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There and Back Again: A Case History of Writing "The Hobbit "

In 1981, two Melbourne University students were hired part-time to write a text adventure game. The result was the game “The Hobbit”, based on Tolkien’s book, which became one of the most successful text adventure games ever. “The Hobbit” was innovative in its use of non-deterministic gameplay, a full-sentence parser, the addition of graphics to a text adventure game and finally “emergent characters” – characters exhibiting apparent intelligence arising out of simple behaviours and actions – with whom the player had to interact in order to “solve” some of the game’s puzzles. This paper is a case history of the development of “The Hobbit.” Little has been written about the development of the first generation of text-based computer games; this case history provides insight into this developmental period in computer game history. As co-developer, I offer my recollections of the development process, the internal design, and the genesis of the ideas that made “The Hobbit” unique. I compare the development environment and the resulting game to the state-of-the-art in text adventure games of the time. Lastly, I discuss the legacy and recent revival of interest in the game.