Computer Chronicles talks Zork with David Lebling in 1985 (Upscale) (4K)
5A Clip from The Computer Chronicles Season 2, Episode 3.
Zork is one of the earliest and most influential text adventure games, originally developed in the late 1970s by a group of MIT students—Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and David Lebling—at the MIT Dynamic Modeling Group. It was inspired by an earlier game called Colossal Cave Adventure and aimed to create a more sophisticated, parser-based interactive fiction experience.
The original version, written in MDL (a Lisp-like language), was later ported to more accessible platforms and split into a trilogy—Zork I: The Great Underground Empire, Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and Zork III: The Dungeon Master. These games were published by Infocom, a company co-founded by the creators, in the early 1980s. The Zork games are known for their rich text descriptions, challenging puzzles, and the immersive, whimsical universe of the "Great Underground Empire."
David Lebling was a key figure in Zork’s creation and a co-founder of Infocom. A graduate of MIT, he played a crucial role in developing Infocom’s signature parser system and contributed significantly to the design and writing of Zork and many other Infocom titles. Lebling later worked on other notable interactive fiction games like Enchanter and The Lurking Horror. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of interactive fiction and computer game narrative design.