[game_preservation] National Game Registry Blog

[Devin Monnens]

I'm intending to head to the university and pick up that book today on the
TIX-0. I also located a paper trail through the old DECUS
Catalogs<http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/programCatalogs/>for
PDP software, which contain descriptions of what the software is as
well
as who made it. If you can find the original program documents, they also
list the date of publication, which is quite useful (although I *am *feeling
a little gipped that most of the information is already on Wikipedia...).
Among the discoveries was a game of Khala from 1961. However, the trail is
incomplete: I can't locate catalogues from 1970 and 1971, which contain a
few pieces of software I'd like abstracts for. The 1972 updates list
software made after this time. Here are some PDP-8 software:

8-332 The Civil War Game
8-356 Pollution Game
8-359 HI-Q Game Playing Program

Otherwise, what you've just stated is that history chooses to remember what
it wants to remember, and this 'wanting to remember' is usually because
somebody has a vested interest in getting people to remember it (fame,
money, lawsuits). I think that's as much an interesting part of the story as
what was actually there.

The other things I'd add to your description is the greater ease of
availability of computer hardware, making the PDP-8 affordable to high
schools, as well as the presence of powerful, easy-to-learn programming
languages such as FOCAL (which Lunar Lander was written in) and BASIC, which
was ported to PDP-8 in 1971 by Richard Burgess (designer of the graphical
Lunar Lander). BASIC had its mainstream moment in 1973 with David Ahl's 101
BASIC Computer Games, many of which were ported from FOCAL.

-Devin

This combination of cheap with ease of use (relative) as well as exposure of
the hardware to high school kids is what encouraged many to get into
programming. Today, the equivalent of BASIC seems to be Flash, which has the
advantage of being more visual.

Regarding Steven Kent, most of my impressions came from the way the people
told their story. It was pretty easy to tell when Nolan Bushnell was just
talking, and being able to recognize that was important. Bushnell, after
all, had his training as a carny, getting people to play carnival games.
That's a fantastic skill that translates well into selling arcade machines
and getting people to play them (Pong and Chuck E Cheez being the triumphs).
However, on the design side, I don't really see him making many original
things - most of the games he's known for had already been built by somebody
else and he just found a way of making money off of them.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Martin Goldberg <wgungfu at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Thank you for the information Marty.

> > There's actually two projects I'm working on now.

> > 1) A survey of game preservation archives, projects, and initiatives

> around

> > the world (this article came up when I was doing a search).

>

> You can add myself, Curt Vendel, and Karl Morris to that.  We run

> archives of industry material.  That includes hardware, software,

> corporate documents, etc.

>

>

> > 2) An article on the development of computer games from the period of

> > 1961-1972 and especially why there is so little documentation over a ten

> > year period outside of Spacewar (which was extremely popular) and Brown

> Box

> > (when the following 10 year period is chock full of new innovations).

>

> You have to understand the context on this.  Most of what you're

> looking for was done behind closed doors in research labs, university

> labs, etc. or for a very limited audience during that period.  It

> hadn't ventured outside to become a commercial product yet or meet the

> general populace.  There's more documentation on Spacewar because it

> wound up being included outside of that environment via being used as

> a test program by DEC for shipping mainframes, and spread from there.

> And even then, you wouldn't of heard of it or Tennis for Two if it

> hadn't been for the Magnavox court cases when they were presented as

> evidence to try and invalidate Ralph's patents (which they failed on).

>  And the brown box?  That's because the development of the devices

> that lead to the brown box, and the brown box itself, represent the

> video game industry's first patents.

>

> As to why documentation suddenly starts appearing abundantly 1972

> onwards: It wasn't until the efforts of the counter culture in the

> late 60's and early 70's - to promote the understanding and use of

> computer technology amongst the common people - that it started

> hitting more of the mainstream.  That's why by '72 you have magazines

> like Rolling Stone covering Spacewar and Xerox PARC, in addition to

> the Magnavox Odyssey and arcade Pong being unleashed on consumers,

> microprocessors starting to enter consumer devices thanks to Intel -

> all contributing to a perfect storm of technology on the consumer's

> and general populace's conscience.  I.E. it was starting to become

> part of the culture and the collective interest.

>

> > I would be very interested in

> > seeing what you located and if you know a paper trail I can continue

> > following.

> >

>

> That's why I'm here and why I joined the project per your request. ;)

>

> As far as the TX-0 and some of the games done there, that (and the

> people surrounding it) are covered pretty well in Steven Levy's

> seminal book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" (1984).  For

> example, it covers the first (that I'm aware of ) networked game play

> - when the mischievous bunch of hackers at MIT "hacked" up a hardwired

> connection between the TX-0 and another mainframe several rooms over

> and got two professors to unwittingly play each other in chess (they

> were told it was a chess program they were playing).

>

>

> > With Steve Kent's book, I find it more interesting regarding not so much

> > what the people are saying but what they are not saying. It is very easy

> in

> > that regard to tell what the person is like and how his character shaped

> the

> > industry, even when you can't take what he says as completely true.

>

> An interesting approach.  Do you have an example of some of these

> conclusions of what's not being said?

>

>

>

> Marty

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>




-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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