Announcement: Text Adventure Documentary

Hello, everyone.

My name is Jason Scott, and I'm what they call a "Digital Historian",
these days, that is, "a guy who collects a lot of online stuff". From
the late 1990s onward, I'm mostly known for a collection of Bulletin
Board System information called textfiles.com, but I do other similar
historical stuff as well.

In 2001, I began making a film called "BBS: The Documentary"
(www.bbsdocumentary.com) which covered a large swath of information
about the dial-up Bulletin Board Systems of the 1970s-today. By the time
I was done, it had taken 4 years, produced 3 DVDs, and included 200+
interviews of users, software authors, and just plain folks. It was 8
episodes, 5 and a half hours in total, and included an hour and a half
of bonus material.

I mention all these statistics to say that I don't like to go halfway on
these projects; I want something that treats subjects respectfully and
takes advantage of the visual medium of video (facial expressions,
speech, images) while still being "true" to the subject (accuracy,
breadth of information, pointers to more information). A documentary
does not replace an information archive or written work, nor should it.

After the release of the BBS documentary in May of this year, I started
some research and work on a new project, a documentary on text
adventures. The title of this project is GET LAMP, and there's a
preliminary website with statements and questions at:

http://www.getlamp.com.

I have been contacting various folks related to both historical and
current interactive fiction/adventure games/text adventures, and expect
to contact many more. Some are for interviews, some advice, and others
just for conversation and ideas. I'm nowhere near done with this aspect
of production, so if you've heard of this project previously, be aware
it is an ongoing process and I'm not in the business of excluding or
ignoring good information.

I expect to spend another couple of years on this project, with filming
beginning in the Spring of 2006.

I invite all members of the community to contact me either on this
newsgroup or in e-mail at jason RemoveThis @textfiles.com. I'll do my best to answer
any questions or concerns.

- Jason Scott

Jason Scott <jason.DeleteThis@textfiles.com>, you wrote on Wed, 16 Nov 2005
02:52:33 -0500:

>I invite all members of the community to contact me either on this
>newsgroup or in e-mail at jason.DeleteThis@textfiles.com. I'll do my best to answer
>any questions or concerns.

Good luck with your documentary.


--
Wel zie ik het betere en prijs het;
toch jaag ik het slechtere na