WEBVTT - TechStuff Tidbits: What was the first text-based adventure game? 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:16.160 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:19.279 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.720 are you? It's time for a tech Stuff Tidbits episode. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.160 And if you follow news and announcements about video games, 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:31.720 you've had a really busy week. This week, the Summer 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.680 Game Fest kicked off a ton of streams that contained 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:40.680 trailers for dozens of upcoming titles, ranging from quirky independent 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:45.239 games to new entries and established franchises. And that kind 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:47.600 of inspired me. I started thinking about some of the 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:52.120 computer games I really loved when I was a little kid. Now, y'all, 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.040 I was born in the nineteen seventies. That means I 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.520 grew up around the same time as the personal computer, right, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:03.040 because that became a thing in the seventies, And some 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:05.280 of the games I played on our old Apple to 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:10.080 e didn't have any sound or any graphics. All the 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:14.160 imagery in the game existed only in text descriptions and 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:18.959 my imagination. So I am today talking about text based 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:22.920 computer games. Now, if you've ever enjoyed a Choose your 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:26.040 Own Adventure style book and I don't even know if 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.120 those are still a thing now. I may still be 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:30.959 dating myself, but if you've ever read one of those, 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:33.760 you have a sense of what a text based computer 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:37.480 game is like. The player of the game reads a 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:41.240 description of an environment, which may or may not include 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.080 hints of dangerous things that surround the player. The player 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.400 then types in a command. That command could be to 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.200 walk in a specific direction, which will take you to 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.760 a new location, assuming you can actually go that way. 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.520 Or it might involve picking up something in the room 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:01.520 or taking a closer look at some or it might 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.520 involve trying to talk or battle someone or something in 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:10.240 the area, or maybe to hide from something. The tricky 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:13.200 thing is the player will always come up with more 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:17.400 options than the programmer considered or anticipated when they made 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:21.720 the game, and that makes text based adventures sort of 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.280 a puzzle that's on a meta level. The puzzle ends 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.720 up being what did the programmer have in mind at 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:31.400 this point in the game, Because you can get stuck 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.440 in these games. You could start to use what you 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.760 think is every single potential option, but it's just that 0:02:37.840 --> 0:02:40.080 you haven't fallen on the one that the programmer had 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.320 in mind. Thinking outside the box won't necessarily help you. 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:47.880 The game can't accommodate creative answers that programmers didn't think about. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.200 So with the old text based adventures, the programmer would 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.880 have to lay out what is possible through code, and 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:59.560 the code was pretty primitive, and the player would type 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.080 in a command and the game would have to determine 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.840 if the command made sense or not. If the command 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.600 did make sense, well, then the player would get a result. 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.359 That result might not be a positive one. It might 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.400 end up being a you can't do that, because even 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.280 though the command makes sense, something else has to happen first. 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.919 For example, if a door is locked, if the command 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:22.519 didn't make sense at all, if the programmer had not 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:28.160 thought to include that in the limited vocabulary of the game, well, 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:30.000 the game would then have to tell the player that 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.360 what they tried didn't work. And there were a lot 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:35.240 of different ways that various text based games would inform 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:38.920 players that what they were trying was a non starter. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.440 You might get something like I don't understand what you're 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.320 trying to do, or that won't work, or I don't 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.800 think that helped, or I don't know what blank means, 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.400 blank being whatever command you typed in that the game 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.560 just can't handle. Those were pretty typical responses. Not all 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.360 of them were used in every single game, but almost 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:05.040 pretty much every text based game had some variation of that. Now, 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:08.520 it might help if we think of a hypothetical example. 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.280 So let's say you've created a text based game in 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:17.160 which the player starts in a room, and this room's 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.960 just got It's a regular square room. There's a locked 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:24.720 door to the north, there's a hallway to the west, 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.040 there's a window to the south, and the east wall 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.320 is blank. And maybe you've created some flavored text for 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.760 the room, saying that the floor is stone and the 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:40.880 walls are wood, and they are covered in healing wall paper, 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:44.520 and a dim chandelier hangs from the ceiling. You know, 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.200 you give it some more text than just there's a 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:49.839 door to the north and a hallway to the west 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.080 and a window to the south. You want to create 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.440 a mood, and that mood will depend upon the style 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:58.560 of game you're making, right, So, if you're making a 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.360 horror game, you wanted to be super creepy and atmospheric. 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.400 If it's an adventure game, maybe it's mysterious that kind 0:05:06.400 --> 0:05:11.120 of thing. So you don't necessarily go bonkers with this description. 0:05:11.279 --> 0:05:13.000 You don't want to write a full novel, but you 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:16.200 want it to be interesting enough so that the player 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.479 gets a sense of where they are and the style 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:22.960 of game they're playing. So you try then to anticipate 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:25.480 the sort of actions that your players are going to 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.840 try when they start in this position. You want to 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.320 anticipate enough of them so that you know for the 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:36.920 vast majority of commands that are typed in, because that's 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:39.120 how you interact with a tech based game. You have 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.760 a prompt where you type in your commands. You want 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.320 those commands to get some sort of response and not 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:48.359 just go straight to the default. I don't know what 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.320 you're doing if you can help it, because you want 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.520 to hook those players in and have them have a 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.359 good experience. So you probably have thought about what the 0:05:57.360 --> 0:05:59.720 game should say if the player tries to open the 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:03.520 lock door, so maybe it responds with the locked door 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.200 won't budge, or maybe despite your valiant efforts, the door 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:11.720 remains locked. Maybe you also anticipate that some players will 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.320 try to look out that window on the south wall, 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:16.760 so you write something like the view outside the window 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:21.040 is of an unremarkable lawn, A bit overgrown or something 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:25.159 to that effect. Players can then choose to go to 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:27.920 the west, which is walking into the hallway that will 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.680 take them into a new setting, or maybe they want 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.560 to search the room. Maybe you write it so that 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.680 that action searching the room uncovers a key that fits 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.440 the door to the north, though I would argue that 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:44.320 would be a bit too easy, that you probably should 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.159 put the key somewhere else so that there's a little 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:50.440 more gameplay there. But more likely you just decide that 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.000 the flavor text is really just flavor. So let's say 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:57.080 that your character searches the room and the response is 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:00.320 you find nothing useful, or something to that effect. The 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:04.560 point is the responses that the player sees all come 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.599 from the programmer. I know that should be obvious, but 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:11.560 it's something that we have to keep in mind. Like 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:14.640 every time we play a game, unless it's a weird glitch, 0:07:15.480 --> 0:07:19.200 the response we get when we do something was put 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.840 there on purpose, right, Someone had to think about that 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:27.520 and build it into the game. So with text based adventures, 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.360 everything you encounter has to have been put there intentionally 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.360 or else there's a problem with the code. It could 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.920 be that there was an error somewhere that breaks something. 0:07:37.440 --> 0:07:40.600 So if the programmer anticipates a specific action, they can 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:44.240 write up a response that's appropriate or funny or whatever. 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.480 But for everything else, the game is just going to 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.000 present a standard default response like I don't know how 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.600 to do that, or whatever it may be. Anyone who 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.880 has ever run a role playing game as a game master, 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:01.280 you know what that is. It's physically impossible to anticipate 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:05.960 everything players will do when you have a human who's 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.760 acting as game master. Humans have the potential to run 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.960 with wild player ideas, even if they had not planned 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:15.320 for such a thing in the past. I used to 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:20.320 as a teenager write adventures for my group of friends 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:23.480 to play in games of Dungeons and Dragons. I'm sure 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.520 this comes as a shock to none of you. I 0:08:26.560 --> 0:08:30.040 didn't write professionally. These were just for my friends to play, 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:32.520 and I would come up with these ideas and I 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:34.840 would spend hours and hours and hours. I would remember, 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.360 I'd get up early on a Saturday morning and just 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:42.280 spend hours crafting adventures and dungeons, and I would have 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.640 this whole kind of sequence playing out in my head 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.200 of how this was going to go. But invariably at 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.440 some point, a player or a couple of players would 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:56.400 come up with something that should certainly work. I just 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.440 hadn't thought about it, and then I had to figure 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:02.240 out what to do. And some of my favorite gaming 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:07.760 sessions involved going completely off script because whatever the players 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.160 had suggested was viable and we should do it, even 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.520 though I had not anticipated it when I was crafting 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.720 the adventure. Now some game masters are far less comfortable 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:21.800 winging it. Nothing wrong with that. It's an intimidating thing 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.200 to try and keep track of everything if you're making 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.319 stuff up on the fly, and so these game masters 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:32.520 will sometimes hit a couple of tough choices, and neither 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.600 of them are great. One of them would be to 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:38.920 attempt to force the players toward a specific path, which 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.040 makes them feel that they have no agency and that's 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.760 not much fun. Or it involves outright denying them their ideas, 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:50.960 and that often can also create a less satisfying playing experience. Well. Unfortunately, 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:56.400 text based games fall more into that restrictive style of play. 0:09:56.559 --> 0:09:59.160 For the most part, they might be very well designed, 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:03.080 but they are still quite constrained. So game designers have 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.880 to come up with lots of clever puzzles and interesting 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.680 text to keep players engaged and eager to see the 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.120 adventure through to the end. And again, sometimes the puzzle 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.320 is trying to make yourself think like the programmer was 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:19.080 thinking when they made the game in the first place. 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:21.439 It's not so much how can I get this door open? 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:27.199 It's how would so and so have designed this so 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.520 that I have to figure out a way to open 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.400 this door? And it still becomes like a puzzle game, 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:36.480 but it also becomes something like a psychological assessment of 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.280 the person that wrote the game. It's a pretty interesting 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.200 style of play. But all of this had to get 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:49.840 started somewhere, right, So what was the first text based adventure? Well, 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.960 we're going to find out, but first let's take a 0:10:53.080 --> 0:11:06.200 quick break, all right, So who created the first text 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:09.360 based adventure and what was it? Well, the game was 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:14.040 called Colossal Cave Adventure and it was created by Will 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:18.560 Crowther in the mid nineteen seventies. And this wasn't just 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.640 some hobbyist dipping his toe in programming. In the early 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:27.400 nineteen seventies, Crowther worked for Bolt, Baroneck and Newman, also 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:32.120 known as BBN. Now you might not be familiar with 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:37.840 that company name, but BBN played a crucial role in 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:42.040 the development of technologies that underpin the Internet, and indeed, 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:47.000 Crowther himself was part of a small team working on arpaet, 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:49.880 which was sort of a predecessor to the Internet. It's 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:54.520 where a lot of the protocols and actual technologies that 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.080 allow the Internet to work were first developed. So here 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:02.240 you have this pioneer of network computing plugging away at 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.520 a major Department of Defense project, trying to design the 0:12:05.559 --> 0:12:08.720 tech that would allow computers to send data across vast networks. 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:12.160 And in his spare time, he would game, and he 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:16.319 would go spelunking, that is, he would go cave exploring. 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:19.960 As for games, he was a tabletop D and D 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.720 player Dungeons and Dragons, So that game first published in 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:28.679 nineteen seventy four, and Crowther became a fan pretty early on. Now, 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.040 Crowther was married with kids, but his marriage was falling 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:35.600 apart and he and his wife initiated a divorce. So 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:37.959 in an effort to create something that would let him 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:41.079 connect with his kids and make something fun for them 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.840 and allow him to find ways to spend time with them, 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:48.600 Crowther brought together his knowledge of programming, his love of 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.480 exploration and caving and some elements of dungeons and dragons 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:56.880 to put together the Colossal Cave adventure game. So he 0:12:57.000 --> 0:13:00.360 chose a text based approach to make the game less 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:04.720 intimidating to people who weren't familiar with computers. Remember this 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:09.920 is before the personal computer age. Computers were pretty scarce 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:14.040 for you know, most people never even encountered one. If 0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.120 they did, it was because they either worked in a 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.679 research facility or they worked at a big company that 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.440 happened to have like a mainframe computer as part of 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:26.560 its assets. But most people never even touched one. So 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.640 how do you make a computer game approachable? That's why 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.880 Crowther said, Let's make it a text based game. Players 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:37.080 could type in commands in natural language and the program 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.280 would check for words that matched viable options and then 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:42.920 send a result to the player and update the story 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.480 in the process. So Crowther's method was to allow for 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.680 two word commands, so you could type something like go 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:54.480 north or look huddle. It was primitive, but it was 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.240 easy to understand. You quickly got the rules. You knew 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:01.920 you couldn't say look under the rock. You couldn't do that. 0:14:01.960 --> 0:14:04.920 You could say look rock and maybe get more information, 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.080 but you had to keep it to those two word commands, 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:12.000 and reportedly his kids really found the game interesting and 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:16.880 fun to play. Crowther would actually release his game over arpinnet, 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.840 which I think makes it the first shareware text based 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:24.320 adventure game. It wasn't long before computer scientists at places 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:27.000 like Stanford got in touch with Crowther and asked permission 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.880 to further develop and enhance the game, and Crowther agreed. 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.760 They thought that was great fun, and so over time 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.080 versions of the game popped up that could be played 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.960 on different types of computers. Because remember, at this time, 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.560 people are using all sorts of different proprietary computers, each 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:49.520 working under its own computer language and computer like operating system. 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.480 So it would require recreating the game in many ways 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:55.440 in order for it to run on other machines, and 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:59.040 that's exactly what various folks were doing. Originally these were 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.520 big ol' honk and computer's house and research labs in 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:05.240 university computer centers, but as the personal computer age dawned, 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:08.320 we started to see versions for those machines as well, 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.040 and often the game's title would simply be shortened down 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:16.680 to adventure. A few years ago, a guy named Eric S. 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.880 Raymond uploaded the code for Colossal Cave Adventure with permission 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.080 to get lab and now developers from all over the 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.640 world can access the code and enhance it and look 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.040 for ways to clean it up. And this is very 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:33.120 similar to what the early programmers were doing in the 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:37.040 nineteen seventies. It's still happening today in many ways. It's 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.080 carrying on the trend that Crowther inspired. Now, there have 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.520 been tons of text based adventures over the years. I 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:49.080 remember playing the Zorich series extensively, which ultimately expanded beyond 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.080 text based adventures, but that's how they started. Then there 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:54.920 was the amazing text game of the Hitchhiger's Guide to 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:59.560 the Galaxy that includes some logic defying puzzles creating an 0:15:59.560 --> 0:16:02.000 improvable ability drive as a heck of a thing in 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.360 that game. But I did play it, and I ultimately 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:09.160 beat that game, but not without I think I ended 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:13.720 up having to consult tip lines or hints or something 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.760 multiple times. I just could not suss my way through 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:22.560 that game throughout the entire arc of the story. It 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.440 is great, though some games had very cheeky titles. I 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.239 will never forget the title The Leather Goddess of Phobos. 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:32.000 I never played it. I understand it was not quite 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:34.920 as salacious as the title would have you believe, but 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.520 I wouldn't know because I never I never got the 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.720 guts to play that one. I remember playing The Hobbit 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:44.080 and The Fellowship of the Ring, both in text. For them, 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.920 they had like very primitive graphics associated with it, but 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:50.320 they were like still images, kind of like a picture book. 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.200 There are dozens of great titles from the seventies and 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.080 eighties out there. A lot of them are available for 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.360 you to play via the internet. You can find links 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.160 to web based versions of these text adventures if you 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:06.280 want to play them. And they're also new text based 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:10.520 adventures coming out even in recent years. So one I've 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.200 heard of I have not yet played, is called Nighthouse. 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.600 It came out in twenty sixteen, and others have come 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.520 out since then, as well as visual novels. I think 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:24.240 visual novels, which is now a popular genre of computer game, 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.320 I think they owe a lot of their DNA to 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:32.040 the old text based adventures. So hats off to Will Crowther, 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:36.959 a creator of the text based adventure game and say 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.359 you you better turn on a light, it's getting dark. 0:17:42.160 --> 0:17:45.720 You are likely to be eaten by a group. Hope 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:49.600 you're all well. I will talk to you again really soon. 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:59.960 Text Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.200 visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:05.280 to your favorite shows.