Andrew Plotkin
Encyclopedia
Andrew Plotkin also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern interactive fiction
community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is widely recognised for both his creative and his technical contributions to the homebrew IF scene.
development system, and one of the first since Infocom
's heyday to explore the boundaries of interactive fiction as an artistic medium. Many later authors cite him as a primary influence. He has won many awards within the community, and is frequently interviewed for magazine articles about interactive fiction.
Plotkin has also made major technical contributions to the interactive fiction medium, designing the Blorb
archive
format, the Glk I/O platform, and the Glulx
virtual machine
, and implementing Glulx Inform and several interactive fiction interpreter
s for the Macintosh and X
. The Glk API has made possible the creation of "universal translator" interpreters such as Gargoyle, a single program capable of running all interactive fiction formats.
, Plotkin holds two XYZZY Award
-related records: for most XYZZYs won in one year (5, with Spider and Web
) and for most XYZZYs won in total: 18.
His most influential games are:
Other Andrew Plotkin games include:
More recently, he was featured on CNN Money for successfully raising over $31,000 using Kickstarter
for development of a new interactive fiction piece called Hadean Lands for the iPhone
and release of the resulting iPhone game framework as open source
.
puzzle game System's Twilight
. Plotkin appears as a character in Being Andrew Plotkin
, an interactive fiction game by J. Robinson Wheeler somewhat based on the film Being John Malkovich
.
While a student at Carnegie Mellon University
, Zarf was one of the early members of the Carnegie Mellon KGB. He created the organization's signature Capture the Flag with Stuff game, which is now played by several hundred students every semester.
In 1997, Plotkin developed a rethemed version of Dimitry Davidoff's social game Mafia, replacing the "mafia" characters with werewolves. Plotkin's version of the game subsequently became popular at universities and conferences in the United States, with a set of cards being produced by Looney Labs
.
He has also made contributions to the Icehouse
community, both in designing the game Branches, Twigs, & Thorns and the creation of several custom sets of pieces. During 2006 he was involved in the open source
on-line game platform Volity and has created, or assisted in the creation of, on-line versions of the pyramid game Treehouse and other Looney Labs
titles to showcase the platform.
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is widely recognised for both his creative and his technical contributions to the homebrew IF scene.
Interactive fiction
Plotkin was one of the earliest writers to use Graham Nelson's InformInform
Over the following decade, version 6 became reasonably stable and a popular language for writing interactive fiction. In 2006, Nelson released Inform 7 , a completely new language based on principles of natural language and a new set of tools based around a book-publishing metaphor.- Z-Machine and...
development system, and one of the first since Infocom
Infocom
Infocom was a software company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced one notable business application, a relational database called Cornerstone....
's heyday to explore the boundaries of interactive fiction as an artistic medium. Many later authors cite him as a primary influence. He has won many awards within the community, and is frequently interviewed for magazine articles about interactive fiction.
Plotkin has also made major technical contributions to the interactive fiction medium, designing the Blorb
Blorb
Blorb is a package format for interactive fiction games. Many such games incorporate resources such as sound effects, music, or pictures. Blorb's purpose is to bind these together into one file...
archive
File archiver
A file archiver is a computer program that combines a number of files together into one archive file, or a series of archive files, for easier transportation or storage...
format, the Glk I/O platform, and the Glulx
Glulx
Glulx is a 32-bit portable virtual machine intended for writing and playing interactive fiction. It was designed by Andrew Plotkin to relieve some of the restrictions in the venerable Z-machine format...
virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
, and implementing Glulx Inform and several interactive fiction interpreter
Interpreter (computing)
In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...
s for the Macintosh and X
X Window System
The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...
. The Glk API has made possible the creation of "universal translator" interpreters such as Gargoyle, a single program capable of running all interactive fiction formats.
, Plotkin holds two XYZZY Award
XYZZY Award
The XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but for a far smaller community. The XYZZY Awards have been presented yearly in the early spring since 1996 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews...
-related records: for most XYZZYs won in one year (5, with Spider and Web
Spider and Web
Spider and Web is a piece of interactive fiction written by Andrew Plotkin.Spider and Web begins innocuously enough: the player's character, an apparent tourist, has wandered into a blind alley. Upon trying to leave the alley, however, the character is confronted by a voice sneering that this is a...
) and for most XYZZYs won in total: 18.
His most influential games are:
- Freefall (1995; Tetris clone - possibly the first so-called Z-machineZ-machineThe Z-machine is a virtual machine that was developed by Joel Berez and Marc Blank in 1979 and used by Infocom for its text adventure games. Infocom compiled game code to files containing Z-machine instructions , and could therefore port all its text adventures to a new platform simply by writing a...
abuse) - A Change in the WeatherA Change in the WeatherA Change in the Weather is a 1995 work of interactive fiction by Andrew Plotkin, in which the player-character is caught in a rainstorm while out in the countryside. It won the Inform category at the inaugural 1995 Interactive Fiction Competition...
(1995; winner of the 1995 IF Comp's Inform division) - So FarSo Far (interactive fiction)So Far is an interactive fiction game written in 1996 by Andrew Plotkin. It's known for its challenging puzzles and surreal imagery. So Far won the 1996 XYZZY Awards for Best IF Game, Best Writing, Best Puzzles, and Best Individual Puzzle....
(1996; winner of many XYZZY AwardXYZZY AwardThe XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but for a far smaller community. The XYZZY Awards have been presented yearly in the early spring since 1996 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews...
s that year, including for Best GameXYZZY Award for Best GameThis is a list of XYZZY Awards results, grouped by award rather than year. The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given by the publication "XYZZYnews" to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film...
) - The Space Under the WindowThe Space Under the WindowThe Space Under the Window is a 1997 interactive fiction game by Andrew Plotkin. The game is part of a collaborative art piece, also entitled "", by Kristin Looney – each piece had to have this title, but was otherwise unconstrained....
(1997) - Spider and WebSpider and WebSpider and Web is a piece of interactive fiction written by Andrew Plotkin.Spider and Web begins innocuously enough: the player's character, an apparent tourist, has wandered into a blind alley. Upon trying to leave the alley, however, the character is confronted by a voice sneering that this is a...
(1998; winner of many XYZZY AwardXYZZY AwardThe XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but for a far smaller community. The XYZZY Awards have been presented yearly in the early spring since 1996 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews...
s that year, including for Best GameXYZZY Award for Best GameThis is a list of XYZZY Awards results, grouped by award rather than year. The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given by the publication "XYZZYnews" to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film...
) - Hunter, in DarknessHunter, in DarknessHunter, in Darkness is a 1999 interactive fiction game by Andrew Plotkin, written in Inform. It won the "Best Individual Puzzle" and "Best Setting" categories in the 1999 XYZZY Awards, and came in eighth overall in the 1999 Interactive Fiction Competition....
(1999; winner of the XYZZY AwardXYZZY AwardThe XYZZY Awards are an event to recognize extraordinary interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards or Grammy Awards but for a far smaller community. The XYZZY Awards have been presented yearly in the early spring since 1996 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of XYZZYnews...
s for Best Individual Puzzle and Best Setting) - ShadeShade (interactive fiction)Shade is a work of interactive fiction released in 2000 by Andrew Plotkin. The author describes it as a "one-room game set in your apartment". Shade won the 2000 XYZZY Award for Best Setting...
(2000; winner of the XYZZY Award for Best Setting)
Other Andrew Plotkin games include:
- Lists and Lists (1996), an introductory course in the Scheme programming language
- The DreamholdThe DreamholdThe Dreamhold is an interactive fiction game by Andrew Plotkin released in 2004. Its primary purpose is to be a tutorial to IF, and because of that the "core" of the game is relatively easy to finish....
(2004), a general IF tutorial game - Delightful Wallpaper (2006; sixth place in IF Comp and winner of Miss Congeniality)
- Dual Transform (2010)
- Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home (2010)
More recently, he was featured on CNN Money for successfully raising over $31,000 using Kickstarter
Kickstarter
Kickstarter is an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects. Kickstarter has funded a diverse array of endeavors, ranging from indie film and music to journalism, solar energy technology and food-related projects.-Model:...
for development of a new interactive fiction piece called Hadean Lands for the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
and release of the resulting iPhone game framework as open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
.
Other work
He also wrote the former sharewareShareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
puzzle game System's Twilight
System's Twilight
System's Twilight: An Abstract Fairy Tale is a graphical interactive fiction computer game created by Andrew Plotkin in 1993.- Summary :The game is a combination of puzzle and story, combining several different kinds of logic puzzles and word puzzles. The puzzles include variations of Set and Black...
. Plotkin appears as a character in Being Andrew Plotkin
Being Andrew Plotkin
Being Andrew Plotkin is a piece of interactive fiction written by J. Robinson Wheeler as a light-hearted parody of both the film Being John Malkovich and of the successful interactive fiction author Andrew Plotkin and his games...
, an interactive fiction game by J. Robinson Wheeler somewhat based on the film Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself...
.
While a student at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, Zarf was one of the early members of the Carnegie Mellon KGB. He created the organization's signature Capture the Flag with Stuff game, which is now played by several hundred students every semester.
In 1997, Plotkin developed a rethemed version of Dimitry Davidoff's social game Mafia, replacing the "mafia" characters with werewolves. Plotkin's version of the game subsequently became popular at universities and conferences in the United States, with a set of cards being produced by Looney Labs
Looney Labs
Looney Labs is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, USA. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney.- Card games :...
.
He has also made contributions to the Icehouse
Icehouse (game)
Icehouse is a turnless abstract strategy game invented by Andrew Looney and John Cooper. It was the first of many games played with Icehouse pieces....
community, both in designing the game Branches, Twigs, & Thorns and the creation of several custom sets of pieces. During 2006 he was involved in the open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
on-line game platform Volity and has created, or assisted in the creation of, on-line versions of the pyramid game Treehouse and other Looney Labs
Looney Labs
Looney Labs is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, USA. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney.- Card games :...
titles to showcase the platform.