Wikipedia Tapped For History of Adventure Games
By Jared Newman
Mostly using Wikipedia as the source material, Philipp Lenssen cobbled together a 500-page book on the history of graphic adventure games. That’s the kind if idea you wish you had first. “Graphic Adventures” covers all the greats, like Grim Fandango, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Myst, and thanks to the unpaid volunteer editors at Wikipedia, you can rest assured that the information within is for the most part pretty close to being accurate.
Don’t worry, Lenssen’s not totally ripping off the free labor. First he went through all the text, editing portions that could use more book-like language. Then he interviewed some of the people behind the games, such as Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe and Lucasfilm’s David Fox. Finally, he added screenshots. “The book took much longer than expected … the original idea after all was to merely compile an encyclopedia from Wikipedia, a book for perhaps a small but dedicated group of fans like me,” Lenssen writes. “But after sending myself the first draft version, I realized much more editing was needed to have something really fun.”
He’s also giving 50 percent of the revenues to the Wikimedia foundation, and making a free, editable version available for free download, in accordance with Wikipedia’s rules. Amazon’s got it for $29. [Blogoscoped via The Game Beat]
