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David Lebling
Lebling in 2010
Born (1949-10-30) October 30, 1949 (age 74)
Occupation(s)Video game designer, computer programmer
Known forZork, co-founder of Infocom

Peter David Lebling (born October 30, 1949) is an American interactive fiction game designer (implementor) and programmer who has worked at various companies, including Infocom and Avid.

Life and career

He was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Maryland, and attended MIT, where he obtained a degree in political science before becoming a member of its Laboratory for Computer Science.

After encountering the original Adventure game (also called Colossal Cave), he was fascinated by the concept and—together with Marc Blank, Tim Anderson and Bruce Daniels—set out to write an adventure game with a better parser,[1] which became Zork. In 1979, he became one of the founders of Infocom.[2]

His games include Zork I, II and III, Starcross, Suspect, Spellbreaker, The Lurking Horror, Maze and James Clavell's Shogun.

After Infocom's end in 1989, Lebling worked on a GUI spreadsheet program, joined Avid (a company doing special effects for broadcast and film), and designed server applications at Ucentric.

Lebling currently resides in Concord, Massachusetts with his wife. He is a programmer for British defense contractor BAE Systems.

References

  1. ^ Lebling, P.D.; Blank, M.S.; Anderson, T.A. (1980). "Zork:A Computerized Fantasy Simulation Game". IEEE Computer. 12 (4). IEEE Computer Society: 51–59. doi:10.1109/MC.1979.1658697. S2CID 7845131.
  2. ^ Crigger, Lara (July 25, 2006). "The Short, Happy Life of Infocom". The Escapist. Archived from the original on November 27, 2010. Retrieved October 28, 2010.

External links


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