Editing Starship Titanic (section)

=== Background ===

[[Douglas Adams]] first imagined the ''Starship Titanic'' in ''[[Life, the Universe and Everything]]'', the third entry in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' series, where it is briefly mentioned in the book's 10th chapter. Adams describes the ship—named after the [[Titanic|famous ocean liner]]—as a "majestic and luxurious cruise-liner" that "did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an [[SOS]]—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure".<ref name="Kotaku">{{cite web
|last1=Packwood
|first1=Lewis
|title=The Secret Douglas Adams RPG People Have Been Playing for 15 Years
|url=https://kotaku.com/the-secret-douglas-adams-rpg-people-have-been-playing-f-1681986562
|work=[[Kotaku]]
|access-date=20 September 2017
|date=27 January 2015
|archive-date=1 October 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001030937/https://kotaku.com/the-secret-douglas-adams-rpg-people-have-been-playing-f-1681986562
|url-status=live
}}</ref><ref>
{{cite book
|last1=Adams
|first1=Douglas
|title=Life, the Universe and Everything
|date=2005
|publisher=[[Del Rey Books]]
|isbn=0-345-39182-9
|pages=92–93
|chapter=10
|title-link=Life, the Universe and Everything
}}
</ref>

Before making ''Starship Titanic'', Adams had previously served as a designer for [[Infocom]]'s 1984 [[text-based game]] ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (video game)|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', which was based on his successful science fiction series of the same name,<ref name="CT">
{{cite news
|last=Lynch
|first=Dennis
|date=30 April 1998
|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1998/04/30/hitchhiker-douglas-adams-back-in-space/
|title='Hitchhiker' Douglas Adams Back in Space
|access-date=27 September 2017
|work=[[Chicago Tribune]]
}}
</ref><ref>{{cite web
|url=https://www.engadget.com/2014/03/11/infocoms-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-playable-for-free-onl
|title=Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy playable for free online
|date=11 March 2014
|access-date=27 September 2017
|work=[[Engadget]]
|archive-date=1 October 2017
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171001031034/https://www.engadget.com/2014/03/11/infocoms-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-playable-for-free-onl/
|url-status=live
}}</ref> and had been an advocate for "[[new media]]".<ref name="Ind">
{{cite news
|url=https://independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/network-the-starship-titanic-its-only-mission-is-to-make-you-think-1294706.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/network-the-starship-titanic-its-only-mission-is-to-make-you-think-1294706.html |archive-date=24 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live
|title=Network: The Starship Titanic? Its only mission is to make you think
|date=18 November 1997
|access-date=27 September 2017
|newspaper=[[The Independent]]
}}</ref> Since working with Infocom, Adams had expressed interest in returning to game design, and feared that he was spending too much time by himself writing.<ref name="Sydney">
{{cite news
|last=Harper
|first=Charlotte
|date=25 April 1998
|title=The intergalactic Adams family
|work=Icon
|issue=41
|publisher=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]
|pages=6–7
}}
</ref><ref name="Newsweek" />
He turned to game design again after playing ''[[Myst]]'', which is when he said "the medium had gotten interesting again".<ref name="Sydney" /> However, he thought ''Myst'' was lacking in story and characters.<ref name="LADN">
{{cite news
|last1=Sherry
|first1=Kevin F.
|title=Busy writer gets Pythons to help
|work=[[Los Angeles Daily News]]
|date=18 January 1998
|page=V5
}}
</ref> Commenting on the gameplay of ''Myst'' and its sequel ''[[Riven]]'', Adams said that "nothing really happens, and nobody is there. I thought, let's do something similar but populate the environment with characters you can interact with",<ref name="Newsweek" /> and hoped to combine graphics and a text-based system that allowed for players to converse with characters in the game.<ref name="ST">
{{cite news
|last1=Covert
|first1=Colin
|title=Hitchhiker' takes another galactic trip; Science-fiction author Douglas Adams, in town today, has created an interactive CD-ROM
|work=[[Star Tribune]]
|date=24 April 1998
|page=23E
}}
</ref>

In 1996 Adams co-founded [[The Digital Village]], a company intended to handle his future endeavours in film, print and new media.<ref name="Guardian">
{{cite news
|last=Daoust
|first=Phil
|date=15 January 1998
|title=Take me to your viewer
|department=G2
|work=[[The Guardian]]
|pages=8–9
}}
</ref> Adams first discussed founding the company with [[Robbie Stamp]], a producer at [[Central Independent Television]] in the early 1990s, and they did so along with Stamp's boss at Central, Richard Creasey; literary agent [[Ed Victor]] was also one of the company's founders. [[Ian Charles Stewart]], one of the founders of ''[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]]'', joined the enterprise shortly thereafter.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=290}} In December 1995, The Digital Village arranged a deal to raise [[seed money|seed capital]] from venture capitalist Alex Catto, who bought 10% of the company's shares for £400,000.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=291
}} In 1996 [[Simon & Schuster Interactive]] reached a deal with the company to finance ''Starship Titanic'', whose budget was estimated at $2 million.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=293
}}

Development of the game began Summer 1996.{{sfn
|Webb
|2005
|p=298
}} Around 40 people worked on the game's development.<ref name="Sydney"/>