Infocom, Inc.
Overview
Developer and publisher of interactive fiction ("text adventure") games in the early 1980s; purchased by
Activision in 1987.
From the Interactive Fiction FAQ:
[Thanks to Dave Lebling (Infocom co-founder) for the definitive
info on this]
Infocom never went out of business. It went deeply into debt to
develop a database product (named Cornerstone) that was a
commercial flop. It went shopping for a merger and found
Activision, which later changed its name to Mediagenic. What did
happen is that in May of 1989 Mediagenic closed down the "real"
Infocom in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and laid (almost) everyone
off. All the releases up through Zork Zero, Shogun, Journey, and
Arthur were developed in Cambridge.
Mediagenic licensed the UK rights to the games to Virgin
Mastertronic about two years ago.
Mediagenic went nearly bankrupt, was taken over by outside
investors, and taken through a so-called "pre-packaged Chapter 11
bankruptcy" in January, 1992. As part of that process, they changed
their name back to Activision, moved from Silicon Valley down to
LA, and recently merged with a company owned by the investors
(called The Disc Company). Activision continues to release new
products under the Infocom label, including collections of
Infocom's text adventures. Their graphical CDROM adventures have
been greeted with dour grunts on rec.*.int-fiction, but the games
seem to be improving in quality with every new release.
Contributed by
Brian Hirt (9986) on Feb 28, 1999.
