''Get Lamp'' is a

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

about

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 ...

(a genre that includes

text adventure 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 ...

s) filmed by computer

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

Jason Scott of textfiles.com. Scott conducted the interviews between February 2006 and February 2008, and the documentary was released in July 2010.

Description

The documentary and its hours of episodes and bonus footage contain material from roughly 80 interviews of interactive fiction developers, designers, and players. Included in the bonus footage is a nearly 50-minute documentary about

Infocom Infocom, Inc., 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 (software), Cornerston ...

, the best-known commercial publisher of

. The DVD release included photographs, essays, and a collectible coin. ''Get Lamp'' is licensed under the

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution-Sharealike-Noncommercial license. Raw interview footage is hosted at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

. The name "Get Lamp" comes from the first inventory pickup in arguably the first-ever adventure game, Will Crowther's ''

Colossal Cave Adventure ''Colossal Cave Adventure'' (also known as ''Adventure'' or ''ADVENT'') is a text-based adventure game, released in 1976 by developer Will Crowther for the PDP-10 mainframe computer. It was expanded upon in 1977 by Don Woods. In the game, the ...

'' (1975), more commonly known as simply ''Adventure''. The lamp appears as a kind of Easter Egg in nearly every interview. The film starts off with a tour of part of the real-life

Mammoth Cave Mammoth Cave National Park is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in south-central Kentucky. It encompasses portions of Mammoth Cave, the List of longest caves, longest known cave system in the worl ...

system in Kentucky that ''Adventure'' was based on. The soundtrack includes Creative Commons-licensed work from Zoë Blade (who started out writing

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

.MOD files) and Tony Longworth.

Reception

Jeremy Reiner of ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' called it "a gem of a film": "The documentary's peek into the culture of Infocom is one of the most fascinating stories I've seen in all of high technology." Gordon Haff of CNET said it "does a great job of capturing a gaming era which is ultimately hard to separate from the history of Infocom." In ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', Will Freeman listed it among "Six of the Best Gaming Documentaries": "It is a low-fi doc prone to the sentimental, but takes the viewer on a journey through a world of gaming all too often forgotten now that ''Call of Duty'' and ''

Angry Birds ''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment, and owned by Sega. The game series focuses on the titular flock of colorful angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game ''Cr ...

'' are household names."

Gallery

File:GET LAMP Packing August 2010.jpg, Get Lamp cases File:GET LAMP coins.jpg, Get Lamp coins File:GET LAMP coin close.jpg, Near view of a Lamp coin

References

External links

*
Get Lamp article
on IFWiki.org * Media * * at GoogleTechTalk
The Infocom Cabinet
at the

::Collections of

documents scanned by Jason Scott in preparing the documentary
The ''GET LAMP'' Interviews
at the

"The Get Lamp" DVDs
Full .ISO Copy at the

{{Jason Scott 2010 films American documentary films Infocom Interactive fiction Creative Commons-licensed documentary films Documentary films about video games 2010 documentary films Films directed by Jason Scott 2010s English-language films 2010s American films English-language documentary films

Description

Reception

Gallery

See also

References

External links