Bureaucracy is an interactive fiction

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...

 computer game released by 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....

 in 1987, scripted by popular comic

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

. It is Infocom's twenty-fourth game.

Setting

The player is challenged to confront a long and complicated series of bureaucratic

Bureaucracy

A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...

 hurdles resulting from a recent change of address. Mail

Mail

Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...

 isn't being delivered, bank accounts are inaccessible, and nothing is as it should be. The game includes a measure of simulated blood pressure

Blood pressure

Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by circulating blood upon the walls of blood vessels, and is one of the principal vital signs. When used without further specification, "blood pressure" usually refers to the arterial pressure of the systemic circulation. During each heartbeat, BP varies...

 which rises when "frustrating" events happen and lowers after a period of no annoying events. Once a certain blood pressure level is reached, the player suffers an aneurysm

Aneurysm

An aneurysm or aneurism is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Aneurysms can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart...

 and the game ends.

While undertaking the seemingly simple task of retrieving misdirected mail, the player encounters a number of bizarre characters, including an antisocial hacker

Hacker (computer security)

In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...

, a paranoid weapons enthusiast, and a tribe of Zalagasan cannibals. At the same time, he or she must deal with impersonal corporations, counterintuitive airport logic, and a hungry llama

Llama

The llama is a South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since pre-Hispanic times....

.

Feelies

Among the extra items, which Infocom called feelie

Feelie

Infocom used the term feelie to refer to the extra content included with the boxed versions of their interactive fiction computer games. Feelies differed from game to game and were of the same theme as the game they came packaged with...

s, in the Bureaucracy game package are:

• A pamphlet entitled You're ready to move! from the fictional bank Fillmore Fiduciary Trust
• A flier advertising the fictional magazine Popular Paranoia
• A welcome letter from the player's new employer, Happitec Corporation
• A Fillmore "Better Beezer" credit card
  Credit card
  A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
  
   application form (each sheet of the triplicate carbon copy
  Carbon copy
  Carbon copying, abbreviated cc or c.c., is the technique of using carbon paper to produce one or more copies simultaneously during the creation of paper documents...
  
   form had different instructions and questions)
• A very skinny pencil (similar to those provided at banks)

Reception

Game reviewers Hartley and Patricia Lesser complimented the game in their "The Role of Computers" column in Dragon

Dragon (magazine)

Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...

#124 (1987), calling it "an outrageous journey through red tape that puts you directly in the middle of a bureaucratic muddle so convoluted that you can’t help but laugh."

External links

• Bureaucracy overview and information
• Bureaucracy information from the Infocom Gallery with photos of the entire contents of the game (manual, feelies, etc.)
• Bureaucracy at Interactive Fiction Database
• Bureaucracy information from Infocom-if.org
• The Infocom Bugs List entry for Bureaucracy