Federation (game)

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Federation is a text-based online game developed by IBGames. The game was originally launched in 1988 on the Commodore 64 network, Compunet. IBGames has since dropped online support for the game, as the entirety of the game's fanbase began playing the sequel, Federation II, upon its release in December of 2003.

The game focuses around the intergalactic economy of our galaxy in the distant future. Players work their way up a series of ranks, each of which has a slightly more rewarding and interesting but difficult job attached, which culminates in the ownership of one's own "duchy," a small solar system.

[edit] History

The original design team just consisted of two individuals, Alan Lenton and a man IBGames now credits only as "John K." Originally, Alan was to design the game and John was to program it, but John, upon realizing the amount of time and dedication needed to produce such a game, dropped out of the project. This led Alan, who had some previous experience with the programming languanges Basic and Forth, to learn C as to allow him to write the game himself.

The game launched on Compunet almost two years later, but was very sparse and buggy. Over the coming months, the game was expanded and new features were added, but, after some changes to the administrative staff of Compunet, the service soon went under and Federation became homeless.

Federation was ported to GEnie and spread through various other small networks, until America Online purchased exclusive rights to the game in 1995. Previously, the number of players had only been in the dozens, but, upon going live on AOL, the number of players skyrocketed to several hundred. In December of 1996, AOL announced that it would no longer be charging an hourly fee for its internet service, which pushed the number of players into the thousands.

Shortly after, AOL, now unable to deal with the added strain on their game servers, dropped all of its existing games. Fed became homeless once again. IBGames began to offer the game through their website, but the number of players dwindled. The game remained live for a time, despite the release of the sequel, Federation II in winter of 2003. In the winter of 2005 the servers for Classic Fed (as it became known) gave out and the game was closed for good.