50 Years of Text Games

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In 1985, a mysterious group of women calling themselves the "Games Mistresses" released the first of a series of text adventure games. The story behind…
Aaron A. Reed
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When the best-loved makers of text adventures met the best-loved sci-fi satirist of the decade, the result was an unforgettable classic of interactive…
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Veronika Megler just wanted a part-time job while she finished her college degree. She didn't realize it would end with her writing one of the first…
Aaron A. Reed
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When four MIT hackers decide they can make a better Adventure, they start building a game that will still be topping bestseller charts eight years…
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A 2021 Journey from Oregon Trail to A.I. Dungeon
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The text of Dwarf Fortress and procedural tales so expansive no human could ever explore them all. 
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A young writer crosses paths with the designer of Zork, sparking a surprisingly experimental game where you experience reality from six unique…
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The dawn of incremental games: how some of the most virally addictive games of the 2010s were nothing but text and numbers going up.
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In communist Czechoslovakia, a network of teenage hackers discovers that text games are a completely uncensored medium.
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A middle-aged lawyer lets his kids Choose Their Own Adventure for their bedtime story, planting the seeds for a publishing phenomenon “as contagious as…
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The story of how dozens of British college students would stay up all night to adventure together in the game that would spawn a thousand sequels.
Aaron A. Reed
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Some final thoughts on this epic expedition.
Aaron A. Reed
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