Game Developers Conference Classic Gaming Postmortem: Zork (2014)
"Dave Lebling, co-author of Zork and co-founder of Infocom, gives a postmortem talk on the classic text adventure. Lebling, who currently works as a senior principal software engineer at BAE Systems, created the "grue," co-authored Zork I-III and wrote seven other text adventures. He plans to give an hour-long talk explaining, among other things, the creation of both the mainframe and microcomputer versions of Zork, the trials and tribulations of coding a cutting-edge text parser, and what it was like to experiment with self-publishing at a time when most PC games were sold in hand-packed plastic bags.
Thanks. I used to run into Dave and other Infocom folks at Steve Meretzky’s Oscar parties but since Steve decamped to CA I may run into a few CA locals once in a great while if I happen to be out there at the right time for some reason.