The Ill-Advised Business Software That Helped Sink Videogame Pioneers Infocom

While Infocom is fondly remembered today as the studio responsible for a string of legendary text adventures including the Zork series, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and A Mind Forever Voyaging, its history contains a darker chapter regarding its ill-advised business software. The company seemed confused about its own strengths, and while it would be an exaggeration to say that diversifying into business tools was the only thing that sunk Infocom, it certainly made a healthy contribution to their downfall. Now, thanks to modern emulation efforts, this failed 1985 database product finally runs on modern PCs, bringing new life to a forgotten era of computing.

The software in question was Cornerstone, a database program released in 1985 that attempted to leverage the same technology used for their games. Because Infocom's text adventures were designed to run on a virtual machine called the Z-machine, it was easy to port them to different systems; similarly, Cornerstone was designed to run on its own proprietary virtual machine. Unfortunately, this architecture made the software notoriously slow to use in real-world applications. The benefit of easy portability meant nothing by that point because IBM-compatibles had decisively won the business sector of the platform war.

A Virtual Machine Lost to Time

For decades, dedicated Infocom heads have kept the Z-machine alive so you can play Infocom classics on your modern PC without issue. However, nobody put much effort into preserving the specific virtual machine that Cornerstone ran on until very recently. The software remained a digital relic, inaccessible and unplayable despite its historical significance as a piece of failed 1985 database products.

That silence has finally been broken thanks to the tireless work of TaradinoC. You can now download an interpreter called Linchpin that will run Infocom's least-loved software on contemporary systems. This achievement allows modern users to experience the program exactly as it was intended, albeit with its original quirks intact. As game developer Andrew Plotkin put it in his blog post about the project: "It's a new age for aficionados of failed 1985 database products!"

The High Cost of Diversification

Plotkin points to The Digital Antiquarian's telling of the Cornerstone saga for more context, which is a fascinating read regarding the financial realities of the time. Since Infocom struggled to find external funding to develop its database app, money had to be diverted from projects in the game division, including:

  • Experiments with different genres
  • Multiplayer development efforts
  • A cross-platform graphics system that would let them add pictures to their games

At a time when back catalogue sales were drying up and Infocom needed splashy new releases, it was starved for the budget these game projects demanded. The financial strain of supporting Cornerstone meant the studio could not afford innovation in its core product line. Just a year after this critical funding shortfall, Infocom had to merge with Activision to stay afloat, a move that ultimately led to the studio's closure in 1989.

Today, Infocom lives on through preservation projects like TaradinoC's efforts and thanks to Zork going open-source last year. While the business software may have contributed to its demise, modern tools ensure that both its successes and failures remain accessible to new generations of gamers and historians alike.