“Digital historian Jason Scott has an eclectic portfolio. At Textfiles.com, he collects files and related materials from the era of dial-up bulletin-board systems. That work led him to create BBS: The Documentary, an eight-episode miniseries about the early history of online culture. His second documentary, Get Lamp … 
examines text adventure games through interviews with developers, designers and players.”
— Computerworld
From an interview with Jason Scott:
Computerworld: Text adventures are no longer a financially viable form of entertainment. What caused them to fade into history?
Jason Scott: The idea of exploring a world, trying to figure out the meaning of that world, pull out answers from it and solve a quest was readily taken over by graphic adventures. These companies didn’t ask how they could improve text adventures, so they lost money and got bought out.
Via BoingBoing.
I played text adventures, back in the day … I have fond memories of Zork.