Emily Short is an
interactive fiction
''
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
(IF) writer.
She is perhaps best known for her debut game ''
Galatea
Galatea is an ancient Greek name meaning "she who is milk-white".
Galatea, Galathea or Gallathea may refer to:
In mythology
* Galatea (Greek myth), three different mythological figures
In the arts
* ''Aci, Galatea e Polifemo'', cantata by H ...
'' and her use of psychologically complex
non-player character
A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster o ...
s (NPCs).
Short has been called "a visionary in the world of text-based games for years," and is the author of over forty works of IF in addition to being chief editor of the IF Theory Book.
She wrote a regular column on
interactive fiction
''
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...
(IF) for ''
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
''Rock Paper Shotgun'' (also rendered ''Rock, Paper, Shotgun''; short ''RPS'') is a UK-based website for reporting on video games, primarily for PC. Originally launched on 13 July 2007 as an independent site, ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' was acquir ...
''.
Career
In June 2011, Emily Short, with
Richard Evans, co-founded Little TextPeople, which explored the emotional possibilities of interactive fiction. It was acquired in early 2012 by
Linden Lab
Linden Research, Inc., doing business as Linden Lab, is an American technology company that is best known as the creator of ''Second Life''.
The company's head office is in San Francisco, with additional offices in Boston, Seattle, Virginia an ...
. In 2014, Short was let go by Linden Lab, ending the project she was working on, Versu.
In September 2016, Short was hired by Spirit AI, a roughly 15 person company working on
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
and
natural language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...
. She joined its board of directors in 2018, and was later named Chief Product Officer.
In January 2020, Short joined the 12 person
Failbetter Games
Failbetter Games is a British video game developer and interactive fiction studio based in London.
History
Founded in 2009 by Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt, Failbetter is chiefly known for its '' Fallen London'' Victorian Gothic franchise ...
as creative director.
Interactive fiction
Works
A number of Short's works have won acclaim at the
XYZZY Awards The XYZZY Awards are the annual awards given to works of interactive fiction, serving a similar role to the Academy Awards for film. The awards were inaugurated in 1997 by Eileen Mullin, the editor of ''XYZZYnews''. Any game released during the year ...
, 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
Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s ...
band, but after they left the project, she completed it on her own.
Of over 11,000 games in the
Interactive Fiction Database The Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) is a database of metadata and reviews of interactive fiction.
In November 2023, the database contained 12,969 game listings, 12,784 member reviews, 51,762 member ratings, and 17,040 registered members. Some ...
in July 2021, Short's game ''
Counterfeit Monkey'' held the top spot in the IFDB Top 100. In addition to this, another five of Short's games, ''
Savoir-Faire'', ''City of Secrets'', ''Bronze'', ''Metamorphoses'' and ''Bee'' qualified into the top 100.
Tools
While many of Short's early games were written in
Inform
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released betw ...
, 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 Lab, 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
hyperlinks.
Inform 7
Short wrote most of the 300+ programming examples in the documentation and created two full-length demo games for release with
Graham Nelson
Graham A. Nelson (born 1968) is a British mathematician, poet, and the creator of the Inform design system for creating interactive fiction (IF) games. He has authored several IF games, including ''Curses'' (1993) and '' Jigsaw'' (1995).
Educat ...
's interactive fiction development system,
Inform 7
Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released betwe ...
.
Selected IF works
See also
*
Electronic literature
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...
*
Cybertext
Cybertext is the organization of text in order to analyze the influence of the medium as an integral part of the literary dynamic, as defined by Espen Aarseth in 1997. Aarseth defined it as a type of ergodic literature where user traverses the te ...
References
External links
Emily Short's interactive fiction blogCollection of Emily Short's workShort's entry in the Interactive Fiction Wiki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Short, Emily
Living people
American emigrants to England
American media critics
American video game programmers
Interactive fiction writers
Women video game critics
Women video game developers
Women video game programmers
Year of birth missing (living people)