Due entirely to the efforts of people who are not me, PAX East has even more IF content than expected.
— The Get Lamp screening will be accompanied by a panel featuring Andrew Plotkin, Brian Moriarty and Steve Meretzky.
— The recently-announced PAX schedule also includes a session of ACTION CASTLE, an RPG where the GM plays a human IF parser.
— The IF hospitality suite will host a panel on IF outreach to the indie and casual gaming communities featuring Jason McIntosh and Andrew Plotkin with Chris Dahlen (who has written up some IF for the Onion AV Club) and John Bardinelli (regular contributor to Jay Is Games coverage of IF)
— There will also be an unofficial panel on adaptive difficulty strategies, featuring Jim Munroe and Aaron Reed talking with Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games. Gilbert’s work includes a number of excellent graphical adventures, including Emerald City Confidential.
I’m especially pleased about the latter two events: it’s cool to revisit IF’s roots, but we want to look forward as well as back. Thanks to everyone who’s worked on putting this together.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 
Cool, maybe I can get my Planetfall box autographed.
Jon: I was thinking the same thing with my mint Wishbringer box. Glad I’m not alone …
> PUT WISHBRINGER INTO BACKPACK
I’m moderating the IF Outreach panel. Emily, if you hadn’t graced me with one email of advice despite your being crazybusy, I probably would have unthinkingly populated it with only hard-core IF types, thereby keeping the vision narrow. Now we’ll not only get to hear from Andrew and Jason but also two gaming journalists (Chris and John) who traverse many other parts of the gaming world as well. And for that matter, though Jason is certainly a member of the IF community in good standing, he’s done Internet TV shows on many kinds of games. Thanks for pushing me to broaden the panel’s horizons!
I’m lucky enough to know Steve Meretzky a little. The Boston Developer community is a fairly small one. He was nice enough to agree to autograph a stack of his games for me at a Post Mortem meeting in Boston. (I asked him first, and at the next meeting, brought the pile.)
I think this may be a great time, though, for me to get Trinity, and Wishbringer signed. I still carry around the Wishbringer Stone with me from time to time. I wonder if anyone warned the Implementors we may be assaulting them for autographs?
I’m looking forward to this PAX. I’ve been a game developer for almost 14 years and I’ve only really ever attended two conventions. I’ve filled out my schedule with the IF events, and am ecstatic that there are so many! While I’ve played IF for a long, long time, starting with my first exposure to “Infidel”, I’ve only written ONE game, for the 2008 comp (for which Emily wrote a very nice, positive review, thanks you!) I still remain actively interested in IF. I used my first game to learn I6. I hope to write another game, learning I7.
I can’t wait to see you all at PAX East.
(Blatant plug, which you can choose to ignore, but I thought this was relevent. I made an IF t-shirt for PAX: >got lamp? – See the link if you’re interested. I know, cafe press is not cheap… (I’m not using any markup – cost only) I’m looking for cheaper shirt printers.)
Love the shirts, Sean!
Thanks, Harry.
I’ll be wearing one at PAX, on Friday. (Saturday I’m wearing my C64 shirt!)
Sean.
“AAAAACTION CAAAAAASTLE!”
*torch hands*
I’m looking forward to this madness. Action Castle isn’t just a love letter to Infocom and Steve Meretzsky, my whole game design career is! I toured Infocom as a 12-year old kid and wrote Steve a letter thanking him. Turns out he still has the letter after all these years.
And weirdness abounds… my new game FreeMarket uses a font that’s an homage to the old Infocom logo and the game itself is a transhuman sci-fi RPG inspired partly by IF guru and all around cool cat Jim Munroe’s work. WHOA.
Also: hi, Sean! :)
Heh. Hi, Jared.
Man, I was about 20 when I first discovered INFOCOM, but I wish I had the ability to visit their offices! You’re a lucky guy. I did once apply to be a beta tester, but got no response. :-(
See you at PAX!
Hi!
I’ve got the privilege of being the Enforcer (volunteer) manager for Wyvern Theater this year. As an IF fan and a reader of this blog, I’m super excited for the IF content that will be in Wyvern and elsewhere at PAX East.
Can’t wait to welcome you to PAX!
Cheers,
Andrew Linstrom
I haz a sad.
When I was visiting the parents in Connecticut a couple of weeks ago I forgot to grab my old box of Infocom game boxes. So no autograph for me.
Yup. I’m experiencing the same thing. All the INFOCOM games I have at hand are already autographed by Steve Meretzky (and Douglas Adams), but for a copy of Wishbringer, which I’ll bring along. But Trinity, my Enchanter Trilogy, and all my rest, are all in storage, and I canNOT find them.
A wasted opportunity.
Sean.