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Emily Short

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Name
  
Emily Short

Role
  
Video Game Designer


Emily Short httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu


Organizations founded
  
LittleTextPeople

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Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer, perhaps best known for her debut game Galatea and her use of psychologically complex NPCs, or non-player game characters. She has been called "a visionary in the world of text-based games for years", and is the author of over thirty-five works of IF in addition to being chief editor of the IF Theory Book. She writes a regular column on IF for Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Contents

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Work as an Interactive Fiction Author

A number of Short's works have won acclaim at the XYZZY Awards, an annual popular-choice award for interactive fiction. Her work has been described by reviewers in terms that range from "mesmerizing" to "frustrating". Her 2003 work, City of Secrets, was originally commissioned by a San Francisco synth pop band, but later left the project, which she completed on her own.

While many of Short's early games were written in Inform, she later experimented with a variety of formats. One such format was Versu, an engine for plot-heavy and story-rich interactive fiction that Short helped develop, and which was later scrapped by Linden Labs, the company owning the engine. Other formats include Varytale, for which she developed the game Bee, and a custom engine by Liza Daly (with help from the company inkle) for the game FIrst Draft of the Revolution. Both formats use an interactive fiction engine based on weblinks.

Inform 7

Short has played a major role in the development of Graham Nelson's radical new interactive fiction development system, Inform 7. Her more conspicuous contributions include writing most of the 300+ programming examples in the documentation, and creating two full-length demo games for release with the Inform 7 beta.

Selected IF works

  • Galatea (2000; winner of the 2000 XYZZY Award for Best Individual NPC and Best of Show in the 2000 IF Art Show)
  • Metamorphoses (2000; 2nd place at the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition, Best Writing in the 2000 XYZZY Awards)
  • Savoir-Faire (2002; winner of XYZZY Awards for Best Game, Best Puzzles, Best Story, Best Individual PC)
  • City of Secrets (2003; winner of the XYZZY Award for Best NPCs; Runner-up for Games' Best RPG/Adventure 2004)
  • Floatpoint (2006, winner of the 2006 Interactive Fiction Competition, winner of 2006 XYZZY Awards for Best Settings and Best NPCs)
  • Counterfeit Monkey (2012, winner of XYZZY Award for Best Game, Best Setting, Best Puzzles, Best Individual PC and Best Implementation)
  • References

    Emily Short Wikipedia


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