Get Lamp

The movie seemed a little too personal to me, and I guess in many ways that was the point: it was a love letter to this type of gaming. A love letter to first generation gamers. In that sense, there were definitely some poignant lines on people reflecting on their work in these games/genre/time period. But I also thought there was a missed opportunity to show how this type of gaming really morphed into many of the popular games that we see today. To take one example, the common threads are so distinct going backwards from Lionhead's Fable series (third generation console gamers) to Sierra's King Quest (second generation PC gamers) all the way back to Adventure (first generation "computer" gamer). There's also the obvious example of Myst!

I think there were missed opportunities to create a great documentary (that could have had universal appeal amongst gamers). But if you were involved with interactive fiction, played interactive fiction, or just generally want to know where gaming got its start, the documentary is worth a look-see.

The opening 20 minutes of Get Lamp that features a bunch of geezers talking about walking around caves. I had to be woken up three times before getting to the middle of the film which surprised me as I thought we'd been watching for three or four days. This documentary has all the engagement of a heroin nod. I guess that's why Jason Scott listed Get Lamp for $200 on Amazon. $200 dollars for a poorly-edited, terribly mixed, rambling documentary that can be watched for free on YouTube.

While Jason's work to preserve the viewpoints and images of early creators before it's too late is commendable, I watched it with a set of friends who never saw the games in action. For them, it was just odd and a little intriguing, but as we watched the whole 90+ minutes in non- interactive mode there was boredom in the room. Not having experienced the thrill of the chase, it meant not that much to them.

However, myself having experienced many of the early games in my teens and early 20s, it was a great look back at what was an obsession. Granted, I never finished most interactive fiction games because I might be willing to put 5 or 6 hours into it but not 20 or 30 hours so I guess that makes me stupid.

I agree with the other reviewer who said there were opportunities missed to link it with games that evolved out, such as King's Quest, which were a hybrid of text and graphics. Why the bias against that? Also, to be fair, remember David Ahl's "BASIC Computer Games" which had the text of some 300 text games to type in. Many of them, such as Hunt The Wumpus, contained many Adventuresque elements.

Even so, I applaud Jason for having the tenacity of going after his early heroes and definitively linking Collosal Cave system to Adventure for all time.

Jason Scott is presenting a long gone era of computer games: text adventure games. I was specifically fascinated by the documentary's peek into the culture of Infocom. Here was a company that was founded on an uncertain premise -- to make some sort of business software -- yet it somehow stumbled upon interactive fiction. As the company grew, it became a Mecca for smart, literate, inquisitive people who would start out as testers and end up designing and writing their own games. This made it all the more sad when Infocom, like all other text adventure game companies, suddenly went away in the late 1980s. I'm glad the story of Infocom isn't lost!

I quite like Jason Scott's style of collecting as many geeks on camera and let them rant. This already worked quite well in the BBS documentary, but you have to be quite dedicated to the subject to sit through the whole two discs. The collection of talking face is certainly eclectic and at times you're getting a very intimate insight into some of the fans' private lives. The rise and fall of Infocom is documented quite extensively, but have benefited from focus on the most famous/infamous games. I would have expected a bit more on the history of IF, which for some reason got short shrift, but overall a gem of a collection.