The Aerie
Just as every generation believes it invented sex, it seems that every
generation will soon claim to have invented the Internet. In fact,
maybe it's that phenomenon which Al Gore actually spawned... Lately
I've read with amusement debates between people as to the provenance
of IRC, and whether or not it's the first/best/most authentic
"internet chat" medium...
In 1976 I was doing networked multiuser chats (including thematic
special effects: a saloon with card games and even a toilet you could
flush!). We also had messaging forums (FORUM*H7LT309) . By and large
they had equivalent or superior features to most of the forum software
available today.
On the University of Minnesota MERITSS system you could play COMBAT:
two-dimensional text-based multi-ship interactive space battle. I used
to play it on a 110-baud teletype. The output is still lodged in my
memory over 25 years later...
>>PWING<< Laser hit on shield 2 by ship 1 caused 14% damage.
**BLAMM** Missile hit on shield 1 by ship 4 caused 25% damage!
Ship Dmg S1 S2 Spd Heat Azimuth Dist Rot
1 0% 24 25 50 74 25.4 532 0.1
2 39% 14 20 24 10
4 18% 18 22 112 88 0.2 234 30.1
I could explain what that all means, but it would get tiresome.
Suffice to say that we built the graphics in our heads and used that
information to fight fearsome real-time interactive space battles!
PLATO users that same year could play networked interactive
vector-graphic Star Trek between different colleges around the nation.
In 1978 Alan Klietz ran Milieu -- an interactive fantasy MUD -- on the
Minnesota statewide high-school MECC system.
Few people remember (and fewer care) that by 1978 Minnesota had a
statewide network of terminals in all the high schools, tied into a
mainframe in St. Paul. In 1981 Apple Computer conviced the state
legislature that mainframes were passe, and that it should be scrapped
in favor of placing an AppleII in every classroom. And that's why, to
this day, you can find ancient AppleII computers gathering dust in
classrooms all over Minnesota.
Alan Klietz and I eventually turned his Milieu into 'Scepter of Goth'
and ran it as an interactive 18-user MUD, the core of our business,
GamBit Multisystems, from 1983-1987. We also offered interactive chat,
e-mail, conferencing forums, and other multiplayer games such as
Foreign Intrigue, a computerized version of RISK.
We franchised to over a dozen cities in the U.S. and Canada, tied
together over the same dialin services that then hosted Prodigy,
Genie, and Compu$erve. In 1987 we sold the business to one of our
successful franchises because we were young and foolish and had
succeeded too easily.
IRC? MUDs? *snort* Johnny-come-latelys... Throw some of the terms
above into Google to verify...
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Posted by Albatross at February 15, 2002 12:00 AM