Andrew Plotkin - Interactive Fiction

Interactive Fiction

Plotkin was one of the earliest writers to use Graham Nelson's Inform 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 interpreters 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.

As of 2007, 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:

• Freefall (1995; Tetris clone - possibly the first so-called Z-machine abuse)
• A Change in the Weather (1995; winner of the 1995 IF Comp's Inform division)
• So Far (1996; winner of many XYZZY Awards that year, including for Best Game)
• The Space Under the Window (1997)
• Spider and Web (1998; winner of many XYZZY Awards that year, including for Best Game)
• Hunter, in Darkness (1999; winner of the XYZZY Awards for Best Individual Puzzle and Best Setting)
• Shade (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 Dreamhold (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 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. Plotkin was also featured prominently in the 2010 interactive fiction documentary, GET LAMP.