User:JimmyBlackwing/meretzkyint


 * https://archive.org/stream/powerplaymagazine-1997-08/PowerPlay_08_1997#page/n125/mode/2up
 * https://archive.org/stream/powerplaymagazine-1997-08/PowerPlay_08_1997#page/n125/mode/2up

Steve Meretzky: The Forefather of Smashing Adventures

Zero Zork, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and almost a dozen other titles — not a list of the "Best Games Ever", but part of the achievements of one of the most prolific and entertaining game designers — Steve Meretzky.

'''Power Play: Your roots go back deep into the history of the game industry and are largely responsible for the foundational work on humorous games. How did you start?'''

Steve Meretzky: This is a very interesting story. I had actually graduated in Architecture and Construction Management at MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology) and knew a lot of people working at Infocom at the time. After graduating, I worked for a few construction companies, and in the space of two years I already had three jobs behind me. However, they were all terribly boring (laughs) and so I quit. In the meantime, I shared a room with Mike Dornbrook; we both knew the founders of Infocom from our MIT time. At that time Mike was their only playtester for Zork 1 and Zork 2. That happened between 1979 and 1981, even before Infocom had a real office, so he tested the games on an Apple II in our dining room. Then in the fall of 1981 he went to a business school in Chicago and Marc Blank asked me if I wanted to take over [for him]. Yes, of course! This was shortly after I had quit a depressing construction job, and the first game I was supposed to test myself was Deadline, then Zork 3 and then Starcross. Around September 1983, Marc asked me, "How would you like to write your own game?"

'''PP: Did that scare you a little? The idea of ​​designing your very own game from the ground up?'''

SM: No, I would not say scared. I'd say I was a little bit nervous, but I just thought, "This is a great way to spend the next three months" (laughs). The work on the game, which was called Sole Survivor initially, started in September 1982. Later it became the working title Survivor and finally Planetfall. It came out in September '83, so a good year later. During this phase, I wrote half the time because I was still working as a tester. After Planetfall came out, I became a full-time game writer.

'''PP: How was it to have been part of the legendary Infocom? How was the industry then?'''

SM: Well, in the very early days there was not even an office, so Infocom existed only as a company name. In January 1982 we moved into our first office. Until then, it was actually just a virtual company. There were more or less only Joel as a managing director, Marc Blank, and Gabrielle Accardi, who took care of everything else. Over the course of that year, there were more and more people working part-time for Infocom, and as the company became a bit more established and successful, these part-time employees became employees. So it quickly grew from four to ten employees. And then Infocom launched its famous business products department...

PP: I guess the logic behind it was to produce software, not just entertainment...

SM: In Warheit sollten beide Bereiche von Beginn an zu ihrem Recht kommen. So, the first work on the business product side began in the autumn of 1982. Well, the profits from the games helped finance the development of the business software, which was called Cornerstone. More and more people joined, ten of them became almost 100 employees. Then it went down the drain. The business product cost a fortune, about $9 million, before it was finally done.

PP: Nine million dollars for a program in 1982?

SM: Exactly, and it made about 1.5 million sales in the first year. So from 1983 to 1985, it was wonderful at Infocom. Anyone who has worked there will confirm that this was simply the best time in our lives. I don't think anyone can imagine working in such a wonderful environment again, considering how intelligent, creative and funny people were. We also had a great office on the outskirts of Cambridge: a three-storey, pure wooden structure with large skylights, a spiral staircase and built around a goldfish pond with pines and a picnic area. It was very idyllic and we had a lot of fun... it was just a very special group of people and a very special time.

PP: Is that something that you want to revive now at Boffo?

SM: Yes of course. We're doing a lot here, but it's not the same people anymore, and time has changed a lot, too. Anyway, Boffo is a smaller company and we do not have the financial resources Infocom had at its best.

PP: How do you think that you have evolved as a game designer since then?

SM: My memory is not what it used to be (laughs). In any case, I had to change a lot to work no longer in a text but now in a multimedia environment, that was quite a challenge. Not that I had problems thinking of multimedia or imagining designs, but there is so much more to worry about now than before. Also, "designing" is not so much about doing it as it is about telling other people what to do. That's not my strength, I think.

'''PP: Being Steve Meretzki, is that a special burden when you develop a game? Do you feel that you still have to work a little harder because of the expectations of the public?'''

SM: Hm. Interesting question. Well, I do not think I've gotten to the point where I've been concerned that people expect something funny from me. From my actual customers, the companies that buy games, games designs or design support from me, I have not felt any pressure to be funny. I believe that, if there ever was a point in my career when I felt like I had been put in a certain drawer or forced into a role, then maybe at Infocom, when I was doing "Leather Goddesses of Phobos". It was very successful. When Bob (Bates of Legend Entertainment) approached me to make a game, he actually wanted an exact spin-off of Leather Goddesses. But I convinced him that it would be better to enrich a crazy comedy with fantasy instead of trying science fiction again. This then became Spellcasting 101. At the same time Activision came to me and wanted Leather Goddesses 2, Microprose knocked, and this then became Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. At that point I had the impression that all anyone wanted of me were sex comedies, which of course is more restrictive than wanting to do something funny in general. Fortunately, that passed too.

'PP: I remember, when Leather Goddesses'' came out, you broke some boundaries within the industry. It was partly repelled, but also interested.'''

SM: Well, there are funny stories about how it came about. The first Infocom office was really just a big central room, with eight small 9m² offices grouped together. The middle room was both a meeting and computer room, like a general meeting place. Across a whole wall, a single huge blackboard stuck out. Then we drew a grid with chalk. On one side of this grid were all the games that Infocom had ever released. At the time these were the three Zorks, Deadline and Starcross. Over it stood all the computers for which these games had come out, and the grid was filled with all the version numbers that existed on the market. Well, in any case, Infocom held a small party for some local press and sales people and a few friends of the company. This was the first celebration Infocom had held to date, and Marc and Juel were already a little tense. They wanted to make sure everything went perfectly. O.K., so before the party started, (laughs) I went into the room and inserted a new line among the five games. I wrote: "Leather Goddess of Phobos" and scribbled all possible, fake version numbers across the grid. Then I disappeared, but five minutes before the first people arrived, Joel noticed and wiped everything out in total panic (laughs). But as a result, the name stuck. From then on, people talking about a game that didn't exist yet would say: Leather Goddesses of Phobos. That went on for a few years. Finally, I realized that everyone really liked that name, so we should make a game called that (laughs). I talked it over with a few other game writers, and everyone thought it was a great idea. It was more difficult to explain this to the management of the company. Mike, who had now gone to business school and returned to Infocom as marketing director, loved the idea, and Joel was thrilled. With Al Vezza, the head of the business product side of the company, we all agreed not to tell him about it (laughs). So I started the game. A few months before it was completed, Infocom was purchased by Activision and Jim Levy, the managing director of Activision, came to visit us. Al Vezza, who had learned about it, although the game was not yet on the [black] board, led Jim Levy around. I don't remember in what context, but the conversation came to Leather Goddesses. Al quickly tried to assure Jim, "Oh yeah, of course, but you know, we don't have to call it that!". To which Jim just said, "Well, I think the name is great!"

PP: Surely you were very excited...

SM: Exactly, and at the same time, I also realized that it would be a favorable development to expose Jim Levy to Al Vezza. The first year after Infocom became part of Activision went really well, but within a year Jim Levy was fired from the board of directors and replaced by Bruce Davis. From there, everything went down the drain between Infocom and Activision. Many say today that it was the end when Infocom was taken over by Activision, but in fact there was a year after the acquisition when the business was still going well.

'''PP: You once held an event about humor at the Computer Game Developer's Conference. Do you think that you can teach someone to be funny? Isn't that more of a natural talent?'''

SM:' Well, I do not think you can take someone who has no sense of humor and teach him. But if you have someone creative with a good sense of humor who just does not know how to control or apply it, they will not turn into a humorous game developer. It's like a baseball player who has a great talent but has never been trained.

'''PP: Speaking to Roberta Williams the other day, we also came to the decline of so-called "free elements" of a game. Thousands of dollars are spent on glittering presentation, bombast and graphics, but the actual game elements seem to be getting less and less time. Especially in recent years, there have been many dazzling products with little gameplay content. You seem to be right there.'''

SM: Well, there seems to have been a trend towards less game content in the industry for some time, but it got really acute three or four years ago. The gameplay content has begun to retreat compared to the luscious, fluffy packaging. And after CD-ROMs appeared, there were suddenly huge budgets and tons of storage space, which have caused the whole thing. People got carried away and forgot what was important. But that also applies to the buyers. They, too, suddenly did not want anything else, and they did not care that it lacks what makes a game interesting in the long run. I think, to a large extent, that the pendulum has swung back and most of those who have just done shiny, but low-quality, stuff are now off the [display] window. Now it's back to where the successful games have a solid core game again. I believe that humor escapes this trend as a more local phenomenon. I guess it depends heavily on the specific interests of the game developer, producer or publisher. This is not an element of which one can just say: "O.K., let's just put a little humor in it!". You can not turn on humor, as you can for example make a game even faster by throwing in a few programmers. What was your question again? (Laughs)

PP: That it looks as if the industry has put a lot more money into the presentation of a game than the real meat in recent years.

SM: Oh, the gloss... Well, I think it's also because of the huge increase in the number of games on the market. Sure, a lot of them will be designed by people who have never designed a game before, and those who do not have any experience will not be sure to get a good game straight away. Many of them will have little or no gameplay content. But now the output of game titles seems to be returning to normal.

'''PP: Imagine that you were stranded with four good game developers on an island and you had to design a game with good content. You're there, Sid Meier, Bob Bates and John Romero. What kind of game would that be?'''

SM: (laughs) Well, Bob I know very well, Sid a bit, John I've never met. Well, two of us are clearly adventure writers, so we were two, but not in the majority. I guess we'd come out with a mix of genre, strategy, story and action. However, the most likely scenario would be that nobody talks to anyone anymore and nobody will work together anymore.

PP: How did you come from Infocom to your own company, Boffo?

SM: Well, after Infocom went down, I became a freelance developer. During that time I wrote various games for Legend, and Leather Goddesses II for Activision. In general, I enjoyed the Legend games the most. The experience with Activision was not great.

PP: Why?

SM: Well, I was just writing and handing in the design for Leather Goddesses II. They then wanted to implement it in their development system called MADE at the time. It was planned that I would always receive new versions for review in order to make further suggestions. We wanted a little bit of my working method with Infocom, and as I worked with Bob on games. While this was still going on, Activision went bankrupt, was able to save itself again but did not pay me any more, and was not able to do more than "absolutely necessary" for the game and implementation of my design. That was all very unsatisfactory. Shortly thereafter, I wrote a few more games for Electronic Arts, an adventure and a racing game for the Sega Mega Drive. That got through half or three quarters of the way before the project was dropped, and the adventure was not even started properly. It was quite frustrating to put so much work into a game that will never happen.

PP: I can well imagine!

SM: Yes, and then what probably broke the camel's back was Planetfall III for Activision. That was incredibly frustrating. The whole thing took six months to finally burst — and that's it. I did not want to design games for someone else thousands of miles away. I also had no real desire to work from home, I was missing the human contact. This is how it started with Boffo. The three of us, Mike Dornbrook, Leo DaCosta and I already knew each other from MIT, and Mike and I had worked together at Infocom. Leo worked for me as a programmer, so I had more time for Planetfall III. Back then, we talked about how great it would be to set up your own company, when Mike got into the conversation as a business, legal and financial expert. The last trigger was an article on which Mike stumbled. It said that Media Vision had founded two new game departments, led by Stan Cornyn, who came from Time Warner Interactive. Stan was once the best man at Marc Blank's wedding and Mike was also there.

PP: You're making that up right now, right?

SM: No really. So, Mike called and Stan arranged a meeting with Linda Rich in New York, his right hand. We introduced her to some of our ideas, some of which she liked. We drove back to Boston, she to Los Angeles. A few days later, she called and said they wanted to make a game: "Hodj 'n' Podj". That was in January 1994. We said, "Great!" And she said: "But it must be finished in August." We said, "Impossible!" And she replied: "What if price is no object?" Well. At the time, we did not have a company, not a single programmer, no offices, not even real computers. The three of us just sat around at my house. We thought about it and also about the short time and came to the conclusion that instead of normally paid programmers, we could hire better, highly paid programmers, who could start immediately. The reason also that Hodj 'n' Podj was quite modular. We set a timetable, thinking that if we paid good dough, we could be ready in just under seven and a half months. We knew that we were kind of stupid, but the contract could only be signed within this short time. So we flew to California in January and arrived Saturday night for a meeting on Monday, and Sunday night there was the Northridge earthquake.

PP: Boffo was founded with an earthquake?

SM: We were a good 10 miles from the epicenter. The meeting was postponed, and finally we got together at Stan's house. Jeder hatte einen kleinen im Kahn, because we survived the earthquake. (laughs) Stan's house was half a ruin, electricity was constantly on and off, and everyone from Media Vision came with a schedule and spent the whole night at Stan's place. We got pizza and gallons of wine. I went through a whole stack of game ideas and the end was that Stan wanted to get started with "Hodj 'n' Podj", and while we're working on it, even cobbled together a contract for as many as five games. We were completely out of our mind about it, so we went back and started hiring people and renting offices -- and the same for the 20-30 people we need for our multi-gaming contract. Then, wait a minute, I do not remember exactly when that was, but sometime between April and July, Media Vision made it from its status as the star of the multimedia industry and star of Wall Street to bankruptcy, and the management was investigated by the prosecutor's office and the FBI. Well, not Stan's group now. His group was a tiny department of this huge hardware company, and it was the parent company that went bankrupt. The executives of the big company were the ones who worked on books and conned investors. We definitely did not get any more money. Fortunately, the courts saw that the property (our game) would be worth more if they gave us the money to finish it, than if it had been left lying, and so, in the end, we were one of two parties who still saw money from the bankruptcy estate. We even managed to deliver the game on schedule, but ironically it was then put on ice for three months, until finally Virgin bought everything on December 9th. So it was not just a stupid time to bring it out, so close to Christmas, no one had even worked on the packaging and the rest. The game finally came out in the following March.

PP: So wait and see...

SM: Exactly, and all we could do was to amaze at all this irony. Of course, the five-game deal we hoped for was a thing of the past. Instead, we had to get new assignments as soon as possible. We started with an adventure for Time Warner, but they had a reorganization. Everyone we'd dealt with until then was gone, and we had to sell the game to a new group of people. We did that too, only there was a reorganization after a few months. This time, they had merged all six interactive groups into a large group, and as a result three-quarters of all ongoing projects were closed. Our project also went down the toilet. That was exactly the time we signed Rocket Science to do "The Space Bar," so in March or April 1995. Rocket Science had just completed Cadillacs and Dinosaurs and Loadstar, a game about a railroad on a moon of Jupiter or Mars or something. Both were games that were praised quite a bit [at first], but were then rather average and got their comeuppance. They then looked for already proven developers ... and we got the contract to do The Space Bar. It was much more than a standard developer / publisher contract because they agreed to provide artistic talent in the form of alien models in the Space Bar, and, more importantly, as Art Director, they wanted to provide Ron Cobb.

'''PP: Yes, that's a considerable snatch. He's a pretty big fish, but I'm not sure if our readers are aware how impressive his CV looks. Do you want to say something about that?'''

SM: Well, I knew about his work for movies, but I had no idea about his career before that. Already in the late fifties he was a science fiction illustrator and then made some covers for fantasy and SF magazines. In the 60s, he was a critically acclaimed underground cartoonist. He then made the leap into the movie business just as George Lucas started "Star Wars". When he was editing and wanted to finish the Mos Eisley Cantina scene, Lucas said, "You know, that does not work, there's something missing here." He went to Ron and asked him to design some really wonderful aliens for this scene. So Ron started thinking of aliens made by model-makers and pasted into the scene as we know them today.

PP: So the Cantina Scene became part of "The Space Bar" to a certain extent?

SM: Yes, that was certainly one of many inspirations for The Space Bar. Ron then worked with Giger and a third artist on the first Alien movie. He then joined the second Alien, The Last Starfighter, The Abyss and Back to the Future. He has the third time machine, designed the Delorian — he also joined True Lies.