~4 minute readREVIEW
Bureaucracy
by Douglas Adams and the Staff of Infocom
INFOCOM
125 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA 02140
48K Disk $39.95
A long, long time ago, on a computer not far enough away, Infocom gave us, the computing public, a game so wild, so off the wall, that it was a preordained bestseller. 'Round about the same time, they also gave us interactive fiction plus and universes so large as to escape the confines of low memory systems. This new product was also greeted warmly and embraced by the public. But now they've gone too far. How can the populace resist a game combining the two? They can't.
Bureaucracy is the latest comedy from Infocom. Written by Douglas Adams, author of the popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, this new work takes aim at the bureaucracy and bureaucrats we must all deal with in our daily lives. And, with uncanny accuracy, it scores a direct hit. It makes us laugh, while cynically pointing out the frustrations we've created for ourselves in this modern world in which we live.
The story starts innocently enough. Having just gotten a new job and moved to a new home, you seem ready to start your life anew. A fresh start, as it were. In fact, your first assignment is a training session in Paris, France. You feel as though you could just sink into your easy chair and relax your day away. That's if the moving company hadn't lost, misplaced, or otherwise eliminated all your possessions. To make things worse, your bank has turned on you as well, failing to properly process your change of address form and invalidating your charge card. By the time you get all these various problems straightened out and finally get to Paris, you'll have taken an adventure unlike any you've ever taken before -- if you survive.
What could be so dangerous in this real-world game? Well, assuming the frustration doesn't force you into suicide, you've got that blood pressure problem to worry about. The status line in this game is unlike any of Infocom's other offerings. In the top right corner of the display is a readout of your blood pressure. Each of life's little annoyances cause this pressure to rise slightly. In this game, even ordering a meal or trying to withdraw money from your bank are tasks that quickly grow to monumental proportions. Taken alone, each frustration is merely an additional throb in your already aching head. But when accumulated, rest assured they're lethal.
The strange status line is only the first unique aspect of this Infocom work. A sample response from the SCORE command typifies the side-splitting prose each new frustration can unleash: Your blood pressure is 144/88 in thirty-four moves. Your status is livid. Your score is 0 out of a possible 21, making you a victim.
In another first, this program allows (rather, forces) the player to fill out those most infamous of the bureaucratic roadblocks: forms. At key places in the game, the screen display fills with a form, which must be filled out before you're allowed to proceed onward. In fact, the first form informs (rather, misinforms, in the spirit of true bureaucracy) the program of your name, sex and other vital statistics.
The documentation, likewise, is very distinctive. Containing a form (of course) and a booklet entitled "You're Ready to Move," (published by your very caring bank, the Fillmore Fiduciary Trust Company), the game materials foreshadow the mess you'll have to disentangle yourself from in order to complete the game. Also included is a skinny pencil, a charter membership flyer for "Popular Paranoia Magazine" and a letter from your boss. Even the players' testimonies contained inside the front cover are different; they're complaints from players frustrated with Infocom bureaucracy.
While the game is frustrating to play, the program itself is simple to use. My favorite feature is the allowed abbreviation of EXAMINE to X; it just makes being nosey that much easier.
Even the save game feature is used much differently than in other Infocom games. Usually, you save your position before trying a dangerous task. In Bureaucracy, you'll find yourself saving your position after a particularly frustrating ordeal, so that it won't have to be suffered through again. Finally, even the constant responses in Infocom games (such as those elicited by an expletive or a word the program doesn't understand) are humorous and original.
Bureaucracy is quite possibly the most frustrating game Infocom has released. It's not hard to play, but, like the world in which we live, it's often hard to cope with. Like the little annoyances in life it pokes fun at, Bureaucracy gets under your skin. And once implanted, it'll tickle your funny bone for days to come.
Steve Panak is a Trust Attorney and a free-lance writer living in northeastern Ohio. He holds a B.S. in B.A. and a J.D. He currently oversees computer operations in his department, where he develops software to teach complex legal concepts. In his spare time, he enjoys computer games
This article appeared in
Analog Computing
Oct 1987
These historical, out-of-print articles and literary works have been GNUSTOed onto InvisiClues.org for academic and research purposes.
