<!--
	Title: New Diversions
	Author: Tom Netsel
	Source: COMPUTE!, v10(6)
	Date: June 1988
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<img style="display: block; margin: auto; max-width: 80%;" src="/public/img/articles/compute-new-diversions/new-diversions.png" alt="New Diversions">

<div class="float-left-half" style="font-family: var(--article-sidebar), Arial, sans-serf; font-size: 1.5em; font-weight: bold; text-align: right;">
These five trends will change the
way you play: computer comic
books, telecommunication games,
high-level simulations, and
Compact Disc-Interactive
entertainment.
</div>

The Golden Age of entertainment software is now!

Leisure-time software is reaching new levels of sophistication as designers
push machines to new limits—as the games get bigger, better, and brighter.
Here are five new diversions coming soon to a computer screen near you.

## Computer Comics

America loves comic books. More than 20 million of them are sold each month.
Now this colorful world of superheroes and dastardly fiends is coming to life on
personal computers, enhanced with sound and dramatic cinematic effects such as
zooms, pans, and dissolves.

Infocomics are comic books that you read on your computer. They are
not games. There are no complicated puzzles to unravel, no treasures to
locate, no arcade aliens to blast in the name of interstellar peace. Instead, you
get an intricate web of intertwining plots and story lines.

The idea came to Tom Snyder, chief executive officer of Tom Snyder
Productions, as he looked at some of the best adventure games, graphic
adventures, and role-playing games. Snyder felt that they all suffered from
artificial plots. "There's no sex. love, greed, sadness, jealousy, and passion —
all the stuff that Shakespeare wrote about and all the stuff that Hill Street
Blues was about," he points out.

Snyder wanted a graphic product that had a story line rich in human
experience, one that relied less on magic spells, monsters, and hardware to
sustain interest.

He wanted interactivity, but he didn't want the player to change the
plot. Instead. Snyder experimented with letting the user change the story's
point of view. His original model was a Raymond Chandler-style detective story',
set in a seedy office in the 1930s. The radiator hisses; there is steam on the
windows. We see the story from the detective's point of view. A beautiful
but obviously distraught women enters. As she explains her problem,
the detective tries to impress her with his revolver. He thinks he's
playing it cool.

<figure class="float-right-wide">
	<figcaption style="font-size: 2em; font-weight: bold; color: steelblue; text-align: right;">She thinks the guy's a chump.</figcaption>
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-new-diversions/detective.png" alt="A cartoon of a hard-boiled detective">
</figure>

Switch to the woman's point of view, though, and you see that she's
not at all impressed by the gun. She thinks the guy is a chump. When she
leaves, you can go with her and meet her family. If you hop to her husband's
perspective, you find out he's really in cahoots with the
detective.

"You are not changing the story," Snyder says.
"You're just seeing it from even' character's point of view.
A well-written story in this style doesn't make sense until you've
seen it from most people's points of view."

For scripts. Snyder approached Infocom, the Activision-owned software
firm noted for interactive text adventures. Snyder's concept makes
extensive use of graphics, an approach Infocom had previously avoided.
Snyder's team developed a technology that allows artists to create 2.000 to
3.000 expressive drawings using minimal storage techniques. As a result, it
takes four to five hours to *read* a single Infocomic disk.

Infocom's first venture into outside publishing may appear to be a radical
departure from its text-only products, but company president Joel
Berez sees it as an extension of what Infocom does best.

"We really see ourselves as being in the storytelling business,"
he says. "What we've done in the case of Infocomics is take
the technology that was developed by Tom Snyder and marry it with
the story writers that we have here."

Infocom's research indicated that people's initial reaction to the
graphic product reminded them of comic books. Researchers
also discovered that computer ownership among comic book readers
is three times the national average.

The premier Infocomics titles, now on the market for most personal computers,
include *Lane Mastodon vs. the Bhibbermen*, a comic spoof of 1930s
pulp fiction, written by Steve Meretzky; *Gamma Force in a Pit of a Thousand
Screams*, Amy Briggs' action-packed superhero tale featuring a trio of brave
aliens; and *Zorkquest: Assault on Egreth Castle*, by Elizabeth Langosy, a
fantasy adventure about a caravan of travelers manipulated by an
evil magician.

The initial titles are aimed at the comic book set, but
plans are underway for an adult psychological thriller which
requires several points of view to determine who is crazy and who
is not. An Infocomic for young children will feature a farmer, a wolf, and a fox.

Snyder says he hopes to sell the product to people who do not usually
buy computer software. In his view, there are millions of people out there
(including his mother) who really don't enjoy playing computer games. To lure
new buyers, each Infocomics title car ries a suggested retail price of $12,
which may be discounted as low as $9.

As the technology grows, Snyder and Berez expect Infocomics to expand
and add additional features. "The next thing we plan to do is add voice and
more storage," Snyder says. "Right now it is compressed within an inch of its
life. If you have 2000 pictures on an Apple disk, you've got to be doing some
magic."

## Phone Games

Reach out and play someone.

Instead of playing solitaire games with the computer, or even playing
against the computer, gamesters are increasingly able to play sophisticated
games by modem. Using telecommunications, you can connect two computers
and play computer chess, backgammon, or checkers with a human opponent.
If you're looking for more militant action, you can climb aboard a
helicopter simulator and try to blast a friend to smithereens.

Sierra On-Line's *3D Helicopter Simulator* is a good example. "It's an
amazing feeling the first time you try it," says Ken Williams, cofounder and
president of Sierra. "You can actually hover over another craft and look
straight down at it. It's got real rotating blades."

<figure class="float-right-wide">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-new-diversions/helicopter.png" alt="A cartoon of a helicopter">
	<figcaption style="font-size: 2em; font-weight: bold; color: steelblue;">3D Helicopter Simulator</figcaption>
</figure>

Other sophisticated flight simulators turn your computer into a Cessna
or an F-16 jet fighter. Sierra's aeronautical entry is based on McDonnell Douglas's
Apache helicopter. An important feature of *3D Helicopter* lets you fly
against a human opponent who doesn't have to be seated at your computer. He
or she can be at another computer connected by a modem and a telephone line.

"It's a different feeling playing against another human being," Williams
says. "You can tell the difference in a dogfight when you're playing a computer;
the computers aren't intelligent enough. You can't talk back and forth,
and the computer won't hide. You can fly behind a building and, hopefully,
your opponent won't see you."

Competition is not the only thrill in two-pilot flying. You can also go
sightseeing. "Getting him right along side of you and doing precision flying is
just a blast," Williams says. "It's pretty exciting flying under bridges and trying
to land two helicopters on top of a small building."

Sierra has plans to add extensions to the product, letting more than two
helicopters be online at once. Williams has already contacted one of the major
time-sharing services to make it available, with plans in the works for as
many as 20 people flying at one time.

## True Stories

Simulations give everyone the chance to see what it feels like to pilot anything
from a Sopwith Camel to an Apollo moon rocket, or drive a railroad locomotive
or a 200-mph dragster.

Most simulations have an arcade quality, and use speed, action, and
thrills to attract players. Lately, another type of simulation is appearing. It's
more a thinking man's simulation, one that combines education and entertainment.
Mark Goldstein calls it *edu-tainment* software.

Goldstein is president of Reality Technologies. His software gives IBM
and Macintosh users the opportunity to run some of America's top corporations
via simulations.

Computer simulations are a core component of many business schools.
Students run a fictitious company, making such decisions as how much to
charge for a product, how much to set aside for research and development,
and how much to spend on advertising.

"Frankly, it was the only course we enjoyed," Goldstein says, recalling his
days at Wharton Business School. He thought this type of computer simulation
should be put to more uses outside the classroom.

After graduation and a stint with Apple Computers, Goldstein and a fellow
Wharton graduate decided to develop their own PC-based business
simulations. "We came out with products that gave executives and would-be
executives the thrills and agonies of running a business." he says.

<div class="article-sidebar-dark float-left-wide">

## EVERYTHING NEW IS OLD AGAIN

The five trends and technologies that Tom Netsel has discovered in entertainment software aren't
sounding any death knell for fun software as we know it, thank you.

They say that nothing is really new, and entertainment software publishers run up against that
limitation just like everyone else. Cinema-style software products are crude
reproductions of movies, just as early films were
often crude reproductions of plays staged outdoors -
Telecommuting games aren't much different, in principle, from playing
chess through the mail. They're faster, certainly, but the concept behind them
doesn't change — two people far removed playing a game together.

The old forms of entertainment software will be around long after these five
new formats hit our computers. Witness that:

**Interactive text games** are getting more sophisticated. An all-text game like
*Border Zone* (Infocom), for instance, offers players multiple points of view. The
game's three chapters give the player three different roles within the same
story.

**Solitaire games** show no sign of losing their popularity. For all the talk of
networking and work groups in business, most computer use is still a solitary occupation.
The same goes for entertainment. One of the greatest boons to game playing
has been the computer opponent. *Balance of Power* (Mindscape) is much
less challenging when played with another person; the computer doesn't back
down, doesn't blink when a crisis reaches its climax.

**Strategy games**, where graphics and speed are less important, continue to
comprise one of the best-selling entertainment software categories. A game
along the lines of *Decisive Battles of the American Civil War* (SSG) won't play any
better because the graphics are more detailed or because there's more information
online. The key to such games is the thinking that goes into developing
successful plans and carrying them out. As players of monster board games
know, there comes a point where too much complexity gets in the way of
payability.

**Arcade games** are making a dramatic comeback, rising fast in both sales and
consumer popularity. Games such as *Arkanoid* (Discovery) don't really need
more than what they already have in a game system such as the Commodore
Amiga. And since the most sought-after computer arcade games are often translations
from video arcade machines — equipment that in some cases is less sophisticated
than many personal computers — beefing up the technology won't
necessarily mean a better-designed action game.

This isn't to say that progress in entertainment software — from electronic
comic books to CD-I — shouldn't be encouraged and anticipated. We're just as
excited as anyone else about the new look in fun software.

But we're also thrilled with what we have now.

<p style="text-align: right; font-style: italic;">— Gregg Keizer</p>

</div>

Their first product was *Venture Magazine's Business Simulator*. The
program was basically a PC version of the business school program that ran on
a DEC 10. "This time it was more fun," Goldstein says. "We took advantage of
the PC and the ability to use it as an individual, one-on-one training tool."

Several Fortune 500 companies recognized the program's value as a
training aid and asked for customized versions for their own operations. As a
result, Reality Technologies produced training simulations for such firms as
IBM, AT&T, DEC, CitiCorp. and General Foods.

From its experience in producing customized business simulations, Reality
Technologies teamed up with McGraw-Hill and introduced *Business Week's
Business Advantage*. The new package is a series of programs based on feature
articles from Business Week magazine.

"We put real data downloaded from databases into a model, and create
company- and industry-specific case studies," Goldstein says. "Instead of
running a mythical company as in our first simulation, in *Business Advantage*
you could call the shots at Chrysler."

The simulation puts you in the role of Lee Iacocca, the chairman of Chrysler.
You're faced with a realistic business scenario. General Motors and Ford
have just revamped their product lines. Asian cars are flooding the market, and
the Japanese are targeting the midrange and luxury-car markets, where
U.S. firms are traditionally strongest. Despite flat demand and a sluggish
economy, your job is to build Chrysler's strength.

Users manage the company over a five-year period. The computer makes
all competitor decisions. At the end of each simulated year, the financial status
and competitive position of each company arc presented.

In this type of simulation the computer's microprocessor does not have to
compute changing scenery, aerial maneuvers, or artillery trajectories. In
stead, *BWBA* uses a number-crunching routine on a 400-rule expert system and
the equivalent of 400 pages of spread-sheet equations to process each management
decision. The simulation considers a broad range of external elements that
can affect a company's bottom line, such as actions by competitors, interest rates,
and consumer spending.

"These invaluable lessons about effective management in highly competitive
business situations can be immediately applied to anyone's business,"
Goldstein says. "We're bridging the education simulation genre and creating
valid tools and models. This environment can very effectively teach
people what their business problem is and how they might address it."

As far as creating more realistic models and simulations is concerned.
Goldstein says he has primarily been restricted by hardware, but that problem
is being resolved. "If you look to a 286-plus [microprocessor] environment,
it's pretty limitless." he says. "We're doing some simulations on DEC and
Sun workstations. It looks like you're dealing with real people (in the simulations)
who even have expressions on their faces. It's a whole new dimension."

## Interactive Stooges

Robert Jacob wanted to come up with something different in entertainment
software. He set out to develop a product that looked as much like a movie as
possible.

"We wanted to do games that had tremendous graphics, state-of-the-art
sound, easy user interfaces, nonlinear story line for replayability, and enough
eye/hand coordination to keep your pulse rate up a little, but not so much as
to drive you crazy." Jacob says.

That didn't seem to be too tall a request for his creative team at Cinemaware.
They came up with the concept of interactive cinema. It's not an adventure
game, it's not an arcade game, and it's not a role-playing game, but it has
elements of all three combined with animation. Jacob says.

Titles released this spring include *Rocket Ranger* and *The Three Stooges*.

In *Rocket Ranger*, you are a young American scientist at your desk in
1940. when a rocket suit and ray gun suddenly materialize. A note explains
that these items were sent by a group of scientists in the twenty-first century.
They want you to change the course of history because in their world, the
Nazis won World War II.

It seems the Nazis have set up a base on the moon and are mining a secret mineral. To make
matters worse, the fiends are kidnapping American women —
including your girlfriend — and turning them into zombies to
work in the mines. "As part of the game you have to build a rocket
ship and go up and save her." Jacob says. "There are a lot of campy
elements in it that make it fun."

In *The Three Stooges*, the zany trio comes to the aid of a widow and her three
beautiful daughters, who are facing foreclosure on the orphanage they
run. With your help. Curly, Larry, and Moe have 30 days to raise enough money
to save the women from the clutches of an evil banker. You guide the Stooges
through a series of odd jobs that include prizefighting, pie throwing, and medical
misadventures.

<figure class="float-right-wide">
	<img src="/public/img/articles/compute-new-diversions/stooges.png" alt="A cartoon of the Three Stooges">
	<figcaption style="font-size: 2em; font-weight: bold; color: steelblue; text-align: center;">The Three Stooges</figcaption>
</figure>

"All the arcade elements of the game are taken right from their movies,"
Jacob says, "as are the 160 uses of digitized sound, which include their
voices and other sound effects.

"To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever really done a computer
comedy before." Jacob says. "We wanted to do a game that would make you
laugh when you sat down and played."

Jacobs feels this technology is just taking off as machines improve and
programmers learn to use the machines better. He feels the next step in the evolution
of interactive entertainment will include the use of true video images
rather than graphics. Cinemaware already has developed a prototype that
includes video images of actors.

To take full advantage of these
emerging entertainment techniques requires hardware that is not too far advanced
from what is available today, but a heavy reliance on digitized images
and sound requires a much larger storage capacity.

"A megabyte of RAM should be sufficient to handle most of the requirements
in the next few years," Jacob predicts. "It's really a question of disk
space and disk access. I feel very strongly that Compact Disc-Interactive (CDI)
is going to be the focal point for the entertainment of the 1990s."

## The Ultimate Entertainer

Combine the tremendous storage of compact discs with the interactivity of
entertainment software and you get Compact Disc-Interactive entertainment.
CD-I is an evolution of the compact disc audio standard developed by
the Netherlands-based Philips corporation. CD-I is a joint venture of Philips
and Sony aimed at standardizing the format and specifications for this
emerging technology.

The first CD-I players, which will connect to your stereo and television, will
be marketed by such consumer electronic firms as Sony, Panasonic, and Hitachi.
The players will contain a powerful microprocessor, play as many as 16 channels
of stereo, store as many as 7000 broadcast-quality pictures, support computer
animation, offer full-motion video in a portion of the screen, and play conventional
audio compact discs.

American Interactive Media (AIM), a subsidiary of Philips and PolyGram
records, is a CD-I software publisher that expects to have approximately
50 CD-I titles available when the first players hit the market early
next year. Cinemaware has already signed an agreement with AIM to develop
*Rocket Ranger* in CD-I.

Spinnaker Software is another firm working with AIM. Its first venture into
the field is a CD-I version of *Sargon IV*, Spinnaker's popular chess game. By the
time this article appears, *Sargon IV* should be on the market for the Macintosh,
says Steve Yelick. Spinnaker's manager of engineering. The 68000
code for the 3-D chessboard will be the CD-I prototype.

"The Macintosh version will have different chess sets as resources,"
Yelick says, "and we will expand that concept in CD-I all the
way to possibly having animated chess pieces, like the original
*Star Wars* movie, with little guys jumping around and chewing
on each other." The CD-I version will have many more games and include
full audio that will announce your moves.

In a parallel move, Yelick is work ing on a science fiction adventure for an
IBM PS/2 computer and CD-I. He expects *Star Lords* to be out by Christmas.

"In *Star Lords*, we're trying to exploit everything we know about gaming,
interactive fiction, and CD-I technology," Yelick says. "It's a multimode
game system that includes strategic star maps and 3-D space views that will permit
arcade-style chasing and fighting."

With more than 600 megabytes of storage space, CD-I offers programmers
a great opportunity to use memory-hungry' graphics to create a degree of realism
not available on today's machines. *Star Lords*' screens will combine art and
digitized images. Yelick says. "We'll build models of space vehicles and photograph
them. That's where CD-I's digitized imagery will really shine."

What excites Yelick most about CD-I is not technical. "Its most interesting
aspect is standardization. There are going to be multiple vendors with
hardware, multiple vendors with software, and cross compatibility. That's
what makes CD-I exciting, trying to avoid the lack of standardization that
plagues the computer industry. The consumer won't put up with it."

Cinemaware's Bob Jacob is waiting for the day when CD-I interfaces with
computers and peripherals. He doesn't expect it to be too long in coming.
"Imagine a computer," he says. "with one megabyte of RAM with a 68000
processor. It'll play back CD audio discs. CD-I discs; have ports for joy
sticks, keyboards, and floppy disk drives; and sell for under $ 1.000!"

Now that'll be a game machine!