[game_preservation] History of "game engine"

[Stuart Feldhamer]

Wiki has decent articles both on the Infocom Z Machine concept and on
Sierra's AGI:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_Game_Interpreter

 

In both of those the engine was separated from assets. Whether you want to
call them game engines or not is a different story.

 

Stuart

 

From: game_preservation-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:game_preservation-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Henry Lowood
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2012 11:51 PM
To: Alex Handy
Cc: IGDA Game Preservation SIG
Subject: Re: [game_preservation] History of "game engine"

 

Hey Alex,
Infocom and LucasArts (SCUMM) were my first thoughts, and we have Meretzky's
papers here, so I can check out Infocom pretty easily.  I'm skeptical, but I
am keeping an open mind.  An important aspect for the stuff I am looking at
is the separation of the "engine" from assets.  Probably a lot will depend
on how the data libraries were organized for the Infocom and LucasArts
projects, and it will take me a while to sort that out. If anybody knows of
good documentation, let me know.
Henry

On 8/7/2012 2:20 PM, Alex Handy wrote:

Text game engines. Infocom probably called it something different, but
that's what it was.

Gold box dnd games, also.

On Aug 7, 2012 2:18 PM, "Henry Lowood" <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:

Hi all,

I'm working on a project having to do with the history of the game engine
(as concept, technology, etc.) and its various impacts on game design and
other things.  So, here is a question for this group.  Does anybody want to
make a claim that there was a relevant use of the term in game design BEFORE
id Software began to use the term.  I've done some analysis with the Google
database (n-grams, etc.) and I find no evidence of anything like that, plus
John Romero believes that id coined the term as we use it today.   (And I
agree.)

Anyway, if you think you have or know of a counter-claim, please let me know
and I'll check on it.  Source references welcome, of course.

Henry

-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
  Film & Media Collections
HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
<http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood> 

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-- 
Henry Lowood
Curator, History of Science & Technology Collections;
   Film & Media Collections
HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
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