One of the most remarkable parts of my interview with Roberta Williams was when she volunteered comparisons between her games and Infocom’s, acknowledging that the latter were much more likely to be praised for parser and writing quality:
“They had people that knew how to write prose very well, and I will admit that I didn’t, I was not a good prose writer. I’m good at storytelling but in those days, I really didn’t know how to write very well.”
Her strength, as she pointed out, was in finding ways to tell game stories to a wider audience, and to bring people with writing experience into games (although she contrasts the experience with Jane Jensen vs. her collaborator on The Colonel’s Bequest, Jacqueline Austin). But I was overall so taken aback by the modesty that I had to point out that she exited her video game niche with a ton of money and basically everybody behind the very nicely written games at other companies… didn’t.