THE IMPLEMENTOR’S CREED
I create fictional worlds. I create experiences.
I am exploring a new medium for telling stories.
My readers should become immersed in the story and forget where they are. They should forget about the keyboard and the screen, forget everything but the experience. My goal is to make the computer invisible.
I want as many people as possible to share these experiences. I want a broad range of fictional worlds, and a broad range of “reading levels.” I can categorize our past works and discover where the range needs filling in. I should also seek to expand the categories to reach every popular taste.
In each of my works, I share a vision with the reader. Only I know exactly what the vision is, so only I can make the final decisions about content and style. But I must seriously consider comments and suggestions from any source, in the hope that they will make the sharing better.
I know what an artist means by saying, “I hope I can finish this work before I ruin it.” Each work-in-progress reaches a point of diminishing returns, where any change is as likely to make it worse as to make it better. My goal is to nurture each work to that point. And to make my best estimate of when it will reach that point.
I can’t create quality work by myself. I rely on other implementors to help me both with technical wizardry and with overcoming the limitations of the medium. I rely on testers to tell me both how to communicate my vision better and where the rough edges of the work need polishing. I rely on marketeers and salespeople to help me share my vision with more readers. I rely on others to handle administrative details so I can concentrate on the vision.
None of my goals is easy. But all are worth hard work. Let no one doubt my dedication to my art.
—Stu Galley, Infocom
From a Moonmist retrospective.
Also, I loved his Seastalker — I was marginally older than the target audience, and sailed thru it fast, but it combined so many things I like, Tom Swift, Hardy Boys, underwater laboratories (SeaLab 2020 pre-Adult Swim, Man from Atlantis, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea TV show, etc.), and tactical roguelike combat with the submarine. For years the sticker was permanently attached to my dresser mirror.