Early Online and Multiplayer Games In this chapter,
Early Online and Multiplayer Games William A. Hinginbotham Figure 2.3 William Hinginbotham invented the multiplayer game Tennis for Two using an oscilloscope. Reproduced by permission of William Hunter. Steve Russel, J.M. Graetz, and Alan Kotok Figure 2.4 Spacewar was the first real computer game, and featured a multiplayer duel of rocket ships. Reproduced by permission of William Hunter. for Two [PONG] and it was perhaps the first documented multiplayer electronic game (Figure 2.3). However, while definitely a multiplayer game Tennis for Two used hard-wired circuitry and not a computer for the game play. The honour of the first real computer game goes to Spacewar, which was designed in 1961 to demonstrate a new PDP-1 computer that was being installed at MIT (Figure 2.4). In Spacewar, two players duelled with rocket ships, firing torpedos at one another. Spacewar had no sound effects or particle effects, but illustrated just how addictive compelling game play could be even without fancy graphics. It even showed sophisticated AI was not needed since real intelligence, in the form of a human opponent, could enhance game play in both competitive and cooperative modes. Soon after its creation, Spacewar programmers were discovering the tradeoffs between realism and playability, adding gravity, star maps and hyperspace. Although the price of the PDP-1 (then over $100 000) made it impossible for Spacewar to be a commercial success, it had lasting influence on the games that followed, including subsequent multiplayer and networked games. A version of Spacewar that was a commercial success was Galaxy War, appearing on campuses in Stanford in the early 1970s (Figure 2.5). It may have been up and running even before the far more popular Pong by Atari.
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