Talk:Tim Anderson (programmer)

This article was nominated for deletion on 21 June 2023. The result of the discussion was keep.

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Video games Low‑importance

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AfDs

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Election attempt

While a failed bid for election is certainly not notable enough to blather on about for paragraph after paragraph about minutiae and platform, a referenced note of the attempts in a "Personal life" section should be fine, it is a notable detail about a subjects personal life IceBergYYC (talk) 11:32, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for finding the Trivia tidbit. It is, in my opinion, much more relevant to the article than the failed election events. Regarding the segue into Zork, I would much rather have a reference to Anderson finding Colossal Cave (and The Four wanting to improve upon it), than the current suggestion, that "success" with Trivia was the impetus for Zork. I write success in air quotes because a) the game market back then was basically non-existent and b) this is way before any commercial endeavors. There just was no success to be had. Cheers and keep up the good work CapnZapp (talk) 17:35, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, clarified on inspiration from Adventure. As well as noted Anderson's work for DARPA, which is what allowed him access to the computer at MIT even after his graduation. Although I do disagree with the statement "There just was no success to be had". The computer game development scene at the time was far from commercial in general, and several of the sources describe Trivia (and obviously Zork) as successful due to their popularity on ARPANET. One of the sources also notes that a big reason for moving on to creating a new game was that Trivia had been "completed" by most of the interested ARPANET users.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback and suggestions. IceBergYYC (talk) 18:49, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]