Amy Briggs | |
---|---|
Born | 1962 (age 61–62) |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Macalester College |
Occupation | Video game implementer |
Years active | 1985–present |
Notable work | Plundered Hearts (1987) |
Amy Ruth Briggs (born 1962[ citation needed]) is an American video game implementor known for creating Plundered Hearts, an interactive fiction computer game published by Infocom in 1987.
At one point in her youth, Briggs was a babysitter of Ron Gilbert, who went on to design the pirate-themed adventure game Monkey Island. [1] A Minnesota native, she graduated from Macalester College in 1984 with a B.A. in English, specializing in British literature.
Already a fan of Infocom's games, Briggs joined the company in 1985 as a game tester. Working long hours playtesting games and learning the ZIL programming language, she quickly rose to the rank of implementor. [2]
Briggs's literary background led her to write the company's only romance-genre text adventure. She also chose an explicitly female lead character, again unique for Infocom (other lead characters were either of unspecified gender, male, or allowed a choice of sex). She explained these choices by saying, " C. S. Lewis said he had to write The Chronicles of Narnia because they were books he wanted to read, and nobody else had written them yet. Plundered Hearts was a game I wanted to play." [3]
Although Plundered Hearts was her only published text adventure, Briggs worked as a writer and editor on a number of other Infocom projects: she did a major rewrite of Quarterstaff, and helped to design "The Flathead Calendar", the main feelie included with Zork Zero. She was also briefly lead implementor on Milliways, the never-completed sequel to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. [4] After Infocom was shut down in 1989, she returned to Minnesota where she attended graduate school, eventually earning a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Minnesota. Then she went to work for 3M as a human factors engineer. [5]