Editing Zork (section)

===Inception===
{{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=300
| image1 = MBlank2018.jpg
| alt1   = Man standing
| image2 = Bruce Daniels.jpg
| alt2   = Man sitting at desk
| image3 = Dave Lebling.jpg
| alt3   = Man presenting at podium
| footer = Marc Blank in 2018, Bruce Daniels in 2009, and Dave Lebling in 2010
}}

[[Tim Anderson (programmer)|Tim Anderson]], [[Marc Blank]], [[Bruce Daniels]], and [[Dave Lebling]] began developing ''Zork'' in May 1977. The four were members of the Dynamic Modelling Group, a computer science research division at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science{{emdash}}Anderson, Blank, and Daniels as students and Lebling as a research staff member.<ref name="GDCTalk"/> Their work was inspired by ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'', a text-based game that is the first well-known example of interactive fiction and the first well-known [[adventure game]]. ''Adventure'' was immensely popular among the small population of computer users of the time and a big hit at MIT in early 1977.<ref name="TCW383385"/> By the end of May, players had managed to completely solve it.<ref name="History1"/>

The four programmers began to design a game that would be a "better" text adventure game, with inputs more complex than ''Adventure''{{'}}s two-word commands and puzzles less obtuse.<ref name="History1"/> They believed that their division's [[MDL (programming language)|MDL programming language]] would be better suited for processing complex text inputs than the [[Fortran]] code used in ''Adventure''.<ref name="History1"/><ref name="Compute1983"/> The group was familiar with creating video games: Blank and Anderson had worked on a multiplayer trivia game called ''Trivia'' (1976), and Lebling was heavily involved with ''[[Maze (1973 video game)|Maze]]'' (1973), a multiplayer [[first-person shooter]] and the first 3D first-person game ever made. Lebling first created a [[natural language processing|natural language input]] system, or parser, that could process typed two-word instructions. Anderson and Blank built a small prototype text game to use it.<ref name="History1"/><ref name="GDCTalk"/> ''Zork''{{'s}} prototype was built for the [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC) [[PDP-10]] [[mainframe computer]], the only system that supported their programming language.<ref name="History1"/>

While Lebling took a two-week vacation, Anderson, Blank, and Daniels designed an adventure game concept, which Anderson and Blank then developed as an early version of ''Zork''. This prototype contained simple versions of many concepts seen in the final game, including puzzles and locations. According to Anderson, "it took time for people to learn how to write good problems", and Lebling's first, uncomplex parser was only "almost as smart as ''Adventure''{{'}}s". The game was unnamed, but the group had a habit of naming their programs "zork" until they were completed, a term in the MIT community for an in-development program. The group, referring to themselves as the "implementers", continued working on the game after Lebling returned, adding features and iterating on the parser through June 1977.<ref name="History1"/> Grues were added to replace pits that would kill players in the dark; while play-testing, Lebling noticed that his character fell into a pit while in the attic of the house.<ref name="GDCTalk"/>

Lebling contends that ''Adventure'' was one of ''Zork''{{'}}s only influences, as there were few other games to emulate at the time. Although the game's combat is based on ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', Lebling said the other developers had never played it.<ref name="Retro77"/> He also thought of the parser and associated text responses as taking on the role of the Dungeon Master from a ''Dungeons & Dragons'' game, trying to lead the player through a story solely by describing it; this had also been the idea behind the parser in ''Adventure''.<ref name="USG2015"/><ref name="Dibbell5657"/>