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 f ...

(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 ...

'' 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 ...

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

(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. Machin ...

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 proc ...

. 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 a ...

band, but after they left the project, she completed it on her own. Of over 11,000 games in the Interactive Fiction Database 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 betwe ...

, 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

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wi ...

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). Educa ...

's interactive fiction development system, Inform 7.

Selected IF works

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)