Habitat (video game)

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LucasFilm's Habitat was an early and technologically influential online role-playing game developed by Lucasfilm Games and made available as a beta test in 1987 by Quantum Link, an online service for the Commodore 64 computer and the corporate progenitor to America Online. It was initially created in 1985 by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar, who were given a "First Penguin Award" at the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards for this innovative work, and was the first attempt at a large-scale commercial virtual community (Morningstar and Farmer 1990; Robinett 1994). For context, it should be mentioned that the habitat was not a 3D environment (Ultima Underworld would not appear until 1992 as the first true 3D computer game (Although it can be said that the 1984 game 'The Eidolon', from LucasArts has a real fractal graphics 3D environment. You can make 360 degrees turns and even look up and down.) and did not incorporate immersion techniques. This would generally exclude it from the VR mold, and it was neither designed nor perceived as a VR environment. However, it is considered a forerunner of the modern MMORPGs which are more similar to VR-style applications and was quite unlike other online communities (i.e. MUDs and MOOs with text-based interfaces) of the time. The Habitat had a GUI and large userbase of consumer-oriented users, and those elements in particular have made the Habitat a much-cited project and acknowledged benchmark for the design of today's online communities that incorporate accelerated 3D computer graphics and immersive elements into their environments.

[edit] Culture

Habitat is "a multi-participant online virtual environment," a cyberspace. Each participant ("player") uses a home computer (Commodore 64) as an intelligent, interactive client, communicating via modem and telephone over a commercial packet-switching network to a centralized, mainframe host system. The client software provides the user interface, generating a real-time animated display of what is going on and translating input from the player into messages to the host. The host maintains the system's world model enforcing the rules and keeping each player's client informed about the constantly changing state of the universe. (Farmer 1993)

Users in the virtual world were represented by onscreen avatars, meaning that individual users' had a third person perspective of themselves, thus making the environment rather videogame-like in nature. The players in the same region (denoted by all objects and elements shown on a particular screen) could see, speak (through onscreen text output from the users), and interact with one another. Interesting notes about Habitat was that it was self-governed by its citizenry. The only off-limits portions were those that concerned the underlying software constructs and physical components of the system. The users were responsible for laws and acceptable behavior within the Habitat. The authors of Habitat were greatly concerned with allowing the broadest range of interaction possible, since they felt that interaction, not technology or information, truly drove cyberspace (Morningstar and Farmer 1990). Avatars had to barter for resources within the Habitat, and could even be robbed or "killed" by other avatars. Initially, this led to chaos within the Habitat which led to rules and regulations (and authority avatars) to maintain order.

[edit] Timeline

Lucasfilm's Habitat was run from 1986 to 1988, after which it was closed down at the end of the pilot run. A sized-down incarnation but with vastly improved graphics (avatars became equipped with facial expressions, for example) was launched for general release as Club Caribe on Quantum Link in January 1988. LucasFilm licensed the technology underlying Habitat and Club Caribe to Fujitsu in 1989, and an elaborated and evolved version launched in Japan as Fujitsu Habitat in 1990. Fujitsu later bought the technology outright, and an even more sophisticated system was relaunched on CompuServe in 1995 as WorldsAway. As CompuServe morphed into AOL's "value brand," Worldsaway was cancelled but has survived independently as Vzones.com.