Steve Meretzky

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Steve Meretzky 2008

Steven Eric Meretzky (* 11. May 1957 in Yonkers , New York ) is an American computer game - programmers . He is a developer of some of the most popular games of the company Infocom known in the 1980s, this outstanding his collaboration with Douglas Adams for the text adventure to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and was named one of twenty-five "Game Gods" by PC Gamer magazine in September 1999 .

Life

Meretzky was trained at MIT , he completed his studies as a Bachelor of Science and became a site manager. But a short time later he got tired of this job, and so he hired Infocom in 1981 . In 1983 he wrote the hugely successful science fiction adventure Planetfall , through which Douglas Adams became aware of him. The following year the two began working on the text adventure for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , which would become one of the best-selling games of its time. Other notable games for Infocom include Leather Goddesses of Phobos , the award-winning A Mind Forever Voyaging, and Zork Zero . As part of the Zork franchise, Meretzky wrote four game books for Tor Books in 1983 and 1984 . After the liquidation of Infocom by the owner Activision , he followed Bob Bates in 1989 to his newly founded company Legend Entertainment , for which he designed several adventure games. In 1994 he left Legend and founded Boffo Games, for which he developed some games, but the company was dissolved after a few years. He then moved to WorldWinner as a consultant and game designer. As a freelance consultant, he was hired by Blizzard in 1997 to revise the concept of their planned point-and-click adventure game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, which has already been in production for a year . The project was discontinued in 1998 due to lack of time and technical weaknesses. The card game Catch 21 , which he developed for WorldWinner in 2001, was further developed in 2008 into a television program for the US television channel Game Show Network (GSN). He later joined Blue Fang Games and worked on the Zoo Tycoon series published by Microsoft for the PC . In November 2016 he became Vice President for Design at the British online games company King Digital Entertainment .

Meretzky is a founding member of the Computer Game Developers Association and is frequently booked as a speaker at events such as the Game Developers Conference . He played himself in the music video for It Is Pitch Dark by MC Frontalot , a rap song that quotes several text adventures by Meretzky.

plant

Meretzky was the main developer and creative director of the following games:

Infocom

Activision

  • Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 (1992)

Legend Entertainment

Boffo Games

WorldWinner (excerpt)

  • Catch 21 (2001)
  • Word Cubes (2001)
  • SwapIt! (2003)
  • Skillgammon (2004)
  • Haunted Mine (2004)
  • Paint Buckets (2005)

Game books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ GetLamp.com: Interview: Steve Meretzky. Retrieved July 2, 2017 .
  2. ↑ MacGateway.com: Ten Symbols of the Computer Game Industry . Retrieved September 13, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Adventure-Treff .de: Steve Meretzky has a new job at King.com. Retrieved November 10, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Meretzky, Steve
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meretzky, Steven Eric (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer game programmer
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Yonkers , New York