Windham Classics

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Windham Classics Corporation

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1984
resolution 1985/86
Seat Cambridge (Massachusetts) (United States)
Branch Software development

The Windham Classics Corporation was an American publisher ( game publisher ) that existed from 1984 to around 1985/86. The company was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts , a suburb of Boston . Windham Classics published computer games that belonged to the adventure genre and were based on models from children's and youth books. In addition to English versions, some Spanish game versions were also published.

history

Windham Classics, a subsidiary of Spinnaker Software , had the legal form of a US corporation , so a corporation . The company was thus able to act relatively independently as a legal person . In fact, there was a close connection to the parent company Spinnaker Software, founded in 1982, especially in terms of sales. Windham Classics was founded in 1984 by Spinnaker Software as part of a marketing strategy to open up new market segments: While Telarium Corporation , also a subsidiary of Spinnaker, focused on the target group of adult adventure players, Windham Classics turned to younger adventure players.

In terms of content, the Windham Classics Adventures were based on books for children and young people. Their development took place partly on the basis of public domain classic texts. The adventure Below the Root was based on a contemporary book by the author Zilpha Keatley Snyder. The game was developed by Dale Disharoon, a teacher who developed edutainment programs in his spare time and gathered a small team around him. In order to suit the target group of younger adventure players, the game solutions for the Windham games were relatively simple and the players were supported with didactic solution tips. In some cases, adaptations were made for the Spanish-speaking market. As a product manager, Seth Godin - partly together with the game developer Byron Preiss - was involved in the creation of the Windham Classics Adventures.

Technically, the adventures were implemented for typical platforms of the 1980s such as Apple II , Atari ST , C 64 , DOS , MSX and TRS-80 . It was controlled via the keyboard using a parser , but also partly via a joystick or mouse. The adventures had two-dimensional graphics and theme songs to illustrate the game.

As far as can be seen, Windham Classics Adventures were only published in the two fiscal years 1984 and 1985. After that, Windham Classics probably ceased business operations; further adventures were planned, but no longer appeared. The market for text-based adventure games began to shrink gradually due to changes in user interests; for example B. Telarium went into business in 1987 and Infocom in 1989. The Robin Hood adventure was announced in the program preview . However, the title was no longer published. The two other titles The Wind in the Willows (based on the children's book Der Wind in den Willows by Kenneth Grahame ) and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (based on the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne ) were also planned. They should be developed under the leadership of Byron Preiss and his company Byron Preiss Video Productions. Ultimately, these two titles were also no longer published.

The parent company Spinnaker Software Corporation was taken over by SoftKey in 1993/94 . SoftKey took over competitor The Learning Company in 1996 and has operated under that name ever since. In the meantime taken over by the toy group Mattel , The Learning Company is now a subsidiary of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company and publishes learning software and adventure games.

reception

In the 1980s, the Windham Classics Adventures were recognized in game reviews by German and American computer game magazines for the quality of their graphics and texts as well as the target group-specific didactic preparation.

Windham Classics Adventures were included in several studies on the history and theory of computer games :

Using the example of the adventure Swiss Family Robinson, Laurene Krasny Brown (1986) emphasized that the involvement of children in the plot is stronger in text adventures than in traditional reading of narratives ("What differs is the children's involvement in the plot. Interactive fiction demands that children participate. ").

David F. Lancy / Bernard L. Hayes (1988) used the Windham Classics games Swiss Family Robinson, Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz for an empirical study. They found that with these text adventures it was especially possible to reach those students who otherwise read little.

William V. Costanzo (1989) named the "electronic novels" Treasure Island and Alice in Wonderland as examples of the computer game adaptation of classic books for children and young people ("interactive versions of the classics").

Using the example of the adventure Swiss Family Robinson, Sharon Franklin (1992) emphasized that the combination of text, graphics and possibilities for interaction supports the imagination of children and young people.

In his study on Interactive Fiction (IF), Jimmy Maher (2006) compared the game principle of the Windham Classics adventures Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson with the ambitious literary adaptations of the sister company Telarium ("IF games in the Telarium mode").

Olli Leino / Hanna Wirman / Amyris Fernandez (2008) found that the development of the adventure game principle saw the transition from text adventures to graphic adventures to visual representations of the player characters. Examples include the characters Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island and Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz. The aim of the graphics was to make it easier for the player to identify with the plot of the game.

Published games

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marguerite Zientara: Inside Spinnaker Software. In: InfoWorld, Volume 6, Number 33, August 13, 1984. ISSN  0199-6649 . P. 45 ("There's one sales call and one invoice").
  2. ↑ on the marketing strategy of Spinnaker Software Marguerite Zientara: Inside Spinnaker Software. In: InfoWorld, Volume 6, Number 33, August 13, 1984. ISSN  0199-6649 . Pp. 43-48.
  3. ↑ Filfre.net: Bookware's Sunset. Retrieved September 13, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Sol Guber: Treasure Island . In: Antic Vol. 5 No. 1, 5/1986, p. 81.
  5. ↑ Selby Bateman: Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words? In: Compute !, Issue 53, October 1984, p. 32; Sharon Darling: Byron Preiss and Ronald Martinez. Trillium Software Developers . In: Compute! S Gazette, Issue 18, December 1984, p. 55.
  6. ↑ Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together. A History of Interactive Fiction . Senior Honor's Thesis, University of Texas, Dallas 2006 (Chapter 7 The End of an Era ).
  7. ^ Hans Persson / Stefan Meier: Adventureland (Companies - Telarium Corporation) .
  8. ↑ Sharon Darling: Byron Preiss and Ronald Martinez. Trillium Software Developers . In: Compute! S Gazette, Issue 18, December 1984, pp. 52-58 (54).
  9. ↑ NN: Conglomerate will turn over $ 130 million. Softkey takes over two software houses with Spinnaker and Wordstar ( Memento of August 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). In: Computerwoche of August 27, 1993; Robert F. Bruner: Deals from Hell. M & A Lessons that Rise Above the Ashes. John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey, USA 2005, p. 249 (chapter Mattel's Acquisition of The Learning Company ).
  10. ^ NN: Mattel swallows The Learning Company . In: Heise online from December 14, 1998; Robert F. Bruner: Deals from Hell. M & A Lessons that Rise Above the Ashes. John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey, USA 2005, p. 249 (chapter Mattel's Acquisition of The Learning Company ).
  11. ↑ See the information on the company website of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ( Memento of April 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ).
  12. ^ M. Kohl / Heinrich Lenhardt : Below the Root . In: Happy Computer special issue 3/1985; Nick Piazza: Below the Root . In: Compute !, Issue. 64, 09/1985, p. 62; Sol Guber: Treasure Island . In: Antic Vol. 5 No. 1, 5/1986, p. 81.
  13. ↑ Laurene Krasny Brown: Taking advantage of media: A manual for parents and teachers . Routledge & K. Paul 1986, p. 124.
  14. ^ David F. Lancy, Bernard L. Hayes: Interactive Fiction and the Reluctant Reader . In: English Journal, Nov. 1988, pp. 42-45
  15. ^ William V. Costanzo: The electronic Text: Learning to write, read and reason with computers . Educational Technology Publications 1989 (Chapter A brief History of Interactive Fiction , p. 67).
  16. ^ Sharon Franklin: Writing & Technology: Ideas that work . The Writing Notebook 1992, pp. 184, 220.
  17. ↑ Jimmy Maher: Let's Tell a Story Together. A History of Interactive Fiction . Senior Honor's Thesis, University of Texas, Dallas 2006 (Chapter 6 The Rest of commercial IF - Trillium / Telarium ) (aE).
  18. ↑ Olli Leino, Hanna Wirman, Amyris Fernandez: Extending Experiences: Structure, Analysis and Design of Computer Games . Lapland University Press 2008, pp. 219, 284f.