Scott Adams (born July 10, 1952) is an American entrepreneur, computer programmer, and video game designer. He co-founded, with ex-wife Alexis,

Adventure International Adventure International was an American video game publishing company that existed from 1979 until 1986. It was started by Scott and Alexis Adams. Their games were notable for being the first implementation of the adventure genre to run on a ...

in 1979. The company developed and published

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

for home computers. The cornerstone products of Adventure International in its early years were the ''

Adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

'' series of

text adventures '' 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 ...

written by Adams.

Adventure International

Born in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, Adams had access to an advanced 16-bit computer at home, built by his brother

Richard Adams Richard George Adams (9 May 1920 – 24 December 2016) was an English novelist and writer of the books ''Watership Down'', ''Maia'', ''Shardik'' and ''The Plague Dogs''. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army ...

, that gave him a jump on game programming in his leisure time. Adams wrote a graphical action game similar to ''

Spacewar! ''Spacewar!'' is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Mas ...

'' on this system in 1975. Scott Adams was the first person known to create an adventure-style game for personal computers, in 1978 on a 16 KB

Radio Shack RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of '' ...

Model I, written in

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

. '' Colossal Cave'' was written two years earlier by

Will Crowther William Crowther (born 1936) is an American computer programmer, caver, and rock climber. He is the co-creator of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of video game design and ins ...

, but on a mainframe computer (the

PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...

). These early

text adventure '' 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 ...

s recognize two-word commands of the form VERB NOUN. The parser only scans the first three letters of each command, so SCREAM BEAR, SCRATCH BEAR, or SCREW BEAR are treated identically. The games from his company,

, were subsequently released on most of the major home computers of the day, including

Exidy Sorcerer The Sorcerer is a home computer system released in 1978 by the video game company Exidy. Based on the Zilog Z80 and the general layout of the emerging S-100 standard, the Sorcerer was comparatively advanced when released, especially when compar ...

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

Commodore PET The Commodore PET is a line of personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A single all-in-one case combines a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor, Commodore BASIC in read-only memory, keyboard, monochrome monitor, an ...

VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PE ...

, and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

. Later adventure games added graphics, with the text entry window below an image illustrating the scene. Adams's work was influential in adventure gaming. In 1990 ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' reported a statement by a "respected designer" that it was impossible to design new and more difficult adventure puzzles, because Adams had already created them all in his early games.

Later work

Since the late 1980s, Scott Adams has worked as a senior programmer for AVISTA in

Platteville, Wisconsin Platteville is the largest city in Grant County in southwestern Wisconsin. The population was 11,836 at the 2020 census, up from 11,224 at the 2010 census. Much of this growth is likely due to the enrollment increase of the University of Wisc ...

. In 2013, Scott Adams released the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

-based ''The Inheritance'', his first game in over ten years. As in most of his other games, the player is the protagonist of a novel-like story and helps events unfold in a text adventure set. However, this new game also includes sound. In a 2018 interview Adams said he had not been happy with the game as it was released so had withdrawn it from the market whilst it was rewritten. In July 2016, Adams created a new company called Clopas to begin publishing games in a new genre he called "Conversational Adventure Games". These games were similar to his early text adventure games, except that they now supported full natural language sentences. The first game he put out under company was '' Escape The Gloomer'', a game published in collaboration with

Soma Games Soma Games is an American video game developer based in Newberg, Oregon. Founded in 2005 by Chris Skaggs, Rande Bruhn, and John Bergquist, Soma originally produced mobile games such as ''G'' and ''Windup Robots'', and beginning in 2018, licensed ...

for their '' Lost Legends of Redwall'' series.

Games

Adventure International

* '' Adventureland'' (1978) * '' Pirate Adventure'' (1979) * ''Secret Mission'' (1979) * '' Voodoo Castle'' (1979) in collaboration with Alexis Adams * '' The Count'' (1979) * ''

Strange Odyssey ''Strange Odyssey '' is a text adventure written by Scott Adams and Neil Broome. Description Published by Adventure International, this text-based adventure game was one of many from Scott Adams. Gameplay involved moving from location to loc ...

'' (1979) * ''

Mystery Fun House Mystery Fun House was an attraction complex in Orlando, Florida, United States. It was founded with the help of David A. Siegel on March 28, 1976, and operated through February 18, 2001. Located near International Drive on Major Boulevard across ...

'' (1979) * '' Pyramid of Doom'' (1979) in collaboration with Alvin Files * ''

Ghost Town Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to: * Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned Film and television * Ghost Town (1936 film), ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser * Ghost Town (1956 film), ''Ghost Town'' ...

'' (1980) * ''Savage Island, Part I'' (1981) * ''Savage Island, Part II'' (1981) in collaboration with

Russ Wetmore Russ Wetmore is an American computer programmer and video game designer best known for writing commercial games and applications for the Atari 8-bit family in the early to mid 1980s. His ''Frogger''-inspired '' Preppie!'' was published by Adventu ...

* ''Golden Voyage'' (1981) in collaboration with William Demas * ''Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle'' (1982) * ''Return to Pirate's Isle'' (1983) exclusively for the TI-99/4A * '' Questprobe #1: The Hulk'' (1984) * ''

Questprobe ''Questprobe'' is a trilogy of graphical adventure video games featuring Marvel Comics characters. The three games are ''Questprobe featuring The Hulk'', '' Questprobe featuring Spider-Man'' and '' Questprobe featuring Human Torch and Thing''. H ...

#2: Spider-Man'' (1984) * ''

#3: The Fantastic Four'' (1984) * ''

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension ''The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'', often shortened to ''Buckaroo Banzai'', is a 1984 American science fiction film produced and directed by W. D. Richter and written by Earl Mac Rauch. It stars Peter Weller in the ...

'' (1984) in collaboration with Phillip Case

Later

* '' Scott Adams Scoops'' (1987) collection of earlier games published by

U.S. Gold U.S. Gold Limited was a British video game publisher based in Witton, Birmingham, England. The company was founded in 1984 by Anne and Geoff Brown in parallel to their distributor firm, CentreSoft, both of which became part of Woodward Brown Ho ...

* ''Return to Pirate's Island 2'' (August 2000) * ''The Inheritance'' (February 14, 2013) * '' The Lost Legends of Redwall: Escape the Gloomer'' (2018)

Unreleased

* ''Questprobe #4: X-Men''

References

External links

*
Scott Adams interview
''Adventure Classic Gaming'', 1998

featuring Scott Adams
Adventure International Memorial
{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Scott 1952 births American video game designers Interactive fiction writers Living people Writers from Miami People from Platteville, Wisconsin Video game programmers