Brian Moriarty (born in 1956) is an American video game developer. He created three early Infocom text-based adventure games: Wishbringer (1985), Trinity (1986), and Beyond Zork (1987). He also developed Loom (1990) for LucasArts.

Career

Before working at Infocom, Moriarty was a Technical Editor for the Atari 8-bit computer magazine ANALOG Computing. He created two text adventure games for ANALOG: Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983) and Crash Dive! (1984). He also helped develop Tachyon (1985), a game based on Atari's Quantum arcade game. This version was shown to the public but was never officially released.

In 1988, Moriarty joined Lucasfilm Games, which later became LucasArts, at the invitation of Noah Falstein. At LucasArts, he designed his first graphic adventure game, Loom, which was released in 1990. The game was successful, and Moriarty had plans for follow-up games, but he chose to work on other projects instead.

After creating an unreleased game based on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles for the company’s educational division, Moriarty took charge of The Dig, a science fiction adventure game inspired by an idea from Steven Spielberg. The game’s development was long and difficult, and Moriarty led the second of three major changes the project went through before it was finally released in 1995. When his version of the project failed in 1993, Moriarty left LucasArts and joined Rocket Science Games. Moriarty described his time at Rocket Science Games as “a silly time.” He noted that the company’s leaders aimed to become Hollywood moguls and secured significant funding. However, he said the Wired magazine cover should have been a warning, as it signaled the company was already outdated.

In 1995, Moriarty became the head of game design for the online gaming service Mpath.

Moriarty occasionally gives public lectures. One of his talks, a 2002 Game Developers Conference presentation titled “The Secret of Psalm 46,” was adapted into a dramatic production and a graphic novel. It was also included as a video Easter egg in Jonathan Blow’s puzzle game The Witness (2016).

Moriarty is a Professor of Practice in the Interactive Media and Game Development program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Games

• Adventure in the 5th Dimension (1983)
• Crash Dive! (1984)
• Tachyon (1985, unpublished)

• Wishbringer (1985)
• Trinity (1986)
• Beyond Zork (1987)
• Timesink (unpublished)

• Loom (1990)
• Young Indiana Jones at the World's Fair (unpublished)
• The Dig (1995) – Credited for "Additional Additional Story"

• Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine (1994) – Credited for "interactive design"

• The Black Rabbit (1982, Atari 8-bit) – single-drive disk duplicator
• Snail (1983, Atari 8-bit) – disk drive RPM checker
• mUSE: A BASIC Memory Monitor (1983, Atari 8-bit) – programming utility