THE IMPLEMENTOR'S CREED

I came across this creed this year, attributed to Stu Galley. I plan on printing off a nice copy and framing it. It is full of wisdom for any artist.

The Implementor's Creed

by Stu Galley

I create fictional worlds. I create experiences.

I am exploring a new medium for telling stories.

My readers should become immersed in the story and forget where they are. They should forget about the keyboard and the screen, forget everything but the experience. My goal is to make the computer invisible.

I want as many people as possible to share these experiences. I want a broad range of fictional worlds, and a broad range of "reading levels". I can categorize our past works and discover where the range needs filling in. I should also seek to expand the categories to reach every popular taste.

In each of my works, I share a vision with the reader. Only I know exactly what the vision is, so only I can make the final decisions about content and style. But I must seriously consider comments and suggestions from any source, in the hope that they will make the sharing better.

I know what an artist means by saying, "I hope I can finish this work before I ruin it." Each work-in-progress reaches a point of diminishing returns, where any change is as likely to make it worse as to make it better. My goal is to nurture each work to that point. And to make my best estimate of when it will reach that point.

I can't create quality work by myself. I rely on other implementors to help me both with technical wizardry and with overcoming the limitations of the medium. I rely on testers to tell me both how to communicate my vision better and where the rough edges of the work need polishing. I rely on marketers and salespeople to help me share my vision with more readers. I rely on others to handle administrative details so I can concentrate on the vision.

None of my goals is easy. But all are worth hard work. Let no one doubt my dedication to my art.

A NOTE ABOUT STU GALLEY

(There is one very mild spoiler for Diddlebucker! in this post.)

On August 2, 2018, Stu Galley, one of the Infocom Implementors passed away unexpectedly at a hospital in Cambridge Massachusetts. Mr. Galley co-authored Seastalker and Moonmist and was the author of The Witness, which won “Best Computer Adventure of the Year” from “Electronic Games” magazine.

After his time at Infocom, Mr.Galley went on to do many other things with his life. You can learn more about his career, hobbies and family from his obituary here.

I don’t think I am alone in considering the Infocom Implementors giants in the field of Interactive Fiction. Of course, there have been many revolutionaries in the field before, during and after the rise and fall of Infocom, but these men and women have always held a special place in my heart. Familiar to me mostly because of their names on the gray box editions of their games, I always wondered what it must have been like to work with a creative group of people like that, made all the more interesting for they ways the sometimes directly put themselves into their games. (You can visit some of them in Sorcerer, for example).

When I wrote Diddlebucker! this past year, I created many teams of famous and fictional people playing the scavenger hunt alongside the player. One of them was a team named “The Implementors." The game randomly decides when the group should show up and which of the Implementors interacts with the player. Naturally, Stu Galley is one of the choices. This was all written and coded before his death.

I received word of his passing a month or so before the start of this year's competition. I debated with myself on whether or not I should remove his name from the code, given that his death happened so close to the start of the contest. The game takes place in the 1980's, so that wasn't an issue, but I was concerned about whether or not it would seem in poor taste, especially to his family. That certainly wasn't my intent. Ultimately, I decided that this part of the game was always designed to pay homage to those men and women who were pioneers in the field of IF, and to take his name out did not feel appropriate. So, I left it in.

Although I have never met Stu Galley, I hope that his family and friends, if they ever learn of his inclusion in my little game, understand the respect and affection I have for him and his works and understand why I decided to keep him a part of Diddlebucker! Without men and women like Stu Galley, I wouldn’t be authoring these games today.