The Classic Game Postmortem talks at the annual Game Developer’s Conference are always a good time, and 2014 will be highlighting two greats: Infocom’s seminal text adventure Zork and twin-stick coin-op Robotron: 2084. These talks are GDC mainstays, with key creatives behind the games in question taking the stage to discuss the development, share anecdotes, and, in so doing, remind us all of how valuable gaming’s past is for informing the present.
The Zork talk will feature co-author and Infocom co-founder Dave Lebling. His hourlong chat will focus on the difficulties of building a story-driven game during the 1970s and the subsequent challenge of sharing that creation with the world before the days of big publishing houses. The Robotron chat will feature creator Eugene Jarvis, the legendary gamesmith behind Defender, Smash TV, and others. He’ll talk about how those early efforts helped to establish arcade parlors during the 1980s.
Last year’s Classic Game Postmortem featured Myst co-creator Robyn Miller, who chatted with Digital Trends on the eve of his talk to run through a few anecdotes from the game’s early days. Lebling appeared with fellow Infocom collaborator Marc Blank at DICE 2013, and he spoke with us there about the golden days of early game development.
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