people, not studios
When Eastgate first began publishing hypertexts -- back in 1989 -- we advertised that people could, on request, receive disks signed by the author. The response surprised us. But people, conditioned to expect software created by distant corporations, valued this reminder that the hypertexts they were reading arose from the passion and wisdom of an individual writer.
Here are a few of the many fine writers who grace our catalog. Click here for information on every Eastgate author.
Many multimedia publishers model themselves after the film industry. They use job titles like "producer", and their software borrows cinematic idioms like lengthy opening credits. For artists like Greg Roach (The Madness of Roland) and David Blair (WaxWeb), the film model makes sense because the software is seeking to do emulate and surpass cinema. Elsewhere, one suspects that the storied glamor of the film industry led firms to borrow some of its jargon without much thought.
Hypertext is blessed with an essentially human scale. Individual passion, wisdom, and craft can create wonderful hypertext; the artist need not also acquire millions of dollars in investment backing or gain the approval of corporate committees before embarking on the creative journey.
No focus groups or market projections determine Eastgate's editorial calendar; we depend on writers to create wonderful new hypertexts, and rely on our own best judgement to select the most interesting and most provocative titles we can discover. We don't commission knock-offs of best-sellers, adaptations of hit movies, or spin-offs of popular TV shows: we wouldn't do its very well if we tried, and other houses do these very well.
