I reflect back on the '80's. I got my Apple II+ with 48K (later up to 64K) in 1981 but pretty much just for text processing. Same with the Macintosh I got about 1987. My first online experience was at work in 1984 where I was on an ARPAnet node in Internet Alley (Tysons Corner) when it was pretty much just text in "news groups". And that was on shared terminals to a mainframe. Then it was office desk terminals and not until the 1990's when they started providing individual PCs or some Macs. This was at a corporation instrumental in developing the Internet of Things (Mitre Corp). Your article nicely shows how the consumer led the way to collective interaction, something that all the professional system development was slow at. The Government work did provide the platform for that, but it is the apps that matter, and the move from algorithms to social apps was epochal.
> In the 1980s, its gaming chops made the C64 low status.
While I'm sure that typecasting hurt the C64, that wasn't its only or probably even its biggest problem in making inroads into business computing. The Commodore 64 simply couldn't support anything close to 80-column-wide text without painful compromises or niche hardware. (David Murray's old video about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzOErvJwZs seems to be pretty good.) That guaranteed a pretty painful experience for anyone trying to edit text documents on it, and wasn't ideal for spreadsheets either. Even with good native support for 80-column text the Commodore 64 would have been held back by the fact that many of its users were relying on TV for video output, and upgrading to a dedicated monitor wasn't cheap. By the mid-'80s 64 KiB had become pretty tight for serious word-processing, too. Still, the C64 would probably have had a much better chance of getting a significant number of small-business word-processing and spreadsheet users from its very large installed base if had been possible to do 80-column word processing on a stock 64 plus a monitor and a printer. If so then the lack of 80-column support was likely one of the most consequential design mistakes in the history of computing. But in any case the problems did go beyond image.
I clicked on this article with some trepidation, because a) I've never heard of Habitat and b) I just finished writing up an short sketch on the first MMO for my substack (The 20th Century Project, which is documenting the most influential games of the 20th Century). Thankfully, I think our articles can live together in peace ... since as you point out, Habitat "unlike an Adventure game, it had no goal." But you had me worried.
I reflect back on the '80's. I got my Apple II+ with 48K (later up to 64K) in 1981 but pretty much just for text processing. Same with the Macintosh I got about 1987. My first online experience was at work in 1984 where I was on an ARPAnet node in Internet Alley (Tysons Corner) when it was pretty much just text in "news groups". And that was on shared terminals to a mainframe. Then it was office desk terminals and not until the 1990's when they started providing individual PCs or some Macs. This was at a corporation instrumental in developing the Internet of Things (Mitre Corp). Your article nicely shows how the consumer led the way to collective interaction, something that all the professional system development was slow at. The Government work did provide the platform for that, but it is the apps that matter, and the move from algorithms to social apps was epochal.
I worked with Chip and Randy (especially Randy) at Yahoo! Thoughtful guys and true pioneers. Randy's book on reputation systems (https://www.amazon.com/Building-Reputation-Systems-Randy-Farmer/dp/059615979X) is definitely something that anyone interested in building online communities would benefit from.
That link doesn't seem to have anything to do with the book.
Dohhh. Cut and paste fail. Thanks for catching. Corrected now.
Really enjoying the article - I had a friend with a C64 (we had an Amstrad in our house) but never played habitat. Fascinating story!
It also reminded me of the fantastic computer game history blog at Digital Antiquarian by Jimmy Maher. Well worth reading, and he covered Habitat too.
https://www.filfre.net/2015/07/a-new-force-in-games-part-2-a-habitat-in-cyberspace/
> In the 1980s, its gaming chops made the C64 low status.
While I'm sure that typecasting hurt the C64, that wasn't its only or probably even its biggest problem in making inroads into business computing. The Commodore 64 simply couldn't support anything close to 80-column-wide text without painful compromises or niche hardware. (David Murray's old video about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzOErvJwZs seems to be pretty good.) That guaranteed a pretty painful experience for anyone trying to edit text documents on it, and wasn't ideal for spreadsheets either. Even with good native support for 80-column text the Commodore 64 would have been held back by the fact that many of its users were relying on TV for video output, and upgrading to a dedicated monitor wasn't cheap. By the mid-'80s 64 KiB had become pretty tight for serious word-processing, too. Still, the C64 would probably have had a much better chance of getting a significant number of small-business word-processing and spreadsheet users from its very large installed base if had been possible to do 80-column word processing on a stock 64 plus a monitor and a printer. If so then the lack of 80-column support was likely one of the most consequential design mistakes in the history of computing. But in any case the problems did go beyond image.
I clicked on this article with some trepidation, because a) I've never heard of Habitat and b) I just finished writing up an short sketch on the first MMO for my substack (The 20th Century Project, which is documenting the most influential games of the 20th Century). Thankfully, I think our articles can live together in peace ... since as you point out, Habitat "unlike an Adventure game, it had no goal." But you had me worried.