wary of continuing this relationship the infocom team felt that personal software was not advertising zork i very strongly and did not seem excited about infocom s plans for zork iii and other planned text adventure games such as deadline and starcross personal software soon stopped publishing entertainment software altogether and rebranded as visicorp in 1982 to align with its visicalc spreadsheet software rather than find another publisher infocom decided to self publish its games and began renting office space and contracting with production facilities it bought out personal software s stock of apple ii zork i copies and began publishing zork i and ii directly by the end of 1981 zork iii followed in the fall of 1982 infocom developed interpreters for the commodore 64 atari 8 bit computers cp m systems and ibm pc compatibles and released the episodes of zork for them as well in 1982 20 reception edit sales edit following its 1980 release zork i became a bestseller from 1982 through 1985 23 with 380 000 copies sold by 1986 24 in its first nine months personal software sold 7 500 copies for the trs 80 and apple ii 25 sales ballooned as infocom began self publishing the trilogy and the personal computer market expanded 20 24 zork i had sold 38 000 copies by the end of 1982 nearly 100 000 in 1983 and around 150 000 copies in 1984 24 its success outpaced infocom s later games inc reported in 1983 that zork i only one of infocom s fifteen released titles composed twenty percent of their annual sales 26 zork i sales declined beginning in 1985 the second and third parts of zork also sold well though not as highly as the first more than 170 000 zork ii and 130 000 zork iii copies sold by 1986 24 overall sales of the first three episodes combined reached 250 000 copies by 1984 15 more than 680 000 copies through 1986 including the 1986 zork trilogy compilation release 24 and over 760 000 copies by early 1989 24 between 1982 and 1986 the zork trilogy composed more than one third of infocom s two million total game sales activision purchased infocom in 1986 and reported that the three zork games and trilogy compilation sold another 80 000 copies by early 1989 24 reviews edit the episodes of zork were highly praised in contemporaneous reviews byte and 80 micro praised their writing which the byte ...