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Brian Moriarty

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Brian Moriarty
Brian Moriarty stands beside Infocom's DECSYSTEM-20 mainframe (1984)
Born1956 (age 67–68)
Occupation(s)Video game designer, Professor
Known forLoom, Wishbringer, Trinity

Brian Moriarty (born 1956) is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, Wishbringer (1985), Trinity (1986), and Beyond Zork (1987), as well as Loom (1990) for LucasArts.[1]

Career

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Prior to joining Infocom, Moriarty was a Technical Editor for the Atari 8-bit computer magazine ANALOG Computing.[2] He wrote two text adventures for ANALOG: Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983) and Crash Dive! (1984). He also worked on Tachyon (1985), an adaptation of Atari's Quantum arcade game, which was previewed but never published.[2]

Moriarty joined Lucasfilm Games, later known as LucasArts, in 1988 at the invitation of Noah Falstein. There he designed his first graphic adventure game, Loom, published in 1990.[2] Though the game was a commercial success and Moriarty had an idea for sequels which were briefly entertained, he opted to move on to other projects.

After working on an unreleased game based on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for the studio's educational division,[3] he took over The Dig, a science fiction adventure game based on an idea from Steven Spielberg. The project had a notoriously lengthy and troubled development, with Moriarty leading the second of ultimately three incarnations the game underwent before finally shipping in 1995. When his version of the project collapsed in 1993, Moriarty departed LucasArts and joined Rocket Science Games. Moriarty said of his stint at Rocket Science Games, "It was a silly time. The Rocket Science executives were out to be Hollywood moguls, and, to their credit, they got hold of some serious money, and to start off with, it looked as if it was going to be a really fun gig. And they got most of it right. ... But the Wired cover should have warned us. I mean, Wired is the kiss of death. If they're on top of you, then you should know that you're already out of date."[4]

In 1995 Moriarty became the head of game design for the online gaming service Mpath.[5]

On occasion, Moriarty delivers public lectures.[6] One of these, his 2002 Game Developers Conference presentation "The Secret of Psalm 46,"[7] has been adapted into a dramatic production [8] and a graphic novel,[9] and was included in its entirety as a video Easter egg in Jonathan Blow's puzzle game The Witness (2016).

Moriarty is a Professor of Practice in the Interactive Media and Game Development program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Games

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ANALOG Computing

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  • Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983)
  • Crash Dive! (1984)
  • Tachyon (1985, unpublished)

Infocom

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Lucasfilm Games / LucasArts Entertainment

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  • Loom (1990)
  • Young Indiana Jones at the World's Fair (unpublished)
  • The Dig (1995) - Credited for "Additional Additional Story"

Rocket Science Games

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Other software

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  • The Black Rabbit (1982, Atari 8-bit)[11] - single-drive disk duplicator
  • Snail (1983, Atari 8-bit)[12] - disk drive RPM checker
  • mUSE: A BASIC Memory Monitor (1983, Atari 8-bit)[13] - programming utility

References

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  1. ^ Brian Moriarty's profile at MobyGames
  2. ^ a b c "Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers". 1997.
  3. ^ García, Paco (March 2006). "Interview with Brian Moriarty".
  4. ^ "What the Hell Happened?". Next Generation. No. 40. Imagine Media. April 1998. p. 44.
  5. ^ "What's the Future of Online Gaming?". Next Generation. No. 19. Imagine Media. July 1996. pp. 6–10.
  6. ^ "Brian Moriarty: Lectures and Presentations". Archived from the original on 2019-05-12. Retrieved 2005-09-13.
  7. ^ "The Secret of Psalm 46" (2002)Archived 2023-03-21 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ Cooke, Amy (24 May 2011). "Open Drama Night". Nouse: University of York's Student Website. Archived from the original on 29 May 2011. Retrieved 9 June 2011. A Brechtian style piece, based on a lecture Todd received by Brian Moriarty, the play explores the history or rather the historiography surrounding the issue of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
  9. ^ Sende, Iván. El secreto del Salmo 46. (Madrid: Diábolo Ediciones, 2016). Retrieved 23 June 2017.
  10. ^ Moriarty, Brian (November 1986). "Designer Profiles / Brian Moriarty" (PDF). Computer Gaming World. No. 32. p. 16. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
  11. ^ Moriarty, Brian (1982). "The Black Rabbit". ANALOG Computing: 49. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  12. ^ Moriarty, Brian (July 1983). "Snail". ANALOG Computing: 12. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
  13. ^ Moriarty, Brian (November 1983). "mUSE: A BASIC Memory Monitor". ANALOG Computing: 111. Archived from the original on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-04-01.
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