Chapter 6

Home Computers (1977–1995)

The Microcomputer Revolution

In 1974, computer visionary Ted Nelson wrote the combined books Computer Lib/Dream Machines,* a counterculture-infused introduction to computers and computer concepts aimed at the general population with the tagline “You can and must understand computers NOW.” Nelson’s motivation stemmed from his concern with the fundamental misunderstandings of computers by the public and what he saw as narrow-minded computer applications by government and corporate entities. Nelson believed that computers had already remade society by 1974 and would continue to do so at an ever-increasing pace. He saw them as machines capable of empowering humanity and fostering limitless creativity. His book, fighting against restriction, coercion, and “cybercrud,” aimed to create a population that was both educated and critical about computer use.

Nelson’s book was timely as the mid to late 1970s saw the first “microcomputers.” Unlike time-shared terminals connected to minicomputers like the PDP-1 (see Chapter 2), microcomputers were intended for individual use. Technology companies Apple, Commodore, and Tandy (owned by Radio Shack) released the first set of preassembled, mass-produced microcomputers in 1977: the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80. Coin-op arcade and home console manufacturer, Atari soon followed with the Atari 400 and Atari 800 computers in 1979. In England, inventor, Clive Sinclair released the affordable ZX80 and ZX81 computers while Acorn Computers created a string of machines including the 1981 BBC Micro. As the price of computer components tumbled in the early 1980s, computers such as the British ZX Spectrum and North American Commodore 64, combined high performance and affordability, helping to place computers in homes throughout the decade.

As the new class of microcomputers was marketed to both businesses and individuals, knowledge of computers was imperative for future political, economic, and cultural development. Universities and elementary schools began teaching how to use computers through educational software, word processors, and even programming languages. Special arrangements between computer manufacturers and schools led to machines like the French TO 7 computer, part of a French educational initiative called “dix mille micro-ordinateurs” (10,000 microcomputers). In England, the British Broadcasting Corporation initiated the BBC Computer Literacy Project, leading not only to the creation of the BBC Micro but also weekly television programs of the 1980s such as The Computer Programme, which aimed to educate the population of the British Isles on how to use computers. Although Nelson’s prescient Computer Lib/Dream Machines predicted the need to “understand computers NOW,” it was centered on minicomputers and did not anticipate that the true revolution would come on the wings of the microcomputer (hereafter referred to as simply “computers” to prevent confusion).

Computer Games of the Late 1970s and Early 1980s

The first consumer model computers were marketed primarily on their text-based applications such as programming, organizing payrolls, learning mathematics, and keeping track of inventory. The graphically robust Apple II, for instance, gained its prominence through VisiCalc (1979, VisiCorp), the first computer spreadsheet program. Game development was seen by marketing bodies as a secondary function of these machines. Nonetheless the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and the Atari 400/800 computers were particularly popular for game development because of their ability to display more complicated graphics and superior sound.

Early games for computers explored various approaches to game design including clones or derivatives of Golden Age arcade games, simulations of card and board games, and the adaption of minicomputer games. As the capabilities of computers were limited in memory and processing power compared to their larger cousins, it was essential for programmers to employ memory-saving tricks, especially for advanced graphics. A common method involved programming in assembly language, where the programmer directed the processor’s individual actions through abbreviated words and numbers, frequently resulting in unintelligible strings of commands. This contrasted with higher-level languages such as BASIC, which automatically translated clear word commands into multiple actions understandable by the computer. For example, a program that displayed the text “hello world,” could be simply executed with one line of code in BASIC, while the same program in assembly language could take upwards of 12 lines of code. Saving a few bytes could result in a game with more appealing visuals or a larger scope, as was the case with Elite (see below). The most significant advantage of the tedious assembly language, however, was the greater degree of speed: games written in assembly could outperform those written in BASIC by a wide margin leading to a significant difference in quality.

As opposed to home console games that were sold at established store chains and packaged professionally, marketing for early computer games was informal. Game disks in the United States were commonly packaged in resalable plastic bags with short, photocopied manuals and sold in local stores. This zine-like quality with small runs and local distribution meant that few of the early consumer computer games reached national audiences. In England, retail distribution was hardly an option until the mid-1980s: programmers instead distributed games via mail order, often sent from their home address. Nonetheless, the late 1970s and early 1980s saw the development of three unique genres of commercial computer games: adventure games, role-playing games, and simulation games—all of which were connected to the games produced for minicomputers by hackers in the 1970s (see Chapter 2).

From Text to Graphic Adventure Games

One of the earliest types of commercialized computer games was interactive fiction. Interactive fiction games used descriptive blocks of text rather than images, to communicate the setting and actions within the game world. Players issued commands by typing words on the keyboard. While the games contained several kinds of play, including turn-based combat, the main focus was on exploration and puzzle solving.

The first interactive fiction game was Adventure, or Colossal Cave Adventure, created on a university mainframe minicomputer by Will Crowther in 1975 and modified in 1976 by Don Woods. Crowther’s game simulated the exploration of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. It combined elements from his background as a caver with fantasy aspects from the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons (see Chapter 2). Adventure featured puzzles, a combat system and score: players earned points for exploring, collecting treasure, and bringing it back to the surface after descending through the caves. The original game allowed only two-word commands, such as “GO IN” or “OPEN DOOR,” due to limitations of the FORTRAN computer language that Crowther used.

Adventure also differed from earlier games like Spacewar!, in that it was primarily played via monitor-less teletype terminals connected to a central minicomputer. Players entered commands into a keyboard and waited for the distant computer to process, then sent back the result through long sheets of paper from the terminal’s printer. The game became popular on mainframe minicomputers in the late 1970s and spread via the ARPAnet as well as other forms of sharing. Microsoft eventually obtained permission from Crowther and Woods to produce a version of the game as Microsoft Adventure (1980), touted as a “complete version of the original.”

Adventure’s design concept inspired a number of other interactive fiction games, of which Zork (1980, Infocom) was one of the most significant. Zork began as an effort to top Adventure by programmers at MIT’s Dynamic Modeling Group consisting of Tim Anderson, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, and Dave Lebling; Lebling, as noted in Chapter 2, cocreated an ARPAnet-playable version of Maze War. For Zork, the group created a setting, puzzles, and creatures using rich descriptive blocks of text. Like Dungeons & Dragons, characters had hit points, used different armor types, and engaged in combat with trolls and other fantasy creatures. One of the game’s most famous elements was the Grue, an unseen creature that killed players if they lingered too long in dark areas. This added high tension as players had to consider whether to use a limited supply of lantern oil or risk the perils of the darkness.

Zork’s most significant improvement over Adventure was the design of a text parser that allowed the computer to understand variations of the same command. For example, “GO NORTH” and “WALK NORTH” produced the same result of moving the character. This provided a greater degree of accessibility, as it reduced the need to hunt for the correct command to accomplish the action. Further, the range of commands could be more complex than two words, allowing the game to have a variety of interactions and puzzles; objects could be used in conjunction with the environment through phrases such as “TIE ROPE TO RAILING,” further expanding the immersive capabilities.

Members of the original Zork group incorporated in 1979 as Infocom, a company initially dedicated to developing productivity software for computers. In the meantime, Zork spread through the ARPAnet and became a favorite on mainframe minicomputers where, like Adventure, it was played via terminal and printouts. The members of Infocom, seeing an opportunity in computer games, worked to bring Zork into the commercial context. The central hurdle in this adaption was the game’s size as it was one megabyte or approximately 1000 kilobytes, well beyond the maximum 48 kilobytes of RAM on even the highest performance Apple II computers. The solution involved more efficient compression methods as well as cutting large amounts out of the original game. Zork’s initial commercial release in 1980, was followed by Zork II (1981) and Zork III (1982), each containing elements cut from the original.

Infocom initially used a publisher for its games, but after a string of problems, decided to self-publish its software. The company built a reputation on its interactive fiction games, releasing more than 20 throughout the 1980s, despite the computer game industry’s growing emphasis on graphics. Infocom ran an aggressively anti-graphics ad campaign in the mid-1980s, expounding on the merits and depth of using one’s imagination rather than relying on the computer display. The company also gained fame for its inclusion of “feelies,” small tangible items directly related to the game. The feelies for Infocom’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984), for example, included papers representing “Destruction Orders for Your Home and Planet,” an empty bag representing “Microscopic Space Fleet,” and a “Don’t Panic” button, among other items.

Although Infocom resisted graphics, other adventure game companies made graphics a central part of their games, feeling that text-only games were wasteful and did not take full advantage of a computer’s capabilities. On-Line Systems, founded by husband and wife team Ken and Roberta Williams, began its line of adventure games with the Hi-Res Adventure series. Inspired by Crowther and Woods’ Adventure, Roberta Williams designed Mystery House (1980, On-Line Systems), a game that closely followed the design conventions of Adventure: players read text descriptions of the scene and used two-word commands to solve a murder mystery. Roberta Williams’ game was, however, a major departure from formula: it used simple line drawings to visually represent the player’s view of the game spaces (Figure 6.2). This combination of text and image helped compensate for the shortcomings of each mode of presentation; images reduced the need for lengthy text descriptions, while words clearly identified the visually ambiguous objects in the rooms. Visuals also offered clues to the solution of puzzles rather than explicitly communicating them via text. As the sophistication of visuals in graphics-based adventure games grew, the player’s need to be sensitive to subtle cues also became greater.

The second of the Hi-Res Adventure games, The Wizard and the Princess (1980, On-Line Systems), combined text entry with images, but did so with full color graphics, a setup used in subsequent Hi-Res Adventure games through 1983. The color capabilities of early home computers were limited to a specific palette: game artists compensated for this by creating greater visual subtlety through employing optical color mixing, an technique that relied on the human eye’s ability to blend different colors placed closely together. A regular pattern of red placed in a field of white, created pink; black pixels in a field of blue created navy blue. A number of computer games from all genres of the early 1980s used this approach, particularly those featuring large images on the screen.

On-Line Systems, renamed Sierra Online in 1982, initiated a major turning point for the burgeoning adventure game genre with Roberta Williams’ fairytale-inspired King’s Quest (1984, Sierra Online). The game was the result of a collaborative effort between IBM and Sierra Online to help demonstrate the color graphic capabilities of the ill-fated IBM PCjr home computer. Each of the game’s 80 single screen spaces were represented in vivid blocks of multiple pure colors rather than the mixed colors used in other adventure games. The impressive graphics of King’s Quest, however, required conscious use of computer resources as storing each of the game’s 80 game spaces would have used too much disk space. The game, instead, relied on vectors to draw the outlines of objects, which were then filled in. The effect of outlining, then filling, was seen each time the player moved to a new space. Although it was slower to draw the graphics this way, it allowed the game to have a larger world.

The gameplay of King’s Quest was also significant as players directed an avatar through various animated screens using a joystick or arrow keys. This imparted a sense of depth, as the game’s protagonist, Sir Grahame, could move vertically and horizontally in the game space, walking in front of or behind objects such as rocks, trees, and walls. King’s Quest retained text commands for opening doors and picking up objects. This provided a different experience, as the position of the character on the screen became an essential consideration for the execution of actions. For example, players needed to move Sir Grahame in front of a door before typing the “OPEN DOOR” command. The combination of controlling the character and using typed commands remained consistent through subsequent sequels until King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990, Sierra Online), which adopted the icon-driven, point-and-click interface.

Early Computer Role-Playing Games

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the beginnings of commercialized CRPGs, a genre that became a staple of computer gaming in the mid to late 1980s. As opposed to text adventures, which replicated the story-telling aspects of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons, CRPGs featured robust systems for simulated combat with monsters or other foes. This led to the same “hack-and-slash” style of gameplay seen in the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired PLATO network games of the 1970s (see Chapter 2). Although more combat intensive, early CRPGs moved at a more methodical pace akin to a board game rather than the comparative hyper-speed of their contemporary arcade games.

Gameplay, like tabletop RPGs, followed a prescribed order: creation of a character or party of characters, purchase of equipment and supplies, descent into a dungeon and combat with monsters. Often the games incorporated a first-person perspective with simple graphics representing rectangular hallways. Players plodding through the spaces created maps on graph paper, as computer resources were limited. So universal was this form of gameplay, that CRPGs became synonymous with the term “dungeon crawl.” Gameplay frequently culminated in a battle with a dragon, evil wizard, or other powerful enemy, a pattern long established by several earlier games on PLATO. Two early-1980s games proved particularly successful and influential on later releases: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981, SRI Tech) and Richard Garriott’s Ultima (1982).

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was designed by Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg for the Apple II computer. The game attempted to reproduce the PLATO network’s multiplayer, party-based games like Oubliette, but in a single player format. Wizardry, unlike other early CRPGs, allowed players to manage a party of six characters instead of a single character as they embarked on a quest to retrieve an amulet from a 10-level dungeon. Like a character sheet from the tabletop version of Dungeons & Dragons or the many dungeon-based PLATO games, the initial version of Wizardry displayed a large amount of information all at once to the player: various key commands for actions, active spells, the name and status of each party member, and a simple line drawing rendered in perspective that represented the dungeon hallways. Wizardry became one of the most popular CRPGs, despite its graphic simplicity and extreme difficulty, spawning an entire franchise that remained strong throughout the 1980s. It was particularly influential in Japan and was one of the games that helped shape the basis for Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) (see Chapter 7).

In the late 1970s, high school student Richard Garriott taught himself computer programming by creating games inspired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels and tabletop role-playing games. After gaining proficiency with programming and game design, Garriott then self-published one of his test games, Akalabeth: World of Doom (1980), while still in high school. Although sold at local computer shops, the game gained the attention of software publisher California Pacific, which promptly licensed and distributed Akalebeth nationally.

Garriott’s first game as a professional was Ultima (1981), which featured many refined concepts explored in his earlier noncommercial games. Ultima’s story was a postmodern mash-up that blended medieval fantasy with science fiction as players used a time machine to graduate from leather armor and axes to vacuum suits and blasters in order to confront and defeat the game’s final evil wizard. The game world featured a variety of environments: vast natural landscapes, towns, and subterranean dungeons that encouraged players to explore.

Ultima used a map-like overworld with icons to represent the various cities and dungeons in a continuous shifting of perspectives (Figure 6.3)—an element similarly employed the following year in Tom Loughry’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain Cartridge for the Intellivision (see Chapter 5). Players that moved over the city icon from the turn-based overworld map abruptly transitioned into a large populated game space where the player could purchase supplies or talk with certain inhabitants. Walking over a dungeon icon in the overworld map, meanwhile, changed the view to a first-person labyrinth where players hunted for treasure and looked for secret doors much like Wizardry and other dungeon-based games on PLATO. Combat against enemies such as bats, necromancers, orcs, and knights, like the rest of the game, followed a turn-based procession of action. Similar to contemporary text adventures, contextual information about the environment, the results of combat and dialog between characters were communicated through a text box. Following the closure of Garriot’s publisher and a brief stint with Sierra Online, Garriott formed Origin Systems in 1983. With Origin Systems, Garriott was able to exercise greater creative control over the direction of his work.

From his first game through Ultima III: Exodus, Garriott remained the sole programmer, designer, and artist of his games. As the Ultima series became more popular, however, it was necessary not only to expand the game development team, but also to explore new narrative and gameplay themes. Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985, Origin Systems), departed from the typical hack-and-slash, dungeon crawl style of gameplay that had dominated CRPGs as it took place in a world where the monstrous forces of evil had already been vanquished. Gameplay, instead, revolved around developing eight personal virtues in a game where the main enemy was internal. Although combat against small antagonists remained a part of the game, objectionable player actions that eroded the social fabric of the game world such as lying, stealing, or cheating other characters limited one’s ability to embody the virtues, providing an innovative form of consequences for choices. Once the player had developed their character through virtuous acts such as helping others, the player ventured into the Great Stygian Abyss in search of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom and returning it to the surface.

Other Directions in CRPGs

First-person dungeon crawling games were not the only CRPGs to emerge from earlier games on minicomputers. Rogue was a turn-based minicomputer game developed by Michael Toy, Glen Wichman, and Ken Arnold in the early 1980s. Inspired by Adventure, Rogue retained the latter’s use of text to describe the contents of rooms as well as the results of player actions. The game, however, featured none of the former’s puzzle solving and instead emphasized “hack-and-slash” gameplay against monsters. The game space was constructed from ASCII characters with the player represented as an “@” symbol, while each of the game’s 26 monsters corresponded to a different letter of the alphabet. Players of Rogue, as in the many computer games inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, gathered gold, gained levels, collected powerful items, and fought increasingly dangerous monsters. The game’s most distinctive element, however, was its ability to randomly generate each of the dungeon layouts. This feature was created in response to the limited replayability of text adventures like Adventure and Zork, as puzzle solutions and maze layouts remained identical in subsequent playthroughs.

Rogue was eventually released as a commercial game for the IBM PC in 1984, where it retained the use of its iconic text-based visuals; later versions ported to other computer platforms throughout the 1980s, however, featured more representational graphics. Thanks to its randomly generated dungeon layouts, Rogue was a popular computer game and spawned a subgenre of “roguelike” games. Its commercial debut, however, was not successful due to rampant software piracy, which forced its developer out of business. This issue plagued many computer games of the time, leading developers to utilize cypher-based copy protection measures in the late 1980s and early 1990s such as game manuals, special black and red reference cards that were difficult to photocopy as well as code wheels (Figure 6.4).

Flight and Vehicle Simulations on Computers

Flight Simulator (1979, subLOGIC) began as a 1975 thesis project by Bruce Artwick while at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Heavily based on the earlier PLATO flight simulators, Airace and Airfight, Artwick attempted to prove that consumer grade computers were capable of computing real-time simulated flight. Adapting his thesis project to the commercial context, Artwick founded the software company, subLOGIC with Stu Moment in 1978 and eventually produced a version for the Apple II and TRS-80. Consisting of 36 square miles of space rendered in wireframe visuals, players engaged in free flight over airports, bridges, and mountains (Figure 6.5). Flight Simulator, however, included a “British Ace” mode of play that allowed users to engage in World War I-style dogfights with computer-controlled enemies, as well as perform bombing runs of the enemy’s airbase and fuel depot. Players earned points for enemies shot down and the amount of damage done to fuel depots.

The commercial release of Flight Simulator was highly successful and gained the attention of Microsoft, who, after licensing the game, began producing its long series of Microsoft Flight Simulator games in 1982. Each subsequent release increased the level of graphical realism as well as the size of the game world. The series became notable for its use of separately sold add-on cities and planes that presaged the popularity of downloadable content (DLC) for games in the contemporary context.

Although later versions of Flight Simulator did not contain the combat elements of the original, several other early computer games made flight and combat a central part of gameplay. Atari’s Star Raiders (1979) for the Atari 400/800 computer drew inspiration from the space combat sequences of Star Wars: players flew through a simple star field in the blackness of space, fought enemy spacecraft, and jumped between sections of the galaxy through hyperspace. In addition to its action gameplay, the game contained the strategic element of deciding which areas of the galaxy to defend. Invading forces that destroyed star bases severely hampered the player’s ability to repair and resupply for the hyperspace jumps, thus complicating the gameplay. The popularity of Star Raiders, like many combat-focused flight simulation games, extended beyond computers to home consoles as the game was eventually ported to Atari’s VCS and 5200 consoles in 1982.

Flight and vehicle simulators played an important role in establishing the reputation of Lucasfilm Games (later renamed LucasArts) as an innovator in computer game technologies and design. An offshoot of Lucasfilm Ltd., the film studio headed by Star Wars director George Lucas, Lucasfilm Games grew out of the company’s special effects-based computer division. The group, formed in 1982, was led by veteran programmer and game designer Peter Langston, who had cocreated a turn-based minicomputer game, Empire (1971) while at Harvard University.*

Aided by an initial partnership with Atari, the new studio released its first games, Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus! in 1984 for the Atari 400/800 computers. Ballblazer combined elements of ball and paddle games with a first-person vehicle simulation as opposing players attempted to carry and launch a ball through moving goal posts to score points. Because of the emphasis on movement and competition, the game’s visuals needed to clearly and economically communicate the illusion of ­perspective and the sensation of movement. Ballblazer, thus, represented its game space as a simple checkerboard pattern of alternating colors (Figure 6.6). To better communicate the smooth sensation of movement, it incorporated the technique of anti-aliasing, which reduced the appearance of hard, jagged edges on the checker boarded playfield. In addition, distant objects appeared to dip below or rise above the horizon line, suggesting a curved playing surface. Ballblazer was also notable for its procedurally generated soundtrack that combined a number of smaller “riffs” into a different musical composition each time the game was played.

The other launch title of the Lucasfilm games group was Rescue on Fractalus!, a combat-focused flight simulator that involved picking up downed space pilots and destroying enemy laser guns and ships (Figure 6.7). Rather than wireframe graphics or an outer space setting, Rescue on Fractalus! took place in a complex mountainous environment that was based on the work of Loren Carpenter of the Lucasfilm Computer Division. Previously, Carpenter had created the computer-generated terrain for the “Genesis effect” sequence from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) by using fractal geometry.

Fractal geometry allowed computers to create more natural looking terrain than that created by hand. It could be produced by simple sets of repeating, ruled patterns that represented an efficient use of computer resources. After David Fox of the Lucasfilm games group approached him with an idea for a game, Carpenter was able to significantly simplify the fractal-generated terrain process, allowing it to run on a consumer grade computer. Fox then crafted the remaining game around the landscape. Rescue on Fractalus! followed many elements of flight simulators through its control scheme composed of individual flight commands for adjusting thrust, landing, turning off the ship’s systems, opening the air lock, and activating the boosters to return to the mother ship. Similar versions of the fractal technology developed for Rescue on Fractalus! were also used in other games from the studio, The Eidolon (1985) and Koronis Rift (1985), both of which presented the game space from a first-person perspective.

In England, meanwhile, the innovations of the space-based flight simulator Elite (1984, Acornsoft Limited) catapulted the British computer game industry to international prominence. David Braben and Ian Bell of Jesus College, Cambridge began development of Elite as a demonstration of 3D graphics on the BBC Micro. Refining the technical aspects further, the two worked toward a game that replicated the expansive fictional worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars. It also drew on elements such as the space station docking sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. With a playable demonstration of the game completed, the two were able to secure Elite’s publication through Acornsoft, the software development division for the BBC microcomputer (Figure 6.8).

Elite had one of the largest game worlds created on any platform of the day: 2500 planets with alien races spread across eight galaxies. Players were encouraged to explore the vastness of the game space by buying and selling commodities at different docks across distant alien markets. Those looking for fast money could trade in illegal cargo; however, they risked running afoul of authorities and becoming wanted felons. In addition to management and cargo hauling, the player could collect bounty on space pirates and attack other cargo ships, also a felony, providing elements of action through 3D dogfights in space. The length of play of Elite extended well beyond what was typical of the many arcade-derived games for computers: a single game could be played for weeks as the player attempted to reach “elite” status through accumulating more than 6000 kills before succumbing to pirates, the authorities, or both.

The size, complexity, and nonlinear nature of Elite’s game world and the ability to play everything from hero to villain, made it one of the earliest commercial instances of open world sandbox gameplay. These features, in addition to the ability to customize the capabilities of the player’s ship, were all the more impressive as Elite ran on the BBC microcomputer which had only 18 kilobytes of usable memory at the time. The marvel of this seemingly endless game was accomplished by Braben and Bell’s mastery of assembly language, which saved space and improved performance of the 3D objects.

Visuals and Action-Adventure Games for Computers

Detailed graphics became an increasingly important part of computer games as larger capacity 5.25″ floppy disks and new models of computers with better visual capabilities—the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and more powerful versions of the Apple II—arrived on the market. This, seen across all genres, was illustrated by the differences between the Hi-Res Adventure titles and King’s Quest. Visual richness was also seen in a number of original action-adventure games that combined puzzle solving with faster play reminiscent of arcade games. For example, Silas Warner’s World War II espionage game, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (1984, Muse Software) featured characters wearing German-style military outfits, a contrast to the stick figure visuals of Warner’s previous Escape from Castle Wolfenstein (1981, Muse). English developer, Ultimate Play the Game (later known as Rare), built a reputation on smooth animation, detailed graphics, and responsive controls in the mid-1980s through its isometric Filmation game engine, which made its debut in Tim and Chris Stamper’s Knight Lore (1984).

As visual detail became a greater selling point for games in the mid-1980s, programmers often struggled to produce appealing art and smooth animations. Some, however, like programmer Jordan Mechner, were able to overcome deficiencies by employing innovative techniques. Rotoscoping was an animation method developed by Max Fleischer in the mid-1910s. In it, individual frames of video were traced on paper. This allowed an animator to produce life-like movement without the need to work out each individual frame. Mechner, inspired by his film history classes at Yale in the early 1980s, used the technique in two action-adventure computer games, Karateka (1984) and Prince of Persia (1989). Both also used the cinematic conventions of classic film to provide narrative structure to their games.

Mechner’s Karateka drew from the samurai epics of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to produce an action game set in feudal Japan. For the game’s visuals, he shot film footage of his family and their karate instructor, which was then traced onto graph paper and then coded into the game pixel by pixel. The game’s plot centered on rescuing the protagonist’s kidnapped girlfriend from an evil warlord. Karateka began with an introductory narrative segment that revealed the game’s story without using words. It showed the cruelty of the warlord, the anguish of the woman’s plight, and entrance of the hero; distinct musical themes accompanied each character and helped communicate individual personalities. Gameplay entailed increasingly difficult martial art fights that required players to consider different attacks and counter attacks against a single opponent in a slightly choppy side-scrolling game space (Figure 6.9).

Prince of Persia, even more ambitious in the design of its gameplay, also used rotoscoping and dialog-less cut scenes to communicate the story. Its Arabian Nights-themed narrative told of the player’s unjust imprisonment after a coup by the sultan’s advisor, Jaffar. When Jaffar’s advancements on the sultan’s daughter are refused, he gives her an hour to live unless she marries him. This narrative element structured the gameplay as the player was given 1 hour to escape the maze-like dungeon of pits, falling platforms, spike traps, and sword-wielding enemies. Narrative elements also extended to the game’s action, which included drama-filled sword fights rotoscoped from actors Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in the 1938 film, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Mechner’s cinematic approach to game creation also extended to the interface as it was virtually nonexistent; the only visible element was a set of simple, unobtrusive triangles at the bottom of the screen representing health.

The Mouse and Computer Games of the Later 1980s and 1990s

The mid to late 1980s saw the introduction of a new generation of 16 and 32 bit computers designed with more robust multimedia capabilities. They were responsible for accelerating the revolution in graphic design, video production, animation, and other creative areas, fundamentally transforming their professional practices. Although platforms like the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64 continued to be popular throughout the decade for creating and playing games, developers rushed to take advantage of higher resolutions and new forms of interaction available through the Apple Macintosh, the Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga. Since the new computers produced higher screen resolutions, specially designed computer monitors became essential, phasing out the living room television as a computer display. As the capabilities of home computers grew, the demand for larger storage capacity grew as well: the size of programs and files made hard drives another essential component. Relative to floppy disks, hard drives accessed information quicker and eliminated the need to swap disks in the middle of gameplay.

The most significant changes for computers and game design came with Apple’s Macintosh. Announced through an iconic commercial that referenced George Orwell’s novel 1984, the Macintosh was presented as a tool of freedom for a population “held captive” by constraints of other companies’ computers. Designed for use by the broader population, the Macintosh was made to be approachable through its pairing of a mouse and graphic user interface (GUI). Using the mouse to issue instructions introduced a spatial dimension to computer interactions that eliminated the need to memorize a large number of text commands. Users could process information visually through commands in pull down boxes grouped by common themes or through icons and buttons that paired familiar office items with computer functions. The Macintosh, however, was not the first commercial instance of a GUI and mouse combination, as seen on the Xerox Star of 1981 and the Visi On GUI of 1983, but it was a watershed moment that signaled the beginning of the GUI’s popularization. The following year Microsoft launched its first version of Windows, while GUIs also appeared on the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computers. For games, mouse-driven interactions and icons became the heart of a number of new design concepts, which changed existing genres and aided in the creation of new ones.

Later Role-Playing Games

Since the majority of CRPGs featured a plethora of systems that tracked hit points, experience points, weapon damage, spells, inventory, food, and more, the games tended to feature information-dense interfaces spread out across multiple different screens. Players typically toggled these interfaces through keyboard shortcuts that added to the already significant number of regular keyboard commands. Dungeon Master (1987, FTL Games) was one of the first CRPGs to use the mouse to move between different information screens. The player was able to check inventory, character stats, equip weapons, and change the marching orders of party members in the first-person dungeon crawler, using boxes with character names and icons. Movement, spell casting, weapon attacks, and picking up items from the ground also could be executed with the mouse, creating a more seamless approach to interaction.

The game was also significant for its departure from the systems of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons that had shaped the CRPG genre. Dungeon Master was played in real time, rather than in turn-based movement and combat, meaning that careful consideration and board game-like strategy was replaced with a need to react and make decisions quickly. Spell casting in Dungeon Master was brought about by building spells from sets of symbols powered from a pool of mana points, instead of the Dungeons & Dragons system of limited spells cast per level, per day. Another notable departure was that characters in Dungeon Master increased their skills through practice, much like the earlier Moria on PLATO. This allowed characters to uniquely develop according to each player’s individual play style rather than as a fixed progression of gaining levels. These elements, plus the game’s large windowed, first-person perspective, made Dungeon Master an immersive experience that garnered multiple awards and served as inspiration for a number of later CRPGs.

By the early 1990s, nearly all CRPGs were designed for mouse input. Icon-based interfaces, particularly beneficial for CRPGs, helped simplify the complex text-based control schemes. The Amiga and Atari ST versions of several games published by Strategic Simulations Inc. such as Phantasie (1987), Demon’s Winter (1988), and Eye of the Beholder (1990, Westwood Associates), along with Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990, Sir-Tech Software, Inc.) and Richard Garriot’s Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990, Origin Systems), all featured redesigned interfaces that promoted efficient management of the game information. Mouse-based interfaces for CRPGs remained the basis for interaction through the 1990s and early 2000s despite great diversification in design and gameplay.

Developing the Point-and-Click Adventure

In the mid to late 1980s, Lucasfilm Games began working in the graphic adventure genre with Labyrinth: The Computer Game (1986), based on the 1986 fantasy film Labyrinth. The player had 13 hours to defeat the game’s antagonist, Jareth (based on David Bowie’s character from the film) who was located in a castle at the center of the labyrinth. Like the conventions of interactive fiction and graphic adventure games, the player gathered items and used them to solve puzzles in order to progress. Unlike Zork and King’s Quest, however, Labyrinth: The Computer Game did not employ typed text commands, but used two boxes; one containing a list of verbs such as “open” or “talk” and the other, nouns, such as “door” or “Jareth.” The design of this interface with pre-written text prevented the often frustrating message of “I don’t understand,” which was a common response for mistyped words or words outside of an adventure game’s vocabulary.

The interaction via menus of text in Labyrinth: The Computer Game was further refined in Lucasfilm Game’s Maniac Mansion (1987), themed as a parody of B-horror films. From a group of six teenagers, the player selected a pair of companions to aid in a quest to rescue the main character’s girlfriend from a mad scientist’s mansion. Through Lucasfilm Games’ playful humor and animated cut scenes, the player solved puzzles by collecting and manipulating objects in the game space. Some puzzles were only solvable by certain characters, adding variety to the gameplay and allowing players to experience the game differently based on their character choices.

Originally designed for a single button joystick on the Commodore 64, the game’s interface allowed players to pair a bank of verbs with objects in the game space by selecting them (Figure 6.10). Selecting “open” and then moving the mouse over the graphic depiction of the door, for instance, directed the player’s character to open a door. This method of interaction governed the performance of actions, talking to people or examining objects, in a similar manner. The following year, the game was ported to the IBM PC, where it allowed players to use either the keyboard arrow keys or the mouse, allowing point-and-click interactions. Although mice were not standard equipment at the time, point-and-click gameplay was revolutionary for the adventure game genre.

In order to speed up the game’s creation and provide an efficient way to interpret the commands, programmer Chip Morningstar aided designer Ron Gilbert by developing the Script Utility Manager for Maniac Mansion, otherwise known as SCUMM. For Lucasfilm Games, the SCUMM engine proved to be remarkably versatile. It and its many revisions powered much-admired games, such as Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (1988), the pirate adventure The Secret of Monkey Island (1990) and later, the motorcycle adventure game, Full Throttle (1995).

As mice became more common, the interfaces of adventure games moved away from words and depended entirely on icons. One of Lucasfilm Games’ more unique point-and-click adventures was Brian Moriarty’s Loom (1990). Set in a fantasy world with mystical craft guilds, players guided a young weaver, Bobbin Threadbare, on a journey to protect the world from forces of chaos. The basic setting and motivation were typical of many adventure games, but the interface and game design were not. Loom, unlike the bank of text commands used in Maniac Mansion and other Lucasfilm games of the period, used a musical note interface to cast spells by clicking a series of notes (Figure 6.11). The spell effects ranged from simple commands that opened doors, to the ability to spin straw into gold. Throughout the story, players learned an increasing number of spells and versatile ways to apply them, including playing the notes backward for a reverse effect. For the sake of immersion in the narrative Moriarty omitted or modified, many expected “game-like” elements from Loom. These changes included removing the potential for player death, eliminating the need to collect and combine objects located in disparate locations, and cutting difficult puzzles that served as roadblocks to progression. Loom, thus, was designed to be completed.

Loom’s success represented the growing presence of a diverse, but underserved population of players less interested in the arcade-like, challenge-based gameplay that dominated the popular market. Loom’s more casual-oriented design provided an alternative approach that was explored by other games of the period, like Myst (see Chapter 8), and continued through games like The Sims (see Chapter 9) as well as later independent games based on narrative exploration (see Chapter 10).

Infocom and Sierra Online also developed adventure games for mouse ­interaction. An early mouse implementation was used in Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987, Infocom) created by Brian Moriarty prior to his employment at Lucasfilm Games. The combination adventure/role-playing game, although entirely text based, drew a simple map of lines and rectangles as the player explored the game space. The player, on certain computer platforms, could click the map with a mouse to ascend or descend into new spaces. Steve Meretzky’s text-based Zork Zero (1988, Infocom), featured an interface bordered in color and used graphic puzzles, as well as the option to navigate via mouse. Return to Zork (Activision), had by 1993, completely adopted mouse and icon-based gameplay as well as graphics that represented the world, using an immersive first-person perspective much like dungeon crawling CRPGs.

At Sierra On-Line, Roberta Williams’ third-person, King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990) completely abandoned the use of text and focused solely on mouse input through icons that moved the character and interacted with the game world. Subsequent games by all three major producers of adventure games, as well as those produced by other companies, continued strong into the 1990s, as many began to move away from pixel art and toward film and computer-generated 3D imagery (see Chapter 8).

Management and Strategy Games in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s

Don Daglow’s 1981 Utopia for Intellivision (see Chapter 5) represented one of the first “god games,” wherein omniscient players developed an island nation and managed its population, using an overlay on a 12-button keypad. In the late 1980s, several strategy and management games on home computers not only expanded the gameplay of the early concept, but also effectively digitized the keypad overlay in the form of a GUI using pull down menus driven by the mouse.

In 1984, game designer and model builder Will Wright created one of his first commercial games, Raid on Bungeling Bay. The game con­sisted of a top-down arcade-like shoot ’em up in which the player shot down enemy planes and bombed enemy factories, using a helicopter. While the game was successful and received a port to the Famicom/NES as well as Japanese MSX-spec computers, Wright found more pleasure in arranging the placement of buildings, roads, and other features in the game’s level editor. This activity led Wright to investigate systems related to civic engineering and city planning, as well as the work by British mathematician John Conway and his Life systems dynamics simulation program from 1970. In the interim, Wright cofounded game company Maxis with Jeff Braun, eventually resulting in the creation of SimCity (1989, Maxis).

In SimCity, the player received resources in the form of tax dollars, space to build, and a number of construction options that ranged from residences to airports (Figure 6.13). Little, however, directed the player toward a specific type of play, as SimCity was not designed with an end goal. Players could build a variety of cities as they interacted with the game’s many systems, including taxes, crime, pollution, traffic congestion, and population. The game was also built around mouse interaction and featured an icon-based interface inspired by the GUI of the Apple Macintosh’s MacPaint art program.

In addition to SimCity, Sid Meier’s Civilization (1991, MicroProse) represented another major innovation in management game design from the period. MicroProse, cofounded by Sid Meier and Bill Stealey in 1982, built a reputation on realistic, military-themed, flight simulators, such as F-15 Strike Eagle (1984) and F-19 Stealth Fighter (1987), the latter utilizing simple 3D polygons. Meier, by the turn of the decade, however, wanted to explore other game ideas. After partnering with Bruce Shelley, a former Avalon Hill board-game designer, the pair created the business simulation game, Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (1990, MicroProse), a game that drew from Francis Tresham’s 1974 railroad building board game called 1829.

The success of Railroad Tycoon pushed Meier and Shelley to continue looking beyond military flight simulations and into strategy-based management games. Inspiration came from the city-building gameplay of Will Wright’s SimCity, the board game Risk, Railroad Tycoon, and other sources. The end result was Civilization, a game where players nurtured a fledgling nation over thousands of years, from prehistory through the space age. The turn-based game allowed players to set building projects, found cities, set government types, trade, and go to war with neighboring nations. Although more structured than SimCity, the game allowed significant freedom of play and featured three distinctive victory conditions centered on building, conquering, and surviving.

One of the most important design features of the game was its technology tree, a series of branching technological developments that allowed players to advance their civilization from pottery making to space flight. With each newly discovered technology, players could create new types of buildings and units along with other types of advances. The ability to choose one’s path through the technology tree, along with random map generation at the beginning of each new game, allowed for a high degree of replayability.

Synthesis and Development of the RTS Game

The more casual gameplay of SimCity and Civilization proved popular, but not all game developers were satisfied with the open-ended goals of SimCity and the methodical turn-based gameplay of Civilization. Westwood Studios (formerly Westwood Associates) applied its experience in real-time action and the simplification of game interfaces, seen in its earlier CRPG Eye of the Beholder, to the creation of the strategy game, Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992, Westwood Studios). Dune II, based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction novel Dune and its 1984 film adaption, pitted dynasties from the fictional Dune universe against each other in a battle to control spice production on the desert planet Arrakis.

The design of Dune II’s core gameplay was reminiscent of elements from Will Wright’s SimCity and Sid Meier’s Civilization; the player placed individual structures in the game space while directing the movements of military units. Like the technology tree of Civilization, the creation of certain buildings gave the player the ability to produce new units as well as additional structures. The game interface, too, featured a windowed view of the game world surrounded by a frame of buttons and mouse-driven icons. Dune II set itself apart from these earlier strategy games, however, by pressuring the player to make simultaneous decisions about managing resources, building structures, producing units, and fighting the enemy in real-time. This accelerated, strategy-based gameplay became known as real time strategy (RTS). Although earlier games such as The Ancient Art of War (1984, Everyware), Carrier Command (1988, Realtime Games Software Ltd.), Herzog Zwi (1988, Technosoft Co. Ltd.), and Populous (1989, Bullfrog) contained several of these elements, Westwood’s game created the basis from which the majority of others would follow.

Westwood Studios followed the success of Dune II with Command and Conquer (1995), a semi-futuristic RTS that mixed real-life military units with science-fiction elements (Figure 6.14). More so than Dune II, the armies of Command & Conquer showed greater asymmetry: units differed in cost, health, range, speed, and damage, elements that required constant evaluation in the game’s skirmishes. Command & Conquer also refined the interface and further streamlined the interactions, increasing the speed and flow of gameplay. Movement and attack orders could be issued to unlimited units via simple mouse clicks in the game space without clicking action icons. In addition, the player’s view of the battlefield scrolled effortlessly in eight directions by positioning the mouse at the screen’s edge. The game used the larger storage capabilities of the CD-ROM to present the narrative through full motion video segments that combined live actors with computer-generated 3D backdrops, a setup used by other games of the early to mid-1990s (see Chapter 8).

While Westwood Studios based its RTSs on ideas of realism enhanced by a sense of techno-science fiction, the early RTSs of Blizzard Entertainment (formerly Silicon & Synapse) drew from medieval fantasy themes, particularly those from the tabletop war game, Warhammer: The Game of Fantasy Battles (1983, Games Workshop). Blizzard’s inaugural RTS, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994), was created out of a desire to add competitive multiplayer gameplay to the basic design of Dune II.

In Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, like Dune II, players built bases, gathered resources and directed armies of units, each with different strengths and weaknesses. The game differed from Dune II’s build/expand/fight setup, however, by introducing greater variety in the missions and integrating the game’s original mythology into the gameplay. For example, the Orc campaign’s mission, “The Dead Mines,” did not feature base-building gameplay and instead gave the player a limited number of units to move through a dungeon-like environment in search of the Orc war chief’s daughter. The game’s sequel Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995, Blizzard Entertainment), like Command & Conquer, similarly utilized an asymmetric approach to each side’s units and added further variety to the mission types.

Following Westwood and Blizzard Entertainment, other studios provided unique forms and variations on the evolving RTS genre. Z (The Bitmap Brothers, 1996) eliminated the base-building component and focused on capturing enemy territory with armies of gun-crazed, beer-drinking robots. Total Annihilation (Cavedog Entertainment, 1997) used well-designed artificial intelligence and innovative specialized units rendered in three-dimensions. Age of Empires (1997, Ensemble Studios) brought a historical approach to the RTS, akin to Civilization, as players advanced through epochs of time.

Westwood continued to release new titles and expansions in the Command & Conquer franchise, with the alternate history-theme Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996, Westwood Studios), which made Internet-based, multiplayer game play a central feature. Blizzard’s StarCraft (1998), however, proved to be a standout in the genre as its asymmetric design was ideal for competitive multiplayer gameplay (Figure 6.15). The game featured three distinct factions, each with different buildings and systems, while every individual unit’s strength was countered by an opponent unit’s abilities. The user interface made the most pertinent information available at a glance through floating overlays displaying resources and unit health. The game space also functioned differently through the use of an isometric perspective allowing for the tactical use of height that granted increased vision and weapon range. These elements created the potential for a dynamic tug of war, where a well-orchestrated counter move could suddenly alter the momentum of a battle; features that helped establish professional e-sports game leagues.

StarCraft was also more visually complex than many of its RTS predecessors. The main parts of the user interface were moved from their traditional position on the sides of the screen to the bottom, changing the proportions of the game space from square to rectangle and giving an overall cinematic impression. Instead of pixel art, the units consisted of pre-rendered sprites created from 3D models, the same technique used to create the characters of Killer Instinct (1994, Rare), Donkey Kong Country (1994, Rare), and Blizzard’s own roguelike Diablo (1996).

The combination of 2D and 3D elements affecting the visuals and gameplay of StarCraft and other games of the period connects to a larger discussion on the transition to 3D in the 1990s. As discussed in Chapter 8, the occasionally awkward mixture of 2D and 3D across different genres was fueled by a desire for visual and spatial realism as developers desired state-of-the-art fully 3D characters and environments without losing the visual fidelity offered by the tradition of pixel art. Chapter 9, meanwhile, discusses the successful implementation of fully 3D visuals and spaces in the late 1990s as well as within contemporary game design.