The Rise of Computer Games, Part I: Adventure

Source: Hacker News

Introduction

Play was central to the formation of personal computer culture. For the early hobbyists who were fascinated by the guts of the machine, the computer was a plaything in and of itself. Many of those who joined the hobby in 1975 or 1976 did so because of games: they had experience with the extensive BASIC game culture that circulated in the time‑sharing systems of universities, high schools, and even corporations, and wanted to keep playing at home.

Even after the rise of commercial personal computer software, when the first truly useful applications began appearing, games remained by far the most popular software category (counting by number of titles produced and number of units sold, although not by dollar value). One 1980 catalog of Apple II software, for example, lists 265 titles, of which roughly two‑thirds are games, from Ack‑Ack (an anti‑aircraft target shooter) to Wipe Off (a Breakout clone). The rest of the catalog comprises demos, educational programs, and a smattering of business software. Whatever they might say about the practical value of the personal computer, buyers had an evident hunger for games.[1]

The Early Games and Their Market

Computer owners got their hands on games in one of three ways.

1. Peer‑to‑peer copying – In the early years the most common means was simply copying a paper listing or cassette tape from a friend or colleague, with or without the permission of the original author. Hobbyists treated game software as a commons to be freely shared, much as it had been in the time‑sharing culture through cooperatives like DECUS. This practice never entirely disappeared, despite the commercialization of game software and various anti‑piracy schemes by publishers.

2. Type‑in programs – Many magazines and books published “type‑ins,” complete computer programs (almost always written in BASIC) intended to be manually entered at the keyboard and then saved to tape or disk. Dave Ahl’s BASIC Computer Games (first published in 1973 by Digital Equipment Corporation), a collection of over 100 type‑ins, reputedly sold one million copies by 1979. Although type‑in publication continued through the 1980s, the inherent limits on program length (only the most dedicated would tackle a type‑in longer than a few hundred lines) and their reliance on BASIC meant that their significance waned as the market grew more sophisticated. They could serve as fun demos or educational tools for learning to code, but could not compare to similar games available commercially.[2]

   

   

3. Commercial titles – The game business began in the same way as the personal‑computer hardware business: with hobby‑entrepreneurs selling their creations to fellow hobbyists. In July 1976, D.E. Hipps of Miami, Florida offered a Star Trek game written for Microsoft’s Altair BASIC for $10, distributing it as printed source code—a type‑in. SCELBI offered another Star Trek variant called Galaxy in the same form. By the late 1970s, the convergence on a few popular storage standards (with CP/M dominant) resolved distribution issues, and most games were shipped in plastic baggies containing instructions and a cassette or floppy disk.[3]

   

Business Models and Market Evolution

It didn’t take long for other entrepreneurs to see a business opportunity in making it easier for software authors to publish their games. Clear business models and market verticals emerged gradually. Prior to 1980 there was no categorical distinction between publishers of games and publishers of utility or business software: Personal Software’s first big hit was MicroChess, followed by VisiCalc, followed by (as we’ll soon see) Zork. Programma International’s founder began as a hoarder of Apple II software—much of it acquired from unauthorized copies—then turned legitimate to sell those authors’ software instead. Softape tried selling bundles of software by subscription and later started its own newsletter for subscribers, Softalk.

Some magazines went the other way around: Softside magazine (located the next town over from BYTE’s Peterborough, New Hampshire headquarters) created The Software Exchange (TSE), while Dave Ahl’s Creative Computing set up a label called Sensational Software. Type‑ins printed in the magazines became a gateway drug to more convenient (and often more complex and interesting) software available for sale on cassette or diskette.[4]

Figure 21: Creative Computing heavily advertised the Sensational Software brand in the pages of the magazine, as in this July 1980 example describing some of their most popular hits and offering a free catalog of their full offering of 400 titles.

The early personal‑computer game culture imitated what came before it. The boundary between mini‑ and microcomputer culture was permeated by thousands who used time‑sharing systems at work or school and then went home to a hobby computer. Prior to 1977, a game written for a personal computer was almost invariably based on a game drawn from the other side of that boundary.

Barring a few exceptions (such as the PLATO system available at some universities), users interacted with such computer systems through teletypes or video teletypes that alternated sending and receiving text. Consequently, the resulting games were turn‑based, purely textual, and relied on strategy and calculation (or pure luck) to win, not timing and reaction speed. These textual games suited the early hobbyists perfectly, since almost all of their computers also had text‑only interfaces, whether mechanical teletypes or video displays like the TV Typewriter.

Other than simple quizzes, demos, and guessing games, popular titles included simulations such as Hammurabi, Civil War and Lunar Lander; statistical recreations of sports contests (baseball, basketball, golf, etc.); or classic games or puzzles.