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From: adam@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Adam Glass)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Re: Infocom
Summary: Dead
Message-ID: <2984@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 24 Jul 90 18:07:05 GMT
References: <Qaf7kTi00Vo9AKNYMV@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: adam@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Adam Glass)
Distribution: na
Organization: Carnegie Institute of Technology
Lines: 29

es2j+@andrew.cmu.edu (Edward John Sabol) writes:
> What's the status of Infocom? Has it just disappeared or what?

Yes and no.  So far as I know, I'm the only Infocommie who reads this
group, so I guess I'll take it.  I can't go into too much gory detail,
as I'm not interested in getting a call from Mediagenic's lawyers.  I
should also mention that this may not be 100% true, it's just what I
saw and what I was told by friends who stayed at Infocom longer than I.

Anyway, as you know, Infocom was bought out by Activision a few years
ago.  Well, things were fine for a while.  To make a long story short,
they fired the head of testing (my boss.)  They then replaced her with
someone else.  Mediagenic was demanding all sorts of deadlines, and
marketing was interefering with testing (and you wonder why
Quarterstaff is so buggy!).  Well, the atmosphere got very unfriendly,
and people started leaving.  More people were hired, but then a few of
them left too.  Finally, everyone got fired (including the
implementors.)  Mediagenic moved the name "Infocom" out to California.

I believe some of the founders of Infocom, along with Meretzky, started
a new company in the Cambridge area.  There was a message about a year
ago on mit.bboard looking for C programmers.  I think Stu Galley is
doing a little teaching at MIT, but I'm not sure.

> I just *knew* they shouldn't have sold out to Activision...

You couldn't have said it better.

Adam