Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

There's some interesting creative subtext in Steve Meretzky's collection of documents from Sorcerer. ("Agency" refers to Giardini/Russell Inc., the advertising agency Infocom used to create collateral and 'feelies' for the game packages.)

   Client/Agency met to discuss Agency's recommendation 
   that Enchanter II should be called Spellbreaker (rahter 
   than Sorcerer), and that Enchanter III should not be    
   called Spellcrafter.  After discussion, Client/Agency 
   agreed to proceed with Client's preferred name for 
   Enchanter II, Sorcerer. Name for Enchanter III will be
   discussed at a later date.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that the ad agency is in charge of coming up with the game's title. That certainly isn't how things would have been done at any other game company I'm familiar with. I've always had a ton of respect for the quality and literacy of Infocom's collateral, so it was fascinating to learn how much of that was outsourced to a generic agency that would have sandwiched their work between full-page ads for furniture sales and TV commercials for used car dealers.

It seems that not everybody at Infocom was 100% on board with G&R's work: http://i.imgur.com/WNBUY1w.png

Overall, these documents offer a really interesting peek inside the sausage factory. Thanks to Steve M. for making them available and to Jason for doing the legwork!

I suspect it's giving G/R somewhat short shrift to describe their contributions so dismissively -- those "feelies" were part and parcel of Infocom's charm and reputation. The agency was, AFAICT, a huge part of Infocom's marketing, and titles are absolutely within a marketing department's purvey. (And I suspect they were not working on anything resembling full-page ads for furniture sales and TV commercial for used car dealers; that's not the sort of thing that ad agencies at that level do!)

I suspect it's giving G/R somewhat short shrift to describe their contributions so dismissively

Sorry, that wasn't my intent -- I'm saying how impressed I was! That doesn't change the fact that they were knocking some really lame titles around.

Much heavy lifting in design, layout, and verbiage for Infocom was done by a firm called Giardini/Russell, Inc. out of Watertown, Massachusetts. In fact, let’s just make it clear – a lot of what people think of as “Infocom” is in fact Giardini/Russell. For example: The Zork logo, the names Infidel and Deadline, and, of course, the verbiage of the advertisements I previously discussed. They wrote manual copy (some of which was then re-written by the implementors) and a pile of other stuff. The story of Infocom’s success, for all its considerable talents, is incomplete unless you realize this firm that contributed so much.

That's me a few years back, in http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2172

I knew putting these up would show some rough feelings. I've done my best to keep that to a minimum - I hope that'll be the case. But be clear - G/R is EASILY one of the most important contributors to Infocom's success.

I'm not sure what is so unusual about an advertising agency having input into a product name. In the B2B tech industry, you'd typically engage with a separate firm for product naming, but in consumer sales branding and product names/titles are part of the whole advertising/promotion package. I don't read that so much as the agency being in charge of naming as arguing that name X would be more effective.

For better or sometimes worse, good agencies are about more than just coming up with ads.

Game development in the 1980s was not exactly something you'd recognize as the "B2B tech industry." It was a business populated exclusively by control freaks (and yes, I'm speaking from experience.)

Without getting too specific, let's just say that the titles of the games we were working on would not have been subject to delegation outside the creator's office, much less outside the company.

I didn't phrase things clearly. I was saying in consumer products (unlike B2B--where you may bring in other consultants to help with product naming) advertising agencies may have input on product naming and so forth. But that seems to be counter to your experience in any case.

From looking through the Planetfall document collection, it looked like G/R came up with that name too (the working title was Survivor).

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