The Institute - December 2020 - TI-10

tech history

DVENTURE VIDEO GAMES have grown in popularity now that people are staying home more due to
coronavirus-related restrictions, according to The
Washington Post.
Such games are driven by storytelling. Players solve puzzles to move the plot along. Adventure games including Broken Age, Machinarium, and Myst are successful because they
feature beautiful graphics and extensive story lines, and they
test players' critical-thinking skills.
One of the people gamers have to thank for the genre is
Roberta Williams who, along with her husband, Ken, created a number of early graphic adventure games in the 1980s,
including Mystery House and King's Quest.
She was honored this year with the Pioneer Award at the
Game Developers Choice Awards. The award recognizes
breakthrough technologies and game design milestones.
Often called " Queen of the Graphic Adventure, " Williams
was not an engineer by trade. She was a stay-at-home mom
who developed an interest in video games after her husband,
TI-10 | DEC 2020 | THE INSTITUTE

a computer programmer at IBM, brought home an Apple II
computer with the Colossal Cave Adventure game loaded on
it, according to the Lemelson-MIT program's profile of her.
She enjoyed playing the text-only game, in which the
player explores a mysterious cave filled with treasure. She
searched for other adventure games to play, but there
weren't many other options. That inspired her to create
her own game, and she added graphics to make the experience more interesting.
" Previous games for the Apple II and other home computers were text-only, like a choose-your-own-adventure
book in game form, " Smithsonian Magazine pointed out in
a profile about Williams.
While Williams wrote the story line, her husband made the
graphics. He used a Versawriter, a board of thick plexiglass
that had an electronic stylus attached to the top, according
to the Lemelson-MIT profile. There was no software at the
time that could read the Versawriter, so he created a program to do that.

JOHN STOREY/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

Roberta Williams Created Iconic
Graphic Adventure Games in the '80s

https://www.ibm.com/us-en/?p1=Search&p4=43700050478421002&p5=e&cm_mmc=Search_Google-_-1S_1S-_-WW_US-_-ibm_e&cm_mmca7=71700000060943610&cm_mmca8=kwd-11656201&cm_mmca9=EAIaIQobChMI_bboqYu56wIVA4rICh3ZlAvUEAAYASAAEgKr7PD_BwE&cm_mmca10=432694855112&cm_mmca11= e&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_bboqYu56wIVA4rICh3ZlAvUEAAYASAAEgKr7PD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/05/12/video-game-industry-coronavirus/ https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/roberta-williams https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/05/12/video-game-industry-coronavirus/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/232790/Broken_Age/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/232790/Broken_Age/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/40700/Machinarium/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/8699/Myst_25th_Anniversary_Collection/ https://www.sierragamers.com/roberta-williams/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1980s-roberta-williams-brought-graphic-adventure-games-home-180962160/ https://www.sierragamers.com/mystery-house/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/345390/Kings_Quest/ https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/02/26/1991270/0/en/2020-Game-Developers-Choice-Awards-to-Honor-Adventure-Game-Creator-Roberta-Williams-with-Pioneer-Award.html https://www.gamechoiceawards.com/

The Institute - December 2020

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