Hunt the Wumpus: A Complex Legacy

Scan the recesses of time and you may casually come across the game that made it. We're talking about the game that spawned millions of clones, the game that encouraged authors to enter the world of gaming; yup, it's Hunt the Wumpus. It was not the most technologically advance game of its type or even the first of the kind, but it did something very important: It got noticed. The odd thing about Hunt the Wumpus was that it did not spawn many text-based clones but brought on what was to be the ever-improving treadmill of graphical games. Roberta William's Hi-Res adventure #1 (Mystery House) was the first game to feature real graphics, the kind that isn't made of annoying individual characters. Why do I mention all of this? One word: Evolution.

In 1985 the first ever multi-user adventure gaming company, MUSE, was formed. The company ran two products one on Compuserve in the US and the other on Compunet in the UK. However, plans were afoot for a new product for a new system, MUD2 for BT. With BT, things are never quite as easy as you'd like them to be, though. For years, MUSE was placed under an oppressive regime of exclusive licensing and rules. In Richard's words, "For five years, we had a world-beating product that very few people actually knew how to access!"

Also in 1985, a decision was being made in the depths of a company named Infocom. The decision was to diversify the company into two new sections; one would continue to sell the interactive fiction that had made them so popular, while the other would start a new branch of business software, starting with a database product called Cornerstone. Many would say that this was the beginning of the end for Infocom. This is almost true, but the slow decline of the company had begun before then. The mood was changing. People no longer wanted to play text adventure -- they wanted graphics.

The start of Infocom is the story of a business company with not enough money. In a get-rich-quick way, the company decided to construct a new market around the world of simple text adventure based on what they had learned from Adventure, the game that had changed gaming perceptions on everything. They hit a problem, though -- size. Games today can include much more in terms of graphics, text and sound due to the space provided by today's portable storage. However, in the days of large mainframes and microcomputers, space was a problem. Adventure ran on a mainframe, meaning it could use the space available there, much more than a traditional microcomputer at the time. MUDs also run on mainframes. All the microcomputer needs is some form of client software. Yet for interactive-fiction games that need to run on the home computer, it must all fit on the machine. Infocom had two solutions:

1. Split the large game down into smaller games. Zork I, Zork II and Zork III were born.
2. Use an interpreter language. This allowed them to code in a scripted language which was then interpreted by an interpreter. This meant that they could cut down on the amount of code they needed to write (saving space) and also it allowed them to port the code much more easily. They only ever needed to port the interpreter, not the whole game, to send it to a whole new system. Then when more games were released they did not have to write any interpreters as the old ones could still play the game code. Also there was no need to rewrite the parser every time for a new game. It was already there from older games.

Over time, Infocom realised that they had tapped into the gold mine of gaming -- a type of game that could be run on a wide-range of systems, games that people wanted to play. For years Infocom were at the top of gaming charts, towering above any other form of gaming that tried to compete. Infocom hint books were so popular that they often filled every space on the top 10 computer books slots, something that proved to be so much of a problem that they had to all be compiled into one slot. They used the power of imagination, not graphics to pull the readers in.

With booming sales and the power to do almost anything, Infocom released a huge range of games over time, each one considered classic in a unique way. Moonmist, Stationfall, Planetfall, The Lurking Horror and the inevitable classic The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy were all to influence people's lives in some way. Yet the adventure game boom was not to last. Even with the best writing in the world and major influences from talents like Douglas Adams the industry could not sustain itself.

Cornerstone did not sell as well as expected. The company began suffering huge losses. People were buying graphics instead. Finally the company was bough out by Activision in 1986 for 7.5 million dollars. By 1989, with the release of Arthur, Infocom was nothing more than a memory, one of a period that was gone for good.

Since then nearly all of the interactive fiction companies have failed, leaving an industry of graphical entertainment awaiting all new gamers. However, how do MUDs stand up in this "new frontier"....