Can we know a little more about the story of the Quest system? [Quest]

Question

Hello,
I am writing a PHD dissertation about interactive fiction tools and I find it difficult to have information about Quest history.

On IFDB, we can see Quest is the third most used writing tool but paradoxally it's very difficult to find documentation on it and it's more easy to find documentation on EAMON, AGT, GAC, Quill, PAW etc (and obviously for Inform, TADS, Twine, Adrift...).

When was it created? On ifdb the first fiction begin in 2000. Who is the creator? Is there any documentation somewhere we can access?

Thanks for answering and sorry for my poor english (my dissertation is in french^^)

Comments

I think Alex will probably be best able to answer your questions. But in the meantime, I can tell you that Alex Warren is the creator, and IFDB might not be the best way to gauge the number of Quest games. Since Quest has its own website, my impression is that many Quest games end up there without being added to IFDB. http://textadventures.co.uk/

Also, this is a list of development systems that you might find useful: http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=18070

---

Thank you for answering so fast! I take good note of that.

Yes, you probably right for IFDB but at the same time, it gives a good overview of all the ratio of all tools wich have been used since the beginning of IF, even the very old ones.

I think, compared to Inform or The Quill which have a very long (or very, very long history), it's quite impressive to be the third most used tool (1828 Inform/563 Quill and 562 Quest). And Quill doesn't work anymore.

But for the progression part, it's sure IFDB is not representative at all, I imagine Quest to be comparable at Twine, for the last year for example, there are 308 new texts between 1rst march 2014 et now and just 20 for Quest. The fact Quest has its own "publication" platform has to be take in account and I will :-)

The problem i have with http://textadventures.co.uk/ is that i can filter by tools (may I?).

if you want to see that on google fusion chart:

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?containerId=googft-gviz-canvas&q=select+col0%2C+col7%2C+col9+from+1GUPkNaHRwhM4vFBeUOKgeejRFma1ayaQTjZy4h_Y+where+col0+not+in+('AGT'%2C+'Autres'%2C+'Eamon'%2C+'GAC'%2C+'Hugo'%2C+'PAW+'%2C+'Total'%2C+'Total+bdd'%2C+'Quill'%2C+'Adrfit')+order+by+col9+desc+limit+20&viz=GVIZ&t=COLUMN&uiversion=2&gco_forceIFrame=true&gco_hasLabelsColumn=true&width=500&height=300

Or maybe this one for the ratio :

https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?containerId=googft-gviz-canvas&q=select+col0%2C+col3+from+1GUPkNaHRwhM4vFBeUOKgeejRFma1ayaQTjZy4h_Y+where+col0+in+('Autres'%2C+'AGT'%2C+'Adrfit'%2C+'Eamon'%2C+'GAC'%2C+'Hugo'%2C+'Inform'%2C+'PAW+'%2C+'Quest'%2C+'Quill'%2C+'TADS'%2C+'Twine')+order+by+col3+asc+limit+12&viz=GVIZ&t=PIE&uiversion=2&gco_forceIFrame=true&gco_hasLabelsColumn=true&gco_useFirstColumnAsDomain=true&gco_is3D=true&gco_pieHole=0&gco_booleanRole=certainty&gco_hAxis=%7B%22useFormatFromData%22%3Atrue%2C+%22viewWindow%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3Anull%2C+%22min%22%3Anull%7D%2C+%22minValue%22%3Anull%2C+%22maxValue%22%3Anull%7D&gco_vAxes=%5B%7B%22useFormatFromData%22%3Atrue%2C+%22viewWindow%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3Anull%2C+%22min%22%3Anull%7D%2C+%22minValue%22%3Anull%2C+%22maxValue%22%3Anull%7D%2C%7B%22useFormatFromData%22%3Atrue%2C+%22viewWindow%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3Anull%2C+%22min%22%3Anull%7D%2C+%22minValue%22%3Anull%2C+%22maxValue%22%3Anull%7D%5D&gco_legend=right&width=500&height=300

---

Oh! I haven't seen the second link first. Thank you again, it's very usefull!

Answer 1

I wrote a few blog posts a couple of years ago talking about the history of Quest from the beginning: part 1, part 2, part 3.

For the rest of the story, your best bet is probably browsing the rest of the Quest category on the textadventures.co.uk blog which has announcements on it going back to 2006.

I can also fill in any gaps if you drop me an email!

Comments

Thank you for the links, it's very precious and it will help me grandly.

Maybe i will come back later for another questions but the articles you've written seem very complete (they have been added automatically in my bibliography!), close to perfection ;-)

And if I may say, congratulations for what you've done for IF, it's  very impressive (and very cool) !!!