Biography
Meretzky was raised in Yonkers, New York. His father was trained as an accountant, but spent a career of 25 years selling automotive hardware. Meretzky's mother was a bookkeeper. He graduated from Yonkers High School in 1975. He went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in construction management in 1979. After working in the construction industry for two years, in 1981 Meretzky decided to pursue a career as a game tester for Infocom. In 1983, he became a full-time writer (an "Implementor"), scripting Planetfall and creating the famous cult figure robot sidekick "Floyd".
In 1984, he had his most famous collaboration, with Douglas Adams on the computer game version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which became one of the bestselling games of the era. Another popular game was Leather Goddesses of Phobos, whose risque writing pushed the boundaries of the art. In an interview, Meretzky said that he originally just wrote the name on a project board as a joke, but was later asked to actually develop a game to go along with the title.
In A Mind Forever Voyaging, Meretzky attempted to address social issues, but Infocom's success was declining, and the 1988 Zork Zero was one of his last titles there.
In 1994, Meretzky co-founded Boffo Games, where he was Vice President of Creation, and developed such titles as the story puzzle game Hodj 'n' Podj and the detective comedy The Space Bar until the company closed its doors in 1997.
Around the year 2000, Meretzky joined WorldWinner as a game advisor and Principal Game Designer. Meretzky is also a charter member of the Computer Game Developers Association, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences such as GDC.
Meretzky appears as himself antagonizing rapper MC Frontalot in the music video for "It Is Pitch Dark." (released on Secrets from the Future). The song references several of Meretzky's text adventure games, and the video is directed by documentarian Jason Scott Sadofsky, whose film GET LAMP is about the genre.
Several years later, Meretzky joined Blue Fang Games to work on the popular Zoo Tycoon franchise.
He is currently employed as a vice president at social media game developer Playdom.
Read more about this topic: Steve Meretzky
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