Donald Woods

Don Woods, 2006. From GET LAMP.

Woods is best known in IF circles as co-creator of the program known as ADVENT, Adventure, and Colossal Cave. While employed at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (SAIL), he found the original version of the game program written by Will Crowther. After writing to every "Crowther" on every ARPANET host he could find, he made contact and requested permission to extend the game, which was granted. Adding a number of puzzles and objects to the game with the help of other employees at SAIL, he then released it to an even wider audience, where it caught plenty of attention.

He has continued working as a developer, employed by companies including Xerox, Sun, ClariNet, General Magic, Postini, and PlaceWare.

In 2006, Woods accepted the "First Penguin Award" at the Game Developers' Conference for the contribution of Adventure to the computer games industry. This award was presented by Bob Bates and Steve Meretzky.

Author Credits

• Adventure (with William Crowther; 1976; FORTRAN).
  • Also known as Advent, Colossal Cave, Colossal Cave Adventure, and other titles. There are many ports and translations of this game; see the Adventure page.

Links

• Don Woods' home page.
• Donald Woods (archived) - at Baf's Guide.
• Don Woods at Wikipedia.

Interviews

• L’avventura è l’avventura interview (in English), (in Italian) - June 2001.
• GET LAMP: Don Woods. Interview video clips of Don Woods for Get Lamp, 2006.