The Hobbit

The Hobbit was one of the first major games produced in Australia, and is considered a classic text adventure. In 1985, it was voted number 1 in Sinclair User’s ‘Top 50 Spectrum Software Classics’.

To create the game Beam’s director Alfred Milgrom advertised on the bulletin board at Melbourne University hiring students Veronika Megler and Philip Mitchell. Originally tasked with making the “best adventure game ever’. Milgrom secured a licence to use J.R.R Tolkien’s popular book the The Hobbit by using Melbourne House’s book publishing relationships, and promising that a copy of the book was to be included with the game. The inclusion of the book with the game was also valuable to the player, as knowledge of the story was needed to solve the challenges that Megler had designed.

The Hobbit was remarkable for both its sophisticated parser and creation of a world that appeared open – were time passed, objects had physics and characters autonomy.

The games interface, Philip Mitchell’s parser Inglish allowed for full sentences with adjectives, where previously most adventure games only allowed for simpler verb-noun combinations. The program was complex enough to intuitively understand pronouns, adverbs, punctuation and prepositions. This allowed players to interact with the games in a way never before possible. Commands could be strung together not just to control the actions of the player character but with the inclusion of “SAY” directive could be issued to non player characters .

In designing the game world Megler wanted to create a place that felt more alive. Objects in the game are given a size and weight ratio which affects your ability to interact with them. You could place one object inside or on top of another. If your character was sitting on an object and that object was thrown, then your character would go with it. Another point of difference with this game and any previous text-based adventure game was that events happened in real time. If you walked away from the computer things would happen with out you. As you played each non-player character and monster had a turn when you did, meaning that many unforeseen events could occur, Elrond might kill the Warg making your journey less troublesome. Gandalf might get himself killed making that game more challenging. The set of characters actions were in part randomised but also affected by the actions of the player so attacking them was not a good idea. As was learnt by many players who became impatient with Thorin and his constant singing. At this time the expression “Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.” entered the popular culture of gamers.

Players found The Hobbit constantly appealing because non-player characters existed independently. They were able to roam freely through the game-world and would not necessarily do the same thing twice. This and the games text driven physics enabled the game to be repeated and played in different ways. Due to the openness of its world, “The Hobbit” was an early game to support ‘emergent gameplay’.

The Hobbit was a challenging game to play requiring trail and error to progress and solve puzzles. Letters requesting assistance were sent to popular magazines who devoted columns to advising players. One player David Elkan wrote an entire guide to playing the game which he sent to Melbourne House who published it as book ” A guide to playing The Hobbit (1984).

References: ACMI Alfred Milgrom interview, 28 April 2006: Interview text provided by Alfred Milgrom 1st March 2013. , Maher, J, “The Hobbit”, The Digital Antiquarian, http://www.filfre.net/2012/11/the-hobbit/; Newman J, Simons, I (2007) 100 Videogames, BFI Screen Guides, BFI Publishing, London

This version of The Hobbit is for the BBC Model B. The game cassette is accompanied by a manual with information about the game. Game cassette and manual are contained in a black cardboard box.