David Cornelson, interviewed in Gamasutra about his plans for marketing text-adventure games to young readers:
One of the reasons IF is so fascinating is that you have this junction
of programming, game design, and writing. It’s great to toy around with
all three of those aspects and try to merge them into something
beautiful.The reality is that most of us have one, possibly two of those
capabilities at a reasonably high level, but statistically very few
people have all three of them at a high level (Andrew Plotkin, Emily
Short, Graham Nelson, Michael Gentry, Paul O’Brian, Eric Eve, Adam
Cadre, and more). I would even argue that some of these people have
been able to overcome a lesser ability with sheer determination and
free time.I don’t think you can build a business from this dichotomy. I do
believe that if you offer someone a task that they’re good at and give
them a template to work towards, they will succeed. From there it was a
matter of developing that template, which we’ve already done. The
process is being duplicated for a second design and writing team and
there seems to be a consensus that we’ve developed the right processes.