Marc Blank is an American game developer and

software engineer Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...

. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first commercially successful

text adventure '' Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the ...

computer games A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-dete ...

, ''

Zork ''Zork'' is a text-based adventure game first released in 1977 by developers Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. The original developers and others, as the company Infocom, expanded a ...

''.

Career

Blank first encountered

Don Woods Donald Woods (1933–2001) was a South African journalist and activist. Donald or Don Woods may also refer to: * Donald Woods (actor) (1906–1998), Canadian-born American film and television actor * Donald Devereux Woods (1912–1964), British ...

and

Will Crowther William Crowther (born 1936) is an American computer programmer, caver, and rock climber. He is the co-creator of ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' from 1975 onward, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of video game design and ins ...

's ''

Adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme ...

'' game while he was studying at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in the mid-1970s, where the game was played on

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

computers. Blank was frustrated by the computer's tiny vocabulary; when it parsed user inputs very few words were recognized. After thinking about the problem during his undergraduate years, he started work on his own adventure game using MDL, a computer language invented at MIT. Blank and a handful of friends wrote the original version of ''Zork'' on a

PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, espec ...

while he was attending medical school at

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

(he received his MD degree in 1979). The free-play university version of ''Zork'' first became available on the MIT-DM PDP-10 in June 1977. It was then distributed by the

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

DECUS The Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS) was an independent computer user group related to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The Connect User Group Community, formed from the consolidation in May, 2008 of DECUS, Encompass, HP- ...

program and spread to many colleges in the United States and Canada. Blank graduated from medical school in 1979 but elected to continue with ''Zork''. He and several friends spent the next year developing a specialized

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can specify an executable problem solution to a comput ...

that they could use to program text adventures like ''Zork'' on the new

microcomputers A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...

. The

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

's limited

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

required them to cut half of the original version of ''Zork''. The new ''Zork'' for the Apple and the

Radio Shack RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...

TRS-80 The TRS-80 Micro Computer System (TRS-80, later renamed the Model I to distinguish it from successors) is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of ' ...

had a 600-word vocabulary. They founded the new company,

Infocom Infocom was an American software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that produced numerous works of interactive fiction. They also produced a business application, a relational database called '' Cornerstone''. Infocom was founded o ...

, to publish the game and more like it. Aside from ''Zork I'', ''II'', and ''III'', he designed ''

Deadline Deadline(s) or The Deadline(s) may refer to: * Time limit, a narrow field of time by which an objective must be accomplished Arts, entertainment, and media Comics * Deadline (DC Comics), a fictional villain * ''Deadline'' (magazine), a British ...

'', '' Enchanter'', ''

Fooblitzky ''Fooblitzky'' is a board game-style video game published by Infocom in 1985 and designed by a team which included interactive fiction authors Marc Blank and Michael Berlyn. It is unique among Infocom titles for not being interactive fiction and f ...

'', ''

Border Zone Border control refers to measures taken by governments to monitor and regulate the movement of people, animals, and goods across land, air, and maritime borders. While border control is typically associated with international borders, it a ...

'', and '' Journey: The Quest Begins'' In 1993 he founded Blank, Berlyn and Co. with former Infocom writer

Michael Berlyn Michael Berlyn (born 1949) is an American video game designer and writer. He is best known as an implementer at Infocom, part of the text adventure game design team. Brainwave Creations was a small game programming company started by Michael Ber ...

. The company's name was later changed to

Eidetic Eidetic memory ( ; more commonly called photographic memory or total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only onceThe terms ''eidetic memory'' and ''pho ...

after former Apple Employee uss Wetmorejoined as the third partner, to help program Notion, for the Apple Newton. Eidetic initially published

productivity software Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital paintings ...

for the

Apple Newton The Newton is a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) developed and marketed by Apple Computer, Inc. An early device in the PDA category (the Newton originated the term), it was the first to feature handwriting recognition. Apple started ...

. Eidetic's ''Notion: The Newton List Manager'' became a hit and was ultimately bundled in all Newtons. Blank returned to text adventures in 1997 when

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

producer Eddie Dombrower asked Blank and Berlyn to create a small promotional game, '' Zork: The Undiscovered Underground'', to promote the release of Activision's graphical game '' Zork: Grand Inquisitor''. As Newton sales slowed, Eidetic changed gears to focus on PC and

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a di ...

games, producing ''

Bubsy 3D ''Bubsy 3D'' (also known as ''Bubsy 3D: Furbitten Planet'' or ''Bubsy is 3D in "Furbitten Planet"'') is a platform game, platform video game, game developed by Bend Studio, Eidetic and published by Accolade (company), Accolade. It is the first ...

'' in 1996 and ''

Syphon Filter ''Syphon Filter'' is a third-person shooter stealth video game series developed by Bend Studio (formerly Eidetic) and published by Sony Computer Entertainment (previously 989 Studios), for PlayStation, PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation Port ...

'' in 1999. In 2000

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

acquired Eidetic for an undisclosed sum. Blank left Sony in 2004, where he focused on his email client for the Treo smartphone, ChatterEmail. On February 22, 2007, Blank announced he would no longer be "actively" working on ChatterEmail. Blank subsequently joined Palm, Inc. (who acquired ChatterEmail) and led the design and implementation of the Palm Pre's Email application. He worked in the Android group at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

from 2010 to 2012, and as a Principal Engineer at

Lab126 Amazon Lab126 (sometimes known as Lab126) is an American research and development and computer hardware company owned by Amazon.com. It was founded in 2004 by Gregg Zehr, previously Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Palm, and is based in S ...

( Amazon.com) from 2012 to 2018. In 2013 Blank and Dave Lebling were awarded the

Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) is a non-profit organization of video game industry professionals. It organizes the annual Design Innovate Communicate Entertain summit, better known as D.I.C.E., which includes the presentatio ...

Pioneer Award for their work on ''Zork''.

References

External links

''Marc Blank''
profile at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Footage from interview with Blank
for the documentary '' Get Lamp''
"Decoupling Object-Oriented Languages from Wide-Area Networks in Lamport Clocks"
Blank's most recent scholarly paper {{DEFAULTSORT:Blank, Marc 1954 births Amazon (company) people American video game designers American video game programmers Google employees Interactive fiction writers Living people Infocom Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Pioneer Award recipients