Bob Bates
Inspired by Infocom games (specifically Zork), Bob Bates co-founded a company to sell text adventures, called Challenge, Inc. Contacting Activision about licensing the Infocom engine, Bates had a meeting with Jim Levy of Activision and was soon asked to develop games for Infocom directly on a contractor basis. This resulted in Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels and Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur. After these projects, Infocom was shut down, scuttling projects Bates was working on. (An adaptation of James Cameron's film The Abyss and a third "from the legends of history" game based on Robin Hood.)
Bates then founded (with Mike Verdu) a follow-up company called Legend Entertainment, which continued to produce games in the style of Infocom, including the efforts of a number of ex-Infocom employees as contributors/writers.
Author Credits
- Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels (publisher: Infocom; 1988; Z-code).
- Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur (publisher: Infocom; 1989; Z-code)
- TimeQuest (publisher: Legend Entertainment; 1991; MS-DOS).
- Eric the Unready (publisher: Legend Entertainment; 1993; MS-DOS).
Organizational Credits
- Founded Legend Entertainment with Mike Verdu.
Other Credits
- "Designing the Puzzle." Game Developers Conference, San Jose, California, April 1997.
- John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles (publisher: Legend Entertainment; 1998) graphic adventure game.
- Co-founder and organizer of the Game Designers Workshop, an annual conference of computer game designers concerned with storytelling.
- Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games. Prima Publishing, 2001.
Links
Interviews
- Interview with Adventure Classic Gaming - by Philip Jong, February 2001.