Thanks for engaging with the content is such a thoughtful way, Mike.
Having asked after this on Facebook and Twitter, I want to point out that almost every answer assumed that Bates and Meretzky represent what Infocom would have done if they had continued. Marc Blank and Mike Berlyn are no less Infocom than Bates and Meretzky, and they didn’t get into point and click games. Well, there was that rather miserable pixel hunter for the Newton, but by 1995 Blank and Berlyn were likely working on the ill-fated platformer, Busby. Mike Berlyn was lead designer.
Blank wound up working on a 3d action adventure game called “Syphon Filter,” and eventually the IP (as well as the studio Blank and Berlyn founded) was purchased by Sony. The studio lives on as Sony Bend Studio. I’d argue that, in terms of enduring in changing markets, Blank, Berlyn, & Co had far more success, even if they are rarely mentioned in IF circles.
So, it has to be asked, which post-Infocom company, BB&C or Legend, had a better recipe for success? In a world where Infocom stopped making mainframe ports in a timely manner, what would they have done instead?
As for the implications for the DIY community:
I think others know better than I, but I will say that my Infocom fan-fic involves identifying a micro-centered architecture by 1985. It’s nice to think that they would, by the early 1990s, be protective of their games as opposed to being protective of a platform that they had left behind, but realistically it would have changed a lot in terms of the DIY scene.
I think Cornerstone is the celebrity spokesperson of Infocom’s failure, but there were some serious organizational and strategic shortcomings that might have sunk them regardless. The absence of technical planning and R&D (which I think should have staffed up in 1981) became a huge issue. Yes, by 1984 Cornerstone had made such a financial commitment impossible, but 1984 was too late. Infocom was not prepared to take meaningful advantage of the features of increasingly popular microcomputers. Zork Zero suffered many delays—the x86 version missed the Christmas holiday—because its fairly rudimentary graphics just weren’t working right.
They had no plan to find a next technical breakthrough, even though they were originally an industry leader in terms of its technology. The industry was leaving them behind. Still, who knows, maybe they would have pivoted if it weren’t for Cornerstone sucking all the oxygen out of the room.