4 ms·

An update on the Infocom Cabinet, with a side order of ethical debate

33 points by bane 11y ago

percept 11y ago
"I worry about someone defending decisions made decades ago, with 20/20 hindsight applied by groupthink hive-mind perfection-oriented knowledge. I hope that doesn’t happen. People in this group range from early 20s to early 30s (with a few noted exceptions) and Infocom was often either their first job, or a completely crazy 90 degree change in career. They did what they did, and it came from competence and doing the right thing as they saw it. I don’t know if any of us could stand up to such scrutiny and get top marks across the board."
justin66 11y ago
A few wordy paragraphs down, he answers the question I was curious about: is this the "infocom drive" guy? Apparently that's one of the author's friends, who got a copy of the drive from the author.
Redoubts 11y ago
I'm having trouble understanding why this is. Where can I find more context?
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  Some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10620142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10620142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619956 http://www.filfre.net/2014/04/down-from-the-top/ http://www.filfre.net/2014/04/down-from-the-top/ http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/ http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU http://www.filfre.net/tag/infocom/ http://www.filfre.net/tag/infocom/
danso 11y ago
FWIW, the OP links to an apparently controversial article ("an article about a particular narrative thread") in which Infocom employees discuss the never-released sequel to HHGG. The domain of that post seems to be currently down (waxy.org), but here's the Sept. 2015 archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150928021842/http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150928021842/http://waxy.org/2...
jacquesm 11y ago
I absolutely love Jason's work. A funny thing happened a few days ago which ties on strongly with the writing here, we both got offered yet another cache of Geocities data and gladly accepted it. My biggest worry about that data is that I'll accidentally revive something that the person whose data it was has already removed. So I'm going to have to go through all the removal requests to make sure that I'm not undoing a previous deletion while trying to make a bunch of people happy their stuff was found. That's a very thin line to walk on, on the one hand trying to preserve something historical, on the other to try to respect peoples wishes and their privacy. It's extra tough for Jason because this work he's been doing on Infocom is essentially documenting the lives of a number of people who are still very much alive (and if they're not, their direct descendants are). It's one thing to grub around in some archaeological dig to find an old piece of parchment recording a deal, it's an entirely different thing to document in painstaking detail all the back-and-forth between company employees, especially if they thought that those details had long been lost and now they re-surface. It's like tearing open a whole batch of old wounds in the name of historical accuracy. I'm definitely not envying his position, and it's a real pity that the person who he trusted with the data could not wait to release some of it in such a way that it nearly killed the project. Just the other day there was a release of a bunch of documents from one person who worked at Atari. I'm still nowhere near done reading it, there are more and more gems to be found there, but at the same time I couldn't help wondering if the fact that all this would have normally been confidential and that plenty of the trading partners of Atari (notably TI) are still in business if this sort of corporate dump would not negatively affect those partners even so many years later. I know that plenty of people have berated me for not asking for their permission before reviving the Geocities data and my (lame) excuse has always been that there wasn't enough time and that there was no contact information and so I decided that the value of the good would outweigh the value of the bad. So I opted for asking for forgiveness rather than permission and even though it has worked out well that's an easy call to make when you're not personally affected but I've had some fairly pointy emails over the years that explained how I had been in the wrong on several occasions. Those are outweighed very handily by the emails of people that were extremely happy their stuff got saved. So please. Jason, don't let anybody stop you from doing what you're doing. It's absolutely marvelous that someone would spend all this time, energy and funds on preserving this information for future generations, the value of your work will only go up over time. I'm not sure if it will ever change the game industry much, lots of time has passed and the game industry has already changed in ways that make the inner workings of Infocom less applicable than they might have been years ago. But just to see how a company goes through it's whole life-cycle is fascinating, especially for those that have lived through such a thing themselves, to see the parallels, the differences and the machinations. That's the real value, that this happens to be a game company is auxiliary to that.

33 points by bane 11y ago

"I worry about someone defending decisions made decades ago, with 20/20 hindsight applied by groupthink hive-mind perfection-oriented knowledge. I hope that doesn’t happen. People in this group range from early 20s to early 30s (with a few noted exceptions) and Infocom was often either their first job, or a completely crazy 90 degree change in career. They did what they did, and it came from competence and doing the right thing as they saw it. I don’t know if any of us could stand up to such scrutiny and get top marks across the board."

justin66 11y ago

A few wordy paragraphs down, he answers the question I was curious about: is this the "infocom drive" guy? Apparently that's one of the author's friends, who got a copy of the drive from the author.

Redoubts 11y ago

I'm having trouble understanding why this is. Where can I find more context?

pmoriarty 11y ago
Some context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10620142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10620142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10619956 http://www.filfre.net/2014/04/down-from-the-top/ http://www.filfre.net/2014/04/down-from-the-top/ http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/ http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/infocom/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhbcDzbGSU http://www.filfre.net/tag/infocom/ http://www.filfre.net/tag/infocom/

danso 11y ago

FWIW, the OP links to an apparently controversial article ("an article about a particular narrative thread") in which Infocom employees discuss the never-released sequel to HHGG. The domain of that post seems to be currently down (waxy.org), but here's the Sept. 2015 archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150928021842/http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150928021842/http://waxy.org/2...

jacquesm 11y ago

I absolutely love Jason's work. A funny thing happened a few days ago which ties on strongly with the writing here, we both got offered yet another cache of Geocities data and gladly accepted it. My biggest worry about that data is that I'll accidentally revive something that the person whose data it was has already removed. So I'm going to have to go through all the removal requests to make sure that I'm not undoing a previous deletion while trying to make a bunch of people happy their stuff was found. That's a very thin line to walk on, on the one hand trying to preserve something historical, on the other to try to respect peoples wishes and their privacy. It's extra tough for Jason because this work he's been doing on Infocom is essentially documenting the lives of a number of people who are still very much alive (and if they're not, their direct descendants are). It's one thing to grub around in some archaeological dig to find an old piece of parchment recording a deal, it's an entirely different thing to document in painstaking detail all the back-and-forth between company employees, especially if they thought that those details had long been lost and now they re-surface. It's like tearing open a whole batch of old wounds in the name of historical accuracy. I'm definitely not envying his position, and it's a real pity that the person who he trusted with the data could not wait to release some of it in such a way that it nearly killed the project. Just the other day there was a release of a bunch of documents from one person who worked at Atari. I'm still nowhere near done reading it, there are more and more gems to be found there, but at the same time I couldn't help wondering if the fact that all this would have normally been confidential and that plenty of the trading partners of Atari (notably TI) are still in business if this sort of corporate dump would not negatively affect those partners even so many years later. I know that plenty of people have berated me for not asking for their permission before reviving the Geocities data and my (lame) excuse has always been that there wasn't enough time and that there was no contact information and so I decided that the value of the good would outweigh the value of the bad. So I opted for asking for forgiveness rather than permission and even though it has worked out well that's an easy call to make when you're not personally affected but I've had some fairly pointy emails over the years that explained how I had been in the wrong on several occasions. Those are outweighed very handily by the emails of people that were extremely happy their stuff got saved. So please. Jason, don't let anybody stop you from doing what you're doing. It's absolutely marvelous that someone would spend all this time, energy and funds on preserving this information for future generations, the value of your work will only go up over time. I'm not sure if it will ever change the game industry much, lots of time has passed and the game industry has already changed in ways that make the inner workings of Infocom less applicable than they might have been years ago. But just to see how a company goes through it's whole life-cycle is fascinating, especially for those that have lived through such a thing themselves, to see the parallels, the differences and the machinations. That's the real value, that this happens to be a game company is auxiliary to that.