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Emily Short

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Emily Short
Emily Short in 2010
Known forGalatea
Counterfeit Monkey
SpouseGraham Nelson[1][2]
Websiteemshort.blog

Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer. From 2020 to 2023, she was creative director of Failbetter Games, the studio behind Fallen London and its spinoffs.[3][4]

She is known for her debut game Galatea (2000)[5] and her use of psychologically complex non-player characters (NPCs).[6]

Short has been called "a visionary in the world of text-based games for years,"[7] and is the author of over forty works of IF.[8] She wrote the chapters "Challenges of a Broad Geography" and "NPC Conversation Systems" for the 2011 The IF Theory Reader.[9]

She wrote a regular column on IF for Rock Paper Shotgun.[10]

Career

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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.[11] In 2014, Short was let go by Linden Lab, ending the project she was working on, Versu.[12] Around that time, she started the Oxford and London Interactive Fiction Group.[2]

In September 2016, Short was hired by Spirit AI, a roughly 15 person company working on machine learning and natural language processing. She joined its board of directors in 2018,[13] and was later named Chief Product Officer.[3]

In January 2020, Short joined the 12 person Failbetter Games as creative director.[3] She announced her departure from the studio in January 2024.[14]

Short is one of the members of the advisory board for Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation (IFTF).

Interactive fiction

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Works

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A number of Short's works have won acclaim at the XYZZY Awards, an annual popular-choice award for interactive fiction.[15][16] 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 band, but after they left the project, she completed it on her own.[17]

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.[18]

Tools

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While many of Short's early games were written in Inform, 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.[19] Other formats include Varytale, for which she developed the game Bee,[20] and a custom engine by Liza Daly (with help from the company inkle) for the game First Draft of the Revolution.[21] Both formats use an interactive fiction engine based on hyperlinks.

Short wrote most of the 300+ programming examples in the documentation and created two full-length demo games for release with Graham Nelson's interactive fiction development system, Inform 7.[22][1]

Selected IF works

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Selected IF works
Association Year Category Work Result Ref.
XYZZY Awards 2000 Best individual NPC Galatea Won [23][24]
Best Writing Metamorphoses 2nd Place [23]
2002 Best Game, Best Puzzles, Best Story, Best Individual PC Savoir-Faire Won [15]
2003 Best NPCs City of Secrets Won [25]
2006 Best Settings, Best NPCs Floatpoint Won [16]
2012 Best Game, Best Setting, Best Puzzles, Best Individual PC, Best Implementation Counterfeit Monkey Won [26]
IF Artshow 2000 Best of Show Galatea Won [27]
Interactive Fiction Competition 2000 N/A Metamorphoses 2nd Place [28]
2006 N/A Floatpoint Won [29]
Games Magazine 2004 Best RPG/Adventure City of Secrets 2nd Place [30]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Short, Emily (6 September 2015). "Private Games". Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling. Retrieved 13 April 2022. One of my larger on-going projects is providing support for the text adventure tool Inform 7. One of the things I do for that project is provide...example games...their first reader has always been my collaborator on the project, Graham Nelson. [...] And, full disclosure, partway through this project I married him
  2. ^ a b Krol, Charlotte (14 June 2023). "Emily Short Deserves Her Flowers". NME. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  3. ^ a b c "Jobs Roundup: Emily Short takes over as creative director at Failbetter Games". 9 January 2020.
  4. ^ "Emily Short | LinkedIn". uk.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  5. ^ Ryan, Marie-Laure. (2006). Avatars of story. U of Minnesota Press.
  6. ^ Stuart, Keith (5 Jun 2015). "Lonely planet: the solitude of open-world games when the story is over". The Guardian.
  7. ^ Alderman, Naomi (22 Sep 2014). "The magic of words opens a whole new world of fun". The Guardian.
  8. ^ "Emily Short Member Profile". Interactive Fiction Database. 2022
  9. ^ Kevin Jackson-Mead, J. Robinson Wheeler. "IF Theory Reader", ifarchive.org, March 2011.
  10. ^ Short, Emily (15 June 2016). "Text Adventures For People Who Hate Guessing The Verb". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2016-09-06.
  11. ^ "Second Life developer acquires experimental game studio LittleTextPeople". 16 February 2012.
  12. ^ "The end of Versu: Emily Short looks back". 14 March 2014.
  13. ^ "Interactive fiction specialist Dr Emily Short joins the Spirit AI board". 9 August 2018.
  14. ^ "The City in Silver". Failbetter Games. 2024-01-18. Retrieved 2024-05-16.
  15. ^ a b "XYZZY Awards: Winning Games of 2002". XYZZY news. 2002. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  16. ^ a b "XYZZY Awards: Winning Games of 2006". Archived from the original on May 15, 2007. Retrieved May 12, 2007.
  17. ^ "City of Secrets".
  18. ^ "IFDB Top 100" (archived), ifdb.org, 5 July 2021.
  19. ^ Nutt, Christian (14 Mar 2014). "The end of Versu:Emily Short Looks Back". Gamasutra.
  20. ^ "Bee". Dan Q. 16 July 2012.
  21. ^ Hamilton, Kirk (24 Sep 2012). "Write (And Re-Write) Letters Of Intrigue In This Fantastic Free Game". Kotaku.
  22. ^ Smith, Graham (9 May 2014). "Informing You: Text Adventure Tool Inform 7 Has Updated". Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
  23. ^ a b Mullin, Eileen (2000). "XYZZY Awards: Winning Games of 2000". XYZZY news. Eileen Mullin. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  24. ^ "Emily Short: Galatea". Electronic Literature Collection Volume One. Electronic Literature Organization. Archived from the original on 27 January 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  25. ^ "XYZZY Awards: Winning Games of 2003". XYZZY news. 2003. Archived from the original on 12 February 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  26. ^ "XYZZY Awards Historical Results". 2013. Retrieved 2016-01-05.
  27. ^ Parker, Marnie. "2000 IF Art Show". IF Art Show. Marnie Parker. Archived from the original on 6 June 2007. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  28. ^ Musante, Mark J. (2000). "6th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition Voting Results". Interactive Fiction Competition. Interactive Fiction Competition. Archived from the original on 25 July 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-19.
  29. ^ "12th Annual Interactive Fiction Competition". 2006. Retrieved 2007-05-12.
  30. ^ McDonald, Thomas L. and Bennett, Dan. The Electronic Games 100. Games. Issue 196 (Vol. 27, No. 10). Pg.58. December 2003.
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