Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: sderby@netcom.com (Steve Derby)
Subject: Re: Hello Again folks.
Message-ID: <sderbyCvCzo9.KC@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <33thdg$9f2@agate.berkeley.edu> <9408292313594.bnewell.DLITE@delphi.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 1994 17:38:33 GMT
Lines: 21

In article <9408292313594.bnewell.DLITE@delphi.com>,
Bob Newell <bnewell@delphi.com> wrote:
>The trinkets and fancy printed stuff can't net you any sales outside of
>retail outlets!  No one can see them, and a description on the net is hardly
>going to attract anyone... unless your goal is the retail market, in which
>case, you are a bold and recklessly daring individual, and I salute you.

This is an excellent point, Bob. These days every company and his brother 
throws a rock or cardboard cutout into their packaging to add 
"atmosphere", but Infocom originally started doing this to make their 
product stand out on a store shelf...who, seeing the huge flying-saucer 
packaging of Starcross or the mask cover of Suspended could resist 
picking it up and looking it over? Later, once Infocom became something 
of a household word, the trinkets became less of a selling point (less so 
than the games themselves anyway), and a little later, they became 
obtrusively annoying copy protection (c.f. Zork 0). It's been probably 10 
years or so since the days of Infocom's "unique" packaging, tho, and I 
figure a lot of people don't remember the original purpose, or are too 
young to have seen the originals.


