Fair enough; I’d pick “benign neglect,” but that’s probably something to preserve.
Fair enough so is the verdict that we shouldn’t point people toward the games even in the vaguest terms? (Basically saying ‘They are out there but you are on your own.’?) Or that we can name but not link? Is saying ‘abandonware’ giving them a search term just as likely to be considered a poke at the relationship as naming an actual site?
I’m seeing a lot of just shirking the issue but no practically useful opinions. Not that I blame anyone, really, as feeling too legally shackled to use your words is part of the whole problem here. (And it’s a real freedom of speech issue, IMO, but let’s put the politics aside for now.) Personally I don’t believe in shirking the issue and I’d like to take a stand and just name a site if it’s acceptable. If it’s not, I’d like a guideline as to how far I should go.
P.
I take it activision took over copyright. Darn, I was hoping copyright would be expired, but personally I don’t think there’s much wrong with using the sites.
Fair enough.
I have no problem telling people “if you search for Infocom games online, you will find them.” (Because that’s, you know, a true statement.) I don’t tell people they should do this, and I don’t tell them they shouldn’t.
(It’s not necessary to include the term “abandonware” in the search.)
Yes, when Activision bought Infocom they bought all the rights. (But the copyrights wouldn’t have expired, anyhow. That won’t happen for a long time, under US law.)
Thanks for your perspective on it.
Paul.
Yeah. And my concern is that the vagueness of the ‘deniably clean hands’ approach is too easily interpreted as unfriendliness to new players. It bears an uncomfortably close resemblance for me to that old school hackerish ‘if you can’t figure it out for yourself you don’t deserve it’ mentality that I recall. But newbies are rare and valuable now, whereas most of the old games aren’t commercially valued enough by Activision even to be distributed, so the situation has been stood on its head and maybe the old responses aren’t the wisest, anymore.
If nobody had named a site or even said ‘abandonware’ in here and instead we had simply said ‘They are searchable. Figure out how if you want them.’, do you think you’d have persisted through our not-very-helpful attitude, and through multiple search pages, until you found them? Or were you prepared to give these games up for dead fairly easily?
P.
Multiple search pages? If I type “infocom games” into Google, three of the top ten hits are titled “Play Infocom games online” or a variant thereof. A fourth is “Play Infocom games cheap”, a fifth is “Where to buy Infocom games”, and a sixth points to a playable HHGG at douglasadams.com.
With due respect to the original poster, I really think that most IF newcomers will find the games long before they find this web forum to ask the question.
I think that’s a little unfair given that the new re-releases of the games started just weeks ago. Activision has recently made some of the titles available commercially again (via an agreement with GOG) and the implication I got from their adcopy was that more titles would be forthcoming via that channel. There’s no reason (at least not yet) to assume that GOG won’t at some point have (nearly) the entire library available for sale again.
Furthermore, Activision has made the library available in multiple forms over the years (themed collections in the nineties, then a CD library at the turn of the century). Not too long ago, they also licensed the Zork trademarks and such to a company doing an all-new Zork online game (not to my taste, but there it was). There are two legally-troublesome titles that stay out of Activision’s releases for legal reasons (Shogun and Hitchhiker’s), but Hitchhiker’s has been made free online in various forms (including in legally-provided browser versions playable right now).
To be clear, I love the work abandonware sites do at preserving games that would otherwise be lost, and I think it’s good and moral to kick copyright laws in the face when a game (or any other work) is genuinely abandoned … but Activision have, demonstrably, not abandoned these games. Maybe they’re not hawking them the way the community would like, or promoting them the way we think they deserve to be promoted (and having purchased the recent GOG package, I certainly think someone’s disinterested cousin did a lazy job putting it together), but they have, repeatedly, taken at least minimal necessary steps to keep the majority of the library available for large chunks of time well past their financial viability.
I think only Shogun, out of all the Infocom library, would really qualify as abandonware at this point. But that’s IMO and all that.
Which CD library is this? I’ve heard of the “Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces” CD, but that was from 1996, I think.
I guess I’m not seeing “repeatedly,” or that the “large chunks of time” include anything recent before the GOG release. I mean, even if the CD library was at the turn of century that means that the games haven’t been obtainable (except on eBay) for the past ten years, doesn’t it? That goes beyond not hawking or promoting them, and I don’t see how it counts as taking minimal necessary steps.
(Of course, I could be wrong about this; I only started paying attention recently, so I’m looking this up now. As far as I can tell, Activision published the Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces in 1996, made some noises about republishing everything in 2005 that came to naught, made Zork I-III freely available for a while; what am I missing?)
It was available from Activision directly for a couple of years into the new millennium, and it was continually available through retail outlets (normal ones, I don’t mean auction sites) through approximately 2005. I got a couple myself (new, from a regular retailer) near the end of that time-frame (Christmas, 2004), and sold one on eBay in (IIRC) spring of 2007, by which time it had faded into “auction-sites-only.”
The theme sets Activision made available in the early 90s were available for years, and when those stocks sold out they did the CD library which was available for even more years. Prior to that, it wasn’t Activision’s deal anyway and many of the old Infocom boxes were still easy to find on the back shelves at retailers (I know; I used to stare at them and wish I owned a computer). Now that we’re in the age when things like GOG and Steam are making it easier to distribute niche/classic games without mucking around with warehousing and shipping, they’re doing download releases which will (I think we have every reason to assume) be even easier to keep available for the long term.
Depending on which title we’re talking about, I count maybe 6-8 years total, out of the last 20 years, that any given Infocom game (excluding Shogun) hasn’t been available to the public. Some games (the Zorks, Hitchhiker’s Guide) have been available in times when others haven’t, but on average it looks like Activision has kept the games available (either for free or for sale) for well over half the time they’ve been shepherding them in their decidedly post-commercial phase.
That’s repeatedly. And those are large chunks of time (at least, relative to the span we’re talking about). That’s my opinion and it doesn’t need to be yours, but it’s not baseless.
This doesn’t mean you have to agree with me that they’ve done the minimal steps necessary (the concept of “abandonware,” while laudable IMO, has no legal grounding or definition to work with), but I think it’s unfair to ignore (for example) the CD library’s long window of retail availability and point only to its release date.
Fair enough. As I said, I started paying attention after the time period, so I didn’t know how long the CD-ROMs were available.
Oh, I didn’t mean to be setting up some kind of standard for necessity – I was just talking about the steps that were necessary to make the games available. Which, since the games haven’t been available for the last five years, they haven’t been taking by definition. I suppose that, in a way, recently taking the necessary steps just means not cracking down on the abandonware sites after the abortive Ken Love thing in 2005 (anyone know anything more about that?)
That bit was a response to when you said “I don’t see how it counts as taking minimal necessary steps.” I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth/keyboard/etc; just responding.
“Abandonware” is a very slippery term, and some people use it for (IMO) a noble idea of preserving games that would otherwise be forgotten … and some people just use it to prop up their sense of entitlement to any game that doesn’t require the latest graphics cards. There’s a big spectrum there, every shade is represented.
When I tried I just typed ‘infocom’ which doesn’t produce anything playable for three pages (and then only a single result, in Zplet form). It was less-than-immediately-obvious to me to add ‘games’; in fact it didn’t even occur to me (I did try adding ‘torrents’ though). I went with the minimalist search most likely to be typed. By narrowing the search you kind of weakened your counterpoint.
And which location they find first depends entirely on their way in. If they start off already knowing about Infocom then they likely don’t need advice as much. If they start off interested in interactive fiction as a concept, and hear the word Infocom bandied about hereabouts and become curious about the history, the discovery path is very different and they are quite likely to ask here. Furthermore, that seems the more likely route nowadays, since where else are people going to get unsolicited mentions of Infocom?
P.
No reason to assume they will, either. So far they have only released the few they usually rerelease, when the idea crosses their radar again. Zork I -2 - 3. Planetfall. Hitchhiker’s. Yup. The usuals. Those games have been released in the past without signalling any intent to release the whole oeuvre. So I don’t expect much more this time, either, and I’ll believe it when I see it. I’d be glad to be proven wrong.
I was aware of that. I purchased the Lost Treasures editions, myself. The nineties are long gone, though. If that’s what I’m supposed to give them credit for, it’s slim pickings, indeed. The other trademark stuff you mention just doesn’t make any difference to me. Trademarks aren’t games. shrug But I get what you’re saying, they haven’t been evil or anything. Fair enough. As I say — benign neglect. But it is neglect. The literary culture would never stand for the legal unavailability of their classic, canonical works. They would do something about it, legally or no. For the most part, they wouldn’t think, Oh better not to upset the corporation lest they take away what little we have. They’d consider another principle to be higher. They would spread the word and make discovery as easy as humanly possible regardless of the legal niceties. Because the culture trumps the legal niceties for them, as I believe it should for us (and you seem to believe it should for some but not us). See Fahrenheit 451 for more. 8)
I can’t say I agree. When all the classics are on sale, we can talk. Until then you may trust them but I don’t. The great majority of these works (all but the most popular handful) have been off the market for a decade. That speaks volumes compared to your evidence, which consists of… extrapolation? Some vague promises in some ad copy? The promise of what might happen is great but credit should only be accrued by the deed itself. BTW rampant, unabashed, and conspicuously public piracy of the ‘lesser’ Infocom works would be the best possible way to force the issue, IMO.
Paul.
Well, it’s true that six years rounds to one decade if we … round it to the nearest decade. I guess that’s something 
My earlier post already addresses all of your points. Refer to it, or don’t, as you like. I also believe you’ve already made your stance clear, and I have no argument with it so there’s no point at all in simply re-stating it. Your opinion is yours to have.
If you don’t want to discuss it further that’s fine. However my points were not reiterations — they were specific responses to your multiple points. You left them unaddressed because you think say you already addressed them, but from where I’m standing, you didn’t. Activision’s beneficence just has not been nearly as much in evidence as you seem to suggest, and I explained specifically why I think so.
And yes, it has been a full decade since the vast majority of these works were commercially available. Three or four have been rereleased in the interim (as I acknowledged) but they are always the same three or four. There are more than thirty titles that have been unavailable commercially for actually more than ten years — if you have knowledge to the contrary, you haven’t said so. So… that’s a fairly serious situation. Nothing you have said has given me any real reason to believe it’s going to change. Thirty games.
Paul.
I’m here to discuss it. You’re welcome to watch. As I said, I have no argument with your opinion (or anyone’s).
Incorrect. See prior posts.
Can you quote this prior post to which you refer? Here is the full list of Infocom titles. There are way more than just the Zorks and Planetfall and Hitchhiker’s — those you mentioned are a drop in the bucket.
P.
Yes, and so can you, if you’d bothered to read the thread.
sigh Why must these discussions always acquire a hostility to them? I’m not trying to get up your nose, dude.
I looked over your discussion with Matt and it seems that you think that as long as something can qualify as having been on some shelf somewhere (like there is some remaindered stock in some back shelf somewhere), it counts as being generally commercially available. I’m just going to have to disagree. I haven’t seen a commercial release for ten years. Let’s really close this exchange now because it’s obvious I am pissing you off and that’s not my intention.
Paul.