Andrew Plotkin (born May 15, 1970), also known as Zarf, is a central figure in the modern
interactive fiction (IF) community. Having both written a number of award-winning games and developed a range of new file formats, interpreters, and other utilities for the design, production, and running of IF games, Plotkin is widely recognised for both his creative and his technical contributions to the
homebrew IF scene.
Interactive fiction
Plotkin was one of the earliest writers to use
Graham Nelson's
Inform development system, and one of the first since
Infocom's heyday to explore the boundaries of interactive fiction as an artistic medium. Many later authors cite him as a primary influence. He has won many awards within the community, and is frequently interviewed for magazine articles about interactive fiction.
Plotkin has also made major technical contributions to the interactive fiction medium, designing the
Blorb archive format, the
Glk I/O platform, and the
Glulx virtual machine, and implementing
Glulx Inform and several interactive fiction
interpreters for the
Macintosh and
X. The Glk API has made possible the creation of "universal translator" interpreters such as Gargoyle, a single program capable of running all interactive fiction formats.
, Plotkin holds two
XYZZY Award-related records: for most XYZZYs won in one year (5, with ''
Spider and Web'') and for most XYZZYs won in total: 18.
[Z-machine abuse)
* ''A Change in the Weather'' (1995; winner of the 1995 IF Comp's Inform division)
* ''So Far'' (1996; winner of many XYZZY Awards that year, including for Best Game)
* ''The Space Under the Window'' (1997)
* ''Spider and Web'' (1998; winner of many XYZZY Awards that year, including for Best Game)
* ''Hunter, in Darkness'' (1999; winner of the XYZZY Awards for Best Individual Puzzle and Best Setting)
* ''Shade'' (2000; winner of the XYZZY Award for Best Setting)
Other Andrew Plotkin games include:
*''Lists and Lists'' (1996), an introductory course in the Scheme programming language
*''The Dreamhold'' (2004), a general IF tutorial game
*''Delightful Wallpaper'' (2006; sixth place in IF Comp and winner of Miss Congeniality)
*''Dual Transform'' (2010)
*''Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home'' (2010)
More recently, he was featured on CNN Money for successfully raising over $31,000 using Kickstarter for development of a new interactive fiction piece called ''Hadean Lands'' for the iPhone and release of the resulting iPhone game framework as open source.]
Other work
He wrote the former shareware puzzle game ''System's Twilight''. Plotkin appears as a character in ''Being Andrew Plotkin'', an interactive fiction game by J. Robinson Wheeler based in part on the film ''Being John Malkovich''.
While a student at Carnegie Mellon University, Plotkin was one of the early members of the Carnegie Mellon KGB. He created the organization's signature "Capture the Flag with Stuff" game, which is now played by several hundred students every semester.
In 1997, Plotkin developed a rethemed version of Dmitry Davidoff's social game Mafia, replacing the "mafia" characters with werewolves. Plotkin's version of the game subsequently became popular at universities and conferences in the United States, with a set of cards being produced by Looney Labs.
He has also made contributions to the Icehouse community, both in designing the game ''Branches & Twigs & Thorns'',
References
External links
Andrew Plotkin's homepage
Andrew Plotkin on the IFWiki
Andrew Plotkin on the IcehouseGames.org wiki
NarraScope
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plotkin, Andrew
Category:Carnegie Mellon University alumni
Category:American video game programmers
Category:Interactive fiction writers
Category:Usenet people
Category:1970 births
Category:Living people
Category:People from Rockville, Maryland
Category:Writers from Syracuse, New York