Emily Short is an

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

(IF) writer. From 2020 to 2023, she was creative director of Failbetter Games, the studio behind '' Fallen London'' and its spinoffs. She is known for her debut game '' Galatea'' (2000) and her use of psychologically complex

non-player character A non-player character (NPC) is a character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster (or referee) rather than by a ...

s (NPCs). Short has been called "a visionary in the world of text-based games for years," and is the author of over forty works of IF. She wrote the chapters "Challenges of a Broad Geography" and "NPC Conversation Systems" for the 2011 ''The IF Theory Reader''. She wrote a regular column on IF for ''

Rock Paper Shotgun ''Rock Paper Shotgun'' is a British video game journalism website. It was launched in July 2007 to focus on PC game, PC games and was acquired by Gamer Network, a network of sites led by ''Eurogamer'', in May 2017. History ''Rock Paper S ...

''.

Career

In June 2011, Emily Short, with Richard Evans, co-founded Little TextPeople, which explored the emotional possibilities of interactive fiction. It was acquired in early 2012 by

Linden Lab Linden Research, Inc., doing business as Linden Lab, is an American technology company that is best known as the developer of ''Second Life''. The company's head office is in San Francisco, California, with additional offices in Boston, Massach ...

. In 2014, Short was let go by Linden Lab, ending the project she was working on, Versu. Around that time, she started the Oxford and London Interactive Fiction Group. In September 2016, Short was hired by Spirit AI, a roughly 15 person company working on

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

and

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

. She joined its board of directors in 2018, and was later named Chief Product Officer. In January 2020, Short joined the 12 person Failbetter Games as creative director. She announced her departure from the studio in January 2024. Short is one of the members of the advisory board for Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF).

Interactive fiction

Works

A number of Short's works have won acclaim at the XYZZY Awards, an annual popular-choice award for interactive fiction. Her work has been described by reviewers in terms that range from "mesmerizing" to "frustrating". Her 2003 work '' City of Secrets'' was originally commissioned by a San Francisco

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s b ...

band, but after they left the project, she completed it on her own. Of over 11,000 games in the Interactive Fiction Database in July 2021, Short's game '' Counterfeit Monkey'' held the top spot in the IFDB Top 100. In addition to this, another five of Short's games, '' Savoir-Faire'', ''City of Secrets'', ''Bronze'', ''Metamorphoses'' and ''Bee'' qualified into the top 100.

Tools

While many of Short's early games were written in

Inform Inform is a programming language and design system for interactive fiction originally created in 1993 by Graham Nelson. Inform can generate programs designed for the Z-machine, Z-code or Glulx virtual machines. Versions 1 through 5 were released ...

, she later experimented with a variety of formats. One such format was Versu, an engine for plot-heavy and story-rich interactive fiction that Short helped develop, and which was later scrapped by Linden Lab, the company owning the engine. Other formats include Varytale, for which she developed the game ''Bee'', and a custom engine by Liza Daly (with help from the company inkle) for the game ''First Draft of the Revolution''. Both formats use an interactive fiction engine based on

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference providing direct access to Data (computing), data by a user (computing), user's point and click, clicking or touchscreen, tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to ...

s. Short wrote most of the 300+ programming examples in the documentation and created two full-length demo games for release with

Graham Nelson Graham A. Nelson (born 1968) is a British mathematician, poet, and the creator of the Inform, Inform design system for creating interactive fiction (IF) games. He has authored several IF games, including ''Curses (computer game), Curses'' (1993) ...

's interactive fiction development system, Inform 7.

Selected IF works

References

External links

Emily Short's interactive fiction blogCollection of Emily Short's workShort's entry in the Interactive Fiction Wiki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Short, Emily Living people American emigrants to England American media critics American video game programmers Interactive fiction writers Women video game critics Women video game developers Women video game programmers Year of birth missing (living people)