Bureaucracy
| Bureaucracy | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Infocom |
| Publisher | Infocom |
| Senior Developer | Douglas Adams |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1987 |
| platform | Apple II , Atari ST , Commodore 128 , Commodore Amiga , Mac OS , MS-DOS |
| Game engine | ZIL |
| genre | Text adventure |
| Game mode | Single player |
| control | keyboard |
| medium | diskette |
| language | English |
| copy protection | Enclosure referencing |
Bureaucracy is a text adventure from Infocom from 1987, which u. a. was written by Douglas Adams .
action
The player is forced to overcome a long and complicated series of bureaucratic hurdles caused by their recent move. The mail is no longer delivered and bank accounts are inaccessible. The game shows a simulated blood pressure measurement , which increases in the case of frustrating events and only decreases again after a period of time without annoying events. If a certain blood pressure is exceeded, the player succumbs to an aneurysm and the game is lost. During the seemingly simple task of getting misdirected letters, the player encounters some bizarre characters, such as a computer hacker , a paranoid gun fetishist, a cannibal tribe and a hungry llama . The game begins with a registration form. After this has been filled in by the player, the game deliberately uses this information completely incorrectly, so the player is persistently addressed in the wrong gender, and the color indicated by the player as "least liked" appears everywhere.
Production notes
Douglas Adams and Infocom started working together after the former noticed the Planetfall game written and programmed by Steve Meretzky . Douglas first wrote (together with Meretzky) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . The contract he had signed with Infocom actually provided for five more games based on the Hitchhiker universe. But Adams lost interest in the topic and instead suggested drawing up a plot on the topic of "bureaucracy". Infocom finally agreed to the plan. According to Adams, the game was inspired by his own experiences. Once when he was moving within London, he filled out many relocation forms, one he handed in personally to his bank. Shortly after he moved to his new apartment, his credit card expired and the bank had sent him a new one to his old address. It took the bank several weeks to fix the bug, during which Adams had to fill out a variety of forms and hold conversations with various bank employees. According to Adams, the bank eventually sent a letter apologizing for the inconvenience; However, this was sent again to the former address.
Since Adams had no experience in using the Z-machine , he was assigned an experienced Infocom employee (as was the case during the production of Hitchhiker's Guide ) to edit the script so that it was suitable for programming, and should then do this programming. Since Adams worked very slowly and canceled numerous interim appointments, the company's internal capacities had to be rescheduled several times. The production took four years, the longest time Infocom has ever worked on a game. During this time, over ten Infocom authors were used one after the other, so that in the end it was not Adams and individual co-authors, but simply "Douglas Adams and the employees of Infocom" that were named on the game packaging.
The original packaging included several documents and other items that were referenced in the game and thus represented copy protection :
- A moving brochure from the fictional bank Fillmore Fiduciary Trust
- An advertisement for the fictional magazine Popular Paranoia
- A welcome message from the player's new employer, Happitec Corporation
- A credit card application form with three carbon copies, each with different instructions and questions
- A pen to fill out the forms
Although Bureaucracy was written in the typical, humorous style of Adams, the game sold sluggishly, especially when compared to the bestselling The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . Since Infocom was in financial distress in 1987 due to the failure of the Cornerstone database software , hardly any money was invested in advertising.
Bureaucracy is also one of the five months in the Discordian calendar .
Web links
- Bureaucracy at MobyGames (English)
- Bureaucracy in the Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB)
- Scans of packaging and inserts on Elsewhere.org
- About Bureaucracy (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together (A History of Interactive Fiction) . 2006 ( filfre.net ).
- ^ Heise.de: Douglas Adams and Infocom. Retrieved November 3, 2018 .