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.