![]() ![]() Janson was a member of Part 2 which is where I’d heard of it, but it’s always been sort of a ‘lost chapter’. ![]() There’s great original research that went into chronicling the ZZT scene on Prodigy: both ZZT CLUB and ZZT CLUB PART 2. Her interview in this book is the most open one I’ve seen from her. Janson was known in the community for being a little mysterious. ![]() Alexis (formerly Greg) Janson, the creator of the Super Tool Kit and ZZT’s successor MegaZeux, has a stronger presence in the book than I expected. Outside of the biographical asides we’re given a detailed history of an almost-forgotten subculture. A lot of lonely kids found comfort in this silly little game. Many of the individuals interviewed had issues growing up: depression, abuse, identity confusion. That’s a theme present throughout the book. The story of the first trans girl she ever met online tugs at the heartstrings a bit too. One section highlights how ZZT specifically appealed to trans kids. Anna is a trans individual so throughout the book we’re given snapshots of her adolescent interactions with the game and it’s community as she discovers who she really is. In ZZT, Anna Anthropy teaches the history of ZZT through the lens of her experience. The community I bonded with on AOL, then later via the web and listservs, allowed me to escape my restrictive homeschooled upbringing while hanging out with a bunch of people like me. I made several games under my ZZT company Ultraware. There were tons of user-created games to download and play, and you could even upload your own. I discovered the game and community when we signed up for AOL using the AOL software for MS-DOS in 1995. ZZT was a game creation system, which meant it came with it’s own built-in world editor. ZZT by Anna Anthropy is centered around a gaming community that consumed a big chunk of my life between the ages of 13 and 15. ![]()
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