They also produced a business application, a relational database called Cornerstone. Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision.
Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979; the founding members were Tim Anderson, Joel Berez, Marc Blank, Mike Broos, Scott Cutler, Stu Galley, Dave Lebling, J.
Zork I was released originally for the TRS-80 in 1980.
Zork especially benefited; its sales rose for years after its initial release in 1980.
In 1982 Infocom started putting resources into a new division to produce business products.
By the time Infocom removed the copy-protection and reduced the price to less than $100, it was too late, and the market had moved on to other database solutions. By 1982 the market was moving to graphic adventures.
Employee Tim Anderson said of their situation, "It was phenomenal – we had a basement that just printed money." By 1983 Infocom was perhaps the most dominant computer-game company; for example, all ten of its games were on the Softsel top 40 list of best-selling computer games for the week of December 12, 1983, with Zork in first place and two others in the top ten.
Lotus released its first product, 1-2-3, in January 1983; within a year it had earned $53 million, compared to Infocom's $6 million.
To Infocom's surprise it sold almost 100,000 copies of the game in 1983, and the figure rose by more than 50% in 1984.
In late 1984, management declined an offer by publisher Simon & Schuster to acquire Infocom for $28 million, far more than the board of directors's valuation of $10–12 million.
InfoWorld wrote in 1984 that "the company always sells games for computers you don't normally think of as game machines, such as the DEC Rainbow or the Texas Instruments Professional Computer.
To Infocom's surprise it sold almost 100,000 copies of the game in 1983, and the figure rose by more than 50% in 1984.
In 1985 they released a database product, Cornerstone, aimed at capturing the then booming database market for small business.
They also produced a business application, a relational database called Cornerstone. Infocom was founded on June 22, 1979, by staff and students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lasted as an independent company until 1986, when it was bought by Activision.
And to compete with the Leisure Suit Larry style games that were also appearing, Infocom also came out with Leather Goddesses of Phobos in 1986, which featured "tame", "suggestive", and "lewd" playing modes.
The marketing campaign was very successful, and Infocom's success led to other companies like Broderbund and Electronic Arts also releasing their own text games. ===Activision takeover=== After Cornerstone's failure, Infocom laid off half of its 100 employees, and Activision acquired the company on June 13, 1986 for $7.5 million.
Most players enjoyed reading books; in 1987 president Joel Berez stated, "[Infocom's] audience tends to be composed of heavy readers.
This was, in part, due to Infocom's long-standing rule of maximum portability; a game that could display graphics on a number of different systems couldn't take advantage of the strengths of any of them. The cost of acquisition was amortized by deducting it from Infocom's operating revenue during the next several years. ===Closure and afterward=== By 1988, rumors spread of disputes between Activision and Infocom.
Rising costs and falling profits, exacerbated by the lack of new products in 1988 and technical issues with its DOS products, caused Activision to close Infocom in 1989, after which some of the remaining Infocom designers such as Steve Meretzky moved to the company Legend Entertainment, founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu, to continue creating games in the Infocom tradition. Activision itself was struggling in the marketplace following Davis' promotion to CEO.
These compilations featured nearly every game produced by Infocom before 1988.
Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom Zork brand.
Activision moved Infocom development to California in 1989, and the company was now just a publishing label.
Rising costs and falling profits, exacerbated by the lack of new products in 1988 and technical issues with its DOS products, caused Activision to close Infocom in 1989, after which some of the remaining Infocom designers such as Steve Meretzky moved to the company Legend Entertainment, founded by Bob Bates and Mike Verdu, to continue creating games in the Infocom tradition. Activision itself was struggling in the marketplace following Davis' promotion to CEO.
Activision shut down the Infocom division in 1989, although they released some titles in the 1990s under the Infocom Zork brand.
In 1991, Mediagenic was purchased by Bobby Kotick, who put into measures immediately to try to turn the company around, which included returning to its Activision name, and putting to use its past IP properties.
Activision began to sell bundles of the Infocom games that year, packaged as themed collections (usually by genre, such as the Science Fiction collection); in 1991, they published The Lost Treasures of Infocom, followed in 1992 by The Lost Treasures of Infocom II.
Activision began to sell bundles of the Infocom games that year, packaged as themed collections (usually by genre, such as the Science Fiction collection); in 1991, they published The Lost Treasures of Infocom, followed in 1992 by The Lost Treasures of Infocom II.
In 1993, Computer Gaming World described this era as the "Cambridge Camelot, where the Great Underground Empire was formed". As an in-joke, the number 69,105 made a number of appearances in Infocom games. ===Reception=== Infocom games were popular, InfoWorld said, in part because "in offices all over America (more than anyone realizes) executives and managers are playing games on their computers".
We sell to the minority that does read". A 1996 article in Next Generation said Infocom's "games were noted for having more depth than any other adventure games, before or since." Three components proved key to Infocom's success: marketing strategy, rich storytelling and feelies.
In 1996, the first bundles were followed by Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom, a single CD-ROM which contained the works of both collections.
Activision abandoned the Infocom trademark in 2002. ==Overview== Infocom games are text adventures where users direct the action by entering short strings of words to give commands when prompted.
The brand name was registered by Oliver Klaeffling of Germany in 2007, then was abandoned the following year.
The Infocom trademark was then held by Pete Hottelet's Omni Consumer Products, who registered the name around the same time as Klaeffling in 2007.
In 2008, Jason Scott, a video game preservationist contributing towards the Internet Archive, received the so-called "Infocom Drive", a large archive of the entire contents of Infocom's main server made during the last few days before the company was relocated to California; besides source code for all of Infocom's games (including unreleased ones), it also contained the software manuals, design documents and other essential content alongside Infocom's business documentation.
The Solid Gold versions of those games include a built-in InvisiClues hint system. In 2012, Activision released Lost Treasures of Infocom for iOS devices.
Scott later published all of the source files in their original Z-engine format to GitHub in 2019. Zork made a cameo appearance as an easter egg in Activision and Treyarch's Black Ops.
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