|
Amy Briggs was
born 1962 in a small town in Minnesota, living next door to
Ron Gilbert, whom she used to babysit
and who later became famous for the "Monkey Island"
series of games.
In 1984 Amy graduated
from Minnesota's Macalester
College with a degree in English, specializing in British
Literature.
This may have had
an influence, when in 1985 she signed up for a job at Infocom,
the company writing "interactive fiction," and was
hired as one of Infocom's program testers. At that time Infocom
only had a few dedicated testers, as Infocom's philosopy allowed
people to fluctuate between their roles; who wasn't writing
a game or took a break from writing one tested the games in
development.
Until 1987 she
only bughunted, but with her background in literature she
of course also had the urge to write a game of her own. Strongly
influenced by the works of Jane
Austen she wanted a female hero as a main character, in
an adventure with a romantic setting. After some persuasion
she was given the ok for the development of "Plundered
Hearts."
"Plundered
Hearts" remained her only work of interactive fiction,
but she also co-authored one of the "Infocomics"
titles, "Gamma
Force - Pit of a Thousand Screams." According to
Amy she came late onto that project and her main task was
to put into a plot what had already been developed in collaboration
with Tom Snyder Productions.
Her further tasks
kept her from authoring more titles, but on the 1988 "Zork
Zero" she co-designed the calendar, for "Quarterstaff"
she did major editorial and rewriting work and she was one
of the "umpteen" implementors to work on "The
Restaurant at the End of the Universe," the never published
sequel to "The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
This was also Amy's
last work at Infocom. She then returned to Minnesota and went
to graduate school there, leaving with a Ph. D. in Cognitive
Psychology.
These days Amy
works at 3M
as a Human Factors Engineer, designing usable products, software
and web sites.
Many thanks
to Amy Briggs for contributing to this biography.
Back
to top.
|
