Rob Griffiths interview from GET LAMP: GET LAMP: Rob Griffiths Rob is a perfect example of the benefits of not going just for "names" in a documentary about a

Rob Griffiths interview from GET LAMP: GET LAMP: Rob Griffiths Rob is a perfect example of the benefits of not going just for "names" in a documentary about a wide-ranging subject - nothing on his resume says he was a big text adventure game player or person who was at the beginning of Zork. But there he was, a kid who had gotten into the MIT lab and seen early Zork being played and the effect it was having on the students and computer lab users. He was articulate and provided a wonderful dash of emotion into the descriptions which I used liberally in GET LAMP. He had a number of printouts which I also filmed (but didn't use). Many documentaries wouldn't count "just a player" as worth interviewing - Rob is proof that approach is short-sighted indeed. https://archive.org/details/getlamp-rgriffiths https://archive.org/details/getlamp-rgriffiths "I believe on one trip we were touring the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, and we saw some people gathered around this terminal. And we inquired what they were doing, and out of that came this game Zork, and my friend, since he was at MIT, had us get an account, and we were able to log in and figure out what to me looked like an extremely arcane set of commands to actually get this game running. From then on we were pretty much hooked from the first time we actually saw it. I believe we saw it when we were walking through the MIT AI Lab. I was a guest. Even back then there was some pretty amazing stuff in there. To see all these students and professors huddled around this terminal. What are the doing? They had all these incredibly cool Lisp Machines with big gorgeous displays, and a bunch of people were huddled around a machine that's got text. And we were sort of intrigued. I believe that was the first time I actually saw the game, so to speak. You know, I never got names, so I don't know. I was a petrified little 15-year-old kid walking around the MIT lab, so it was a bit of a feeling of "Am I supposed to be here?", and if I am supposed to be here, I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to talk, so perhaps I'll just be quiet and observe."