It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction with Steve Meretzky’s work, a sentiment that I know is shared by many in this room. There is so much of his work to praise, new and old, innovative and hilarious, textual and graphical. Without making any attempt to be comprehensive, I’ll note that, after graduating from MIT, Steve started his career in computer gaming at Infocom, where, after working as a tester, he became that company’s most prolific author of interactive fiction, designing, programming and writing Planetfall, Sorcerer, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (in collaboration with Douglas Adams), A Mind Forever Voyaging, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Stationfall, and Zork Zero. He continued to create adventure games for Legend Entertainment (including the Spellcasting 101 series) and for his company Boffo Games (for which he did Hodj ‘n’ Podj and The Space Bar). He then worked for many years, again prolifically, at WorldWinner. He is now at Blue Fang games working on the Zoo Tycoon series. The awards that stud him include a 2005 BAFTA award for the re-released Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy and the prize for his victory at the 2008 Game Design Challenge at GDC.

I just want to mention two reasons that Steve Meretzky’s work has been so important to me. Many people recall the the emotional impact of his 1983 game Planetfall, but the real contribution of that game, and the robot buddy Floyd who appears in it, went beyond a tugging at the heartstrings: It showed that a computer game character could be richly drawn, playing an important role within the game and being well-written. In 1985, Steve’s A Mind Forever Voyaging exploded our expectations by showing an American city transformed over time. He showed in this game that we could textually simulate our society on the computer, putting forth ideas about how policies and governance might make our lives better or worse. It’s hard to think of a more powerful idea in computer gaming. I know that we will still be learning even from this early work of Steve’s in the next few decades. I’m very glad we have this opportunity tonight to hear from and learn from Steve Meretzky in person. Please join me in welcoming him.