1993: Curses (Aaron A. Reed’s “50 Years of Text Games”)
The latest in Aaron A. Reed’s monumental project” 50 Years of Text Games” focuses on Graham Nelson’s programming language Inform, and in particular his game “Curses.” “You have to get a coin from the temple of zeus to buy the ekmek,” explained one responder. “To do that you need to use the rod of luck. To use the rod of luck you have to change the nature of the universe.” Gradually more and more people decided to give this new game a shot, downloading it via FTP and running it on their InfoTaskForce interpreters just to see what all the…
Economics in Early Computer Games
(First published 27 May 2020, when I found it in my “drafts” folder.) In an article on consumerism in role-playing computer games, Garrelts explores a history that leads back to Adventure and Zork: “At this stage, while there were objects that could be manipulated that had use-value, there were no developed economies; in fact, there was no money to be exchanged.” It may be worth noting, however, that Crowther’s original Colossal Cave Adventure offered the following motivation (originally in all-caps): “SOMEWHERE NEARBY IS COLOSSAL CAVE, WHERE OTHERS HAVE FOUND FORTUNES IN TREASURE AND GOLD, THOUGH IT IS RUMORED THAT SOME…