<!--
	Title: The Future of Computer Games
	Subtitle: Ten Industry Leaders Speak Out
	Author: Keith Ferrell, Features Editor
	Source: COMPUTE!, v9(11)
	Date: November 1987
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

*Computer games have never been more diverse — or more fun. Whether
you want to play a sports simulation, play a strategy game, experience ar
cade action, explore alternate realities, solve text puzzles, or even create
a challenge of your own devising, the software is available. Who develops
these programs and brings them to the market? COMPUTE! talked to ten
industry leaders to find out about the past, present, and future of
entertainment software.*

Surveys show that a computer bought for home use is used more
often for playing games than for anything else.

And who could blame the users? Today there are games for every
interest, from shoot-and-smash arcade games to high-level intellectual
exercises. Behind these games are a variety of people, from
programmers and designers to marketing specialists and corporate
executives. For our annual games issue we talked with several people
responsible for some of the most popular games and found them to
be as engaging in conversation as their products are on the monitor.
They are a diverse group, sharing some striking similarities of outlook
as well as having dynamic differences of approach.

But we'll let them speak for themselves. Meet, in alphabetical
order, ten of the industry's leading game makers:

**Mark Beaumont, Activision**<br>
*"We're moving beyond action/arcade games and moving toward
giving somebody a full-blown experience."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/mark-beaumont.jpg" alt="Mark Beaumont">

Mark Beaumont, product manager for Activision, entered the consumer
electronics industry in 1982, joining Atari at the height of the
Pac-Man craze. He moved to Activision the following year and, since 1985,
has been involved in the company's product management.

Beaumont has seen both expansion and dramatic retrenchment.
Activision grew dynamically, then faced a period of restructuring
and realignment. Currently returning to economic health, Activision
faces a market far different from that of a few years ago.

Many changes result from hardware evolution. "We're starting to move upwards from the 48K
machines and the 64. The market today is as much driven by what
works from a hardware system as from the sales area. If a machine is
doing particularly well, as the MSDOS machines are doing now,
you'll see more people gravitate to that for development and more
games designed specifically for that machine."

The number of different systems is exerting an effect on the
industry. "The market is getting segmented. At the low end you
have the Atari 2600." The 2600 has enjoyed an unexpected resurgence
recently, and Activision is responding by developing new software for
2600s.

Moving up, Beaumont sees several areas of opportunity. "At
the lower end of the mid-range you have the Atari ST in 520 configuration,
on through the Tandy machines which are making significant
inroads at the $700 price point. Then, heading toward the high end
you have the Amiga 500. And at the real high end there's the Apple IIGS
and the full-boat Amiga. Games are appropriate for each of those
machines."

While many of its products are ported to several machines, Activision
has found that the games market varies somewhat from machine
to machine.

"There's an audience issue at play. Different kinds of software,
different games, appeal to the different machine owners. Arcade games
may not work as well on the Amiga as they do on the 64. We're selective
about which titles are ported to different systems, and on occasion we
will develop specifically for a particular machine. Amiga owners seem
to have a desire for fantasy role playing and graphics-intensive
products, as well as high-end productivity products. Our *Music Studio*
has done very well on the Amiga, for example, where things which are
direct ports from other systems might not do as well."

The most dramatic growth has been MS-DOS machines. "As
Tandy and some of the other clone manufacturers have brought the
price of their computers down, it's opened up a whole new category of
buyer. When the MS-DOS machines were a higher-end purchase,
the demographics of the buyers were significantly higher, and the
kinds of software that appealed to the consumer were quite different.
As the demographics have come down, there's been a bigger demand
for arcade software. Our *Gamestar* line is a good example.
While I don't think that would have done well on MS-DOS machines
four years ago, it is doing extremely well now."

Activision understands that computer owners represent a niche
within the overall consumer electronics market. Beaumont notes
that there are niche markets within this niche market. The key to
success in entertainment software, he says, is targeting the largest number
of consumers.

"There are subcategories within categories. Working in our favor
is the fact that the market continues to grow. As it grows, you bring in a
larger variety of people, and individual segments within the installed
base also grow."

Market growth can carry dangers as well. "Activision ran into
difficulty a couple of years ago. Our mistake was with trying to go to too
many different market segments, trying to fragment ourselves too
significantly."

With Bruce Davis as the new president and CEO, Activision's recent
surge to renewed profitability shows that the company learned
important lessons from its slump. "Now we've focused in on the
products that have been most successful for us. We're channeling in
on those areas that work best — sports software, entertainment software,
creativity and productivity software, and not taking too many
forays out into the never-never land of 'who knows what this prod
uct is.'"

Still, Activision is willing to take some risks. "We will occasionally
gamble, but we'll make sure we have the core business taken care of
before we do."

Within the proven categories, Activision is still committed to extending
the capabilities of its software. "We're trying to create the
experience and the environment of each of our games, throughout the
software, the packaging, and the documentation, so that players actually
feel that they're participating. We're moving beyond action/arcade
type run-and-shoot games and moving toward giving somebody a
full-blown experience."

Thus, new Activision products such as Gamestar's *Top Fuel Eliminator*
offer players the chance to customize drag racers to the conditions
of various tracks. *The Last Ninja* will put martial arts skills in
the midst of a quest type of story.

Is there a universal game, a game that will sell 15 million copies?
"Consumer taste is so varied that to find one thing that appeals to
millions of people would be difficult. To find a market that big, you'd
need, for one thing, to have many more computers in the home.

"But that's a double-edged sword. To get more computers into
the home you need better software that appeals to more people. As
entertainment software becomes better, more people will become
interested in computers."

**Roger Buoy, Mindscape**<br>
*"In a decade, we'll be well on our way to projected environments,
where you can, through holographic projection, actually take part in an
adventure."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/roger-buoy.jpg" alt="Roger Buoy">

Roger Buoy, president and CEO of Mindscape, looks over the company's
four-year history and sees the evolution of entertainment software
as being shaped by the growth of both hardware capabilities and software
development skills.

"The most dramatic change has been the introduction of the 16-bit
computers such as the ST and the Amiga, and more recently the GS.
They've brought a whole new level to game-play quality. We're gradually
getting nearer the same quality that people expect to see on their TV
sets. That's the progression that will continue until we finally reach that
accepted standard, which we're all striving to achieve."

For all their advanced capabilities, the 16-bit machines face some
problems. It will be a while before the 16-bit machines completely supersede
the 8-bit machines. "The problem right now is marketing
support for the 16-bit machines. Their market penetration is far below
what Atari and Commodore in particular would have expected to
achieve. The price has to come down before they become wide-spread,
but also those companies have to focus their marketing. They
have to decide what they want their machines to be. It's hard to push an
Amiga as a professional work station and as an entertainment
product at the same time."

There has been simultaneous growth in the ability to use 8-bit
machines such as the Commodore 64 and 128. "We've learned to get a
lot more out of 8-bit machines. Looking at a product such as our
*Superstar Ice Hockey*, compared with what was a terrific product
four years ago, the older product looks very crude. We're seeing
some terrific products coming out for the 64 and the IBM PC, which
are six- and seven-year-old architectures."

There are certain qualifications against which any piece of entertainment
software must be measured. What does Buoy look for in a
new product? "A couple of things. One is terrific depth, a product that
kids and adults won't get tired of very quickly. Defender of the Crown
is a good example of this and, again, *Superstar Ice Hockey*." Buoy
feels that as a result of their depth, such games become experiences
rather than just pastimes.

"In another dimension you have arcade games that are so superior
in terms of their addictiveness that you can't leave them alone."
Mindscape is presently preparing two arcade releases, *Paperboy* and
*Gauntlet*, based on two arcade classics.

"On the one hand, you're looking for tremendous depth, but
depth of game design includes arcade games. In some ways arcade
games theoretically haven't changed a great deal from what we
were doing in 1983. You can still be extremely successful, provided the
game design is deep enough to provide a very easy-to-play, easy-to-comprehend
arcade product."

Perhaps the deepest of all of Mindscape's games, and in many
ways the antithesis of an arcade experience, is *Balance of Power*,
which simulates the complexity of interrelationships among the
world's powerful and emerging nations. Is there a future for such
games? "When I first published *Balance of Power*, people thought I was
crazy. They saw it as a niche product that would not be successful."
The game had been, in fact, originally commissioned by another
publisher. "The game was just left to languish. No one wanted to do
it." Buoy's instincts were right. "Before Christmas, we'll have done
over 100,000 copies."

Not bad for a "niche" product. But aren't all products niche or category
products? "We see several market niches, types of games that
appeal to different folks."

Is there room for new ideas? Buoy thinks there is. "I'm prepared
to take a risk on something new and which represents an opportunity.
And there are some things I think you should do just because it needs
to be done. *Balance of Power* was like that — it was a product that had
so much love and care put into it, and a year and a half of [developer]
Chris Crawford's time, that the apparent quality, and the thought behind
it, and its depth, were all just phenomenal. It had to be published.
It's a great piece of work."

What comes next? "As a followup to *Balance of Power*, Chris has
*Trust and Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot*. It's a new type of product,
involving artificial personality."

In this game, scheduled for release later this year, the player faces
the challenge of establishing communications with six different
aliens. Buoy admits that *Siboot* is more of a risk than was *Balance of
Power*. "*Siboot* is so radically different that it's obviously a publishing
gamble. No one's ever done this before. It doesn't fall within conventional
lines. But the program's intent is good and the amount of
work that's gone into it is phenomenal. *Siboot* is very advanced in its
design. It's a fun game, but it's also a very intellectual game. You've got
to *think* about it. If you don't want to think about it, and you want
something that's more of an arcade experience, it's not for you."

As Buoy points out, no game can appeal to everyone. Whether in
arcade games, sports simulations, or intellectual adventures, Buoy is
determined to continue developing Mindscape's potential.

He has a clear vision of the company's future and of the sorts of
games that lie ahead. In the next few years, he suggests, "we'll be
pretty close to TV-quality images, and interactive media will be available
using compact disc or laser disc technology."

And farther down the road? "In a decade, we'll be well on our
way to projected environments, where you can be in a room and
through holographic projection actually take part in an adventure."

**Peter Doctorow, Accolade**<br>
*"You like to push the boundaries of enjoyment."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/peter-doctorow.jpg" alt="Peter Doctorow">

Peter Doctorow, vice president of design and development for Accolade,
has been involved with computers for more than two decades,
working first as a programmer in higher-order languages and in real
time assembly language.

Doctorow entered the consumer electronics industry in 1983,
when he joined Nolan Bushnell at Androbot. "The company doesn't
exist any longer, but at that time we were involved in the development
of home robots. The heart of the product was basically a computer
on wheels. It was called 'BOB' — Brains On Board."

Serving as director of product development for Androbot provided
Doctorow with many challenges. "We spent a lot of time
figuring out what we could and could not do in software for this
robot." The job gave Doctorow much food for thought. "I was in
volved in software, and directly in the conceptualization of software
capabilities." From Androbot, Doctorow moved to Accolade about a
year ago, where he's now applying his experience to developing entertainment
software. With games such as *Hardball*, *Ace of Aces*, *Mean
18*, and the new *Test Drive!* and *Apollo 18: Mission to the Moon*, Accolade
has continued to broaden its approach to entertainment software,
with the added effect of further enhancing Doctorow's understanding
of the consumer marketplace.

What makes a game success ful? "If I knew that, I wouldn't be
vice president of product development. I would be *king*!"

More seriously, he points out that numerous factors play a part in
determining a game's success or failure. "One element is timing, another
is luck. A variety of things have to come together at just the
right time. It's not just the product, it's also the packaging and the distribution
channels."

Equally important is the consumer. "The market itself plays a
role — what the market wants to buy is a big factor. Success is a function
of what time of year a product is sold. It's a function of what hardware
the game is written for, of how many marketing dollars are spent
not only by the publisher but also the hardware manufacturers."

Included among the factors is the product itself. "Success can be
affected by what the product looks like, what category the product falls
into. Success is also a function of how deep and how playable the
product is."

Doctorow emphasizes that his list of factors is not complete. "The
formula is not precise, it's not a scientific evaluation."

Development of entertainment software is not for the faint-hearted.
"There is great gamble involved." Getting a product from development
to market, "means a commitment of people and money — for a
*possible* payback. When you go to Las Vegas, your payback can occur
within seconds. In the software market, your payback is perhaps 18
months down the road."

The payback is worth the wait, Doctorow feels, and the chance of
failure is worth the gamble. "We're not so strictly bound up in just dollars
and cents, but we're developing a medium for entertainment, for a
recreational market. People like to participate in recreational activities.
It's a nice feeling to pull your hair out and gnash your teeth for
months, and develop a product that's successful and gets good reviews
and favorable word-of-mouth. That's what we're in the business for. You like to push the
boundaries of enjoyment."

Doctorow wants to see computer games that involve several
players, rather than one or two. "We would love to see more group- or
family-involvement-type computer games. We took a risk and
released a couple of products, *Killed Until Dead* and *Comics*, both of
which are an awful lot more fun
when there are several people
crowded around the monitor.
We've learned, though, that it's
tough to get groups around
monitors."

In part, the impulse toward group games is mitigated by the nature
of the computer itself. "One of the nice things about software is that
you can play by yourself. You don't have to have 18 players to enjoy a
game of baseball. You don't need a foursome to play a round of golf."

The solitaire tendency concerns Doctorow. "I am hopeful that
computers will not contribute to the attitude that people should not be
social in the way that television contributed to the antisocialization
of the human race. People turn on the TV and they go into a coma. I
would be hopeful that the computer wouldn't do that. It would be
very nice if the computer added to the socialization of the human race.
The computer has the capability of bringing people together."

Will Accolade be pursuing "so cial" computer games? Doctorow
chuckles. "It's something we won't give up on yet. I do think that we
will continue to see products and develop products that begin to be a
bit more risky, that try to open up the standards, that represent the
next activities that will entertain people."

**Michael Dornbrook, Infocom**<br>
*"With text there are always new things to do."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/michael-dornbrook.jpg" alt="Michael Dornbrook">

Before there were full-color 3-D graphics, there was text. And now,
with graphics of every variety, there is still text, and one company
that continues to specialize quite successfully in text games only:
Infocom.

Michael Dornbrook, the company's director of marketing, joined
Infocom in 1983 as product manager, although he has been associated
with the company since the 1970s. "I attended M.I.T. with [Infocom
president] Joel Berez, and when Joel was starting Infocom in the late
seventies I was hired to test *Zork* as it was being transferred to microcomputers."
Not previously a fan of computer games, Dornbrook found
himself captivated by the world of *Zork*, and foresaw a huge market for
the game. His foresight was accurate. "*Zork* sold way beyond our
wildest expectations."

Working as a consultant, Dornbrook began creating promotional
materials for *Zork*. He founded the *Zork* user's group, designed maps
and hint books, established a newspaper — *The New Zork Times* (now
called *The Status Line* as a result of a settlement with *The New York
Times*) — and built a successful direct-mail business. "I did anything
that I thought people would be interested in."

In 1983, Dornbrook sold the company his mail-order business,
and joined Infocom as a full-time member of the management team.

Since *Zork*, Infocom has published close to 30 text games, marketing
science-fiction text adventures (*Planetfall*), ghost stories (*Moonmist*),
horror (*The Lurking Horror*), archaeological adventure (*Infidel*),
alternate realities (*Trinity*), bestseller adaptations (*The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy*), and even historical romance (*Plundered Hearts*).

Dornbrook feels that interactive text games are virtually inexhaustible.
"People say, 'What more can you do?' But that's like saying,
'What more can you do with a book?' There have been hundreds
of years of books. People shouldn't see text as a limitation. With text,
there are always new things to do."

The increasing sophistication of microcomputers has allowed Infocom
to assemble increasingly complex adventures. The company
has developed its own programming system, with parsers that offer
large vocabularies and stories that branch in many directions.

"*Trinity* is a good example. We used a new system, and decided to
develop the game for 128K computers. The game needed that much
memory to be effective." Didn't that decision cost them sales? Dornbrook
admits that Infocom was concerned about producing a game
that couldn't tap the huge Commodore 64 market.

"But we sold almost exactly the same number of games that we
would have had *Trinity* also been available for the 64. It led us to
believe that the 128 market is the more active software buying market
now and that there are a lot of 128 owners who are eager to see
games developed for their machines."

Can text games, for all the flexibility they offer, compete with increasingly
dynamic graphics games? "If people are looking for
complete relaxation where they can turn their brains off, our products
aren't what they want. But there are a lot of people who do want to keep
their brains active. I see our market as about 15 percent of the total
home computer market. About one in seven computer users are the
potential for us right now."

Can Infocom continue to grow with that size market share? "I'm
hoping that we can grow by reaching out with different types of text
products. Over time, though, if we really want to reach the whole market —
and I'm not sure that we do — I think we'll have to have a different
kind of product, with less interaction, with less challenge."

As we move to more and more powerful machines, will we see text
adventures moving closer to a real literary experience, to traditional
fictional structures? Will we see great novels become interactive
computer experiences?

"Taking something like *Wuthering Heights*, for example, and
making an interactive experience out of it would be likely to disappoint
people. To be interactive, you need a fairly nonlinear structure.
Most stories are written with very linear structures in mind. The optimal
use of our medium is nonlinear, with different pieces coming together,
with a tree structure that offers
lots of different ways to go and lots of
different possible endings."

Infocom's relation to fiction is like the movies. "It's very difficult
to take a great novel and make it into a great movie. They are very
different. What's best, I think, is to come up with something brand
new, designed specifically for this medium."

The medium itself is in evolution, and that has Dornbrook excited.
"As machines become more powerful, as memory costs go
down and things like compact discs come onto the market, you can still
have the same type of story, but move away from reading."

Text adventures without reading? "Imagine if you could lie in
bed and have a voice-recognition system. When you say, 'Open the
door,' you hear a creak or shrieks in the distance. You could play in the
dark — the game would be all aural. You could have great narrators, different
voices for different people. There would be a much wider potential
market for something like that—simply because there are so
many people who don't read."

Will Infocom be a part of these new media? "Absolutely. We're interactive
storytellers. When we see a medium that lets stories be told,
we're going to jump at it."

**Thomas Frisina, Three Sixty**<br>
*"There's a growing market of con
sumers that don't understand zeros
and ones, they don't like big man
uals, they want to have fun, they
want to enjoy the experience, and
they don't want any obstacles."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/thomas-frisina.jpg" alt="Thomas Frisina">

A founder of Accolade, Tom Frisina left the company earlier this year.
"Everybody with an entrepreneur ial spirit, gets to the point where
they want to do it for themselves. That's why I named my company
Three-Sixty: I've come full circle."

How does starting a software company today differ from the early
days at Accolade? "We started Accolade in 1985 when the entertainment
software industry and the whole home computer industry
were in the doldrums. As it turned out, we had the proper set of experiences,
and the market was ready for innovation. We built the company
to some rather significant heights in a very short time."

Frisina sees both advantages and disadvantages to today's market.
"My advantage today is that I have a track record in the industry.
But it was easier to get people's attention in 1985. The difficulty is
that because the market is healthier, there are more [industry] players
today, who are all much bigger than they were in 1985."

Three-Sixty's first entertainment product was released in September
of this year. "*Dark Castle* is our adaptation of the hit Macintosh
product. We'll be releasing versions for the Commodore, ST, PC, and
Amiga. The game is an implementation of the jumper and climber
platform arcade game. We've tried to give players a tremendous sense
of realism. And we've added a number of innuendos and characterizations."
Three-Sixty will follow *Dark Castle* in 1988 with
*Harpoon*, an adaptation of the World War III board game on
which Tom Clancy's *Red Storm Rising* was based. Versions will be
available for all machines.

Is the variety of machines a dilemma? Frisina sees a conflict at
the heart of the market. "The conflict exists both from the developers'
point of view and the customer's. Developers want to
make the best entertainment programs they can, but if they use the
most powerful and sophisticated machines, they have a lesser chance
of selling a lot of copies.

"Conversely, if developers choose to go where the money is —
the Commodore and IBM environments—they end up never satisfying
themselves as creators, because those machines don't have the capabilities
of the higher-end machines. It's like the difference
between going to see a 16mm movie, and then seeing the same movie
in 70mm Panavision with Dolby sound. The market really limits the
scope of what a talented creator can do."

There's a consumer-based conflict as well. "I think that eight-bit
machine users are satisfied with their machines, only because most
of them don't really know what an ST or an Amiga looks like. They
only have as a reference the products they purchased previously for
their machines. If the industry continues to push the state of the art
forward on those machines, then the customer can continue to be
satisfied with their eight-bit machines. But when they see an ST or
an Amiga for the first time, *then* you have a conflict."

Where does Apple fit? "Apple is a real aggravation for me. They
have disavowed any knowledge of a home market since their inception.
They don't promote products for the home market, even though
there are a lot of Apple IIs in homes, and a growing number of
Macintoshes."

Ironically, Apple may have a machine that's ideal for the home
user. "The IIGS can satisfy the home market maybe better than
any other machine. It offers graphics and sound capabilities that the
Amiga and the ST have, combined with a name that customers can
trust." Again, Frisina feels that price stands in the way of substantial
market penetration. "When the IIGS comes down in price, it could
be the ultimate answer to the home market; it has everything the home
user could want."

Frisina is concerned about today's software. "We have a terrible
problem today with an overabundance of products. There are too
many mediocre products." He sees the lack of quality as
endemic to the way the industry is run. "There's a lack of ingenuity,
and a lack of commitment to releasing fewer products, but making
them bigger, better, and more satisfying to the consumer."

Can this be solved? "I don't think there's going to be a solution.
Bigger companies are either in the midst of public offerings, or are
public, or have stockholders who want to get liquid. And the way to
do that is to get enough revenues. It's my belief that there's not
enough commitment out there to raise revenues by putting out fewer
products that sell more, rather than more products that sell fewer units."

Frisina plans to concentrate his company's energies on a couple of
games each year. He feels certain the public will respond to his approach.
"My company is intended to satisfy the growing home market
of consumers that have purchased audio and video and car stereo and
compact dies. Now, with their discretionary income they are looking
to purchase a home computer for the first time. They don't understand
zeros and ones, they don't like big manuals, they want to have
fun, they want to enjoy the experience, and they don't want any
obstacles. And that's what I.'m going to give them."

**Bing Gordon, Electronic Arts**<br>
*"We're talking about using the power to give something more like an
interactive television experience."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/bing-gordon.jpg" alt="Bing Gordon">

Vice president of the entertainment division at Electronic Arts, Bing
Gordon sees the entertainment software industry as being on the
verge of broadening its market — a broadening that's the result of
hardware advances as well as more sophisticated software. The two go
hand in hand.

"The takeoff of Tandy and the IBM compatibles in the home has
opened up a whole new computer market. These machines start with
about the same amount of power as a Commodore 64, and then beckon
us almost toward minicomputer power. It's a real challenge to do a
program that's a winner at the low end with 256K of memory and four
colors, and then go all the way up and support an EGA card, 640K,
and a hard drive."

Does the evolution of hardware spell an end to the Commodore
64-level games? Gordon doesn't think so, noting that different
machines offer different challenges and opportunities.

"The 64 has always excelled at games that let you move a lot of
sprites around, with pretty graphics and good sound. The IBM-class
machines take a little more power to drive graphics that are competitive
with 64 graphics, but because of the disk storage and additional
memory, you have a lot more room for math. For simulations, that lets
us do incredible amounts of high speed physics calculations."

The ability to do those calculations lends an ever greater realism
to simulation games. "The aerodynamics in *Chuck Yeager's Advanced
Flight Trainer*, for example, can be that much more sophisticated. With
*Earl Weaver Baseball*, there's something like 200 real-world calculations
between the time the pitcher winds up and the time the play is
finished, all dealing with the batting average against a particular
pitcher, the effect of the wind, the speed of the pitch, and so on. It's
not possible to do all of that on the Commodore 64, where you compromise
the math or the graphics. With the IBM-class machines, we
use 48 or 64K of working RAM just for statistical calculations."

This power lets experts such as Yeager and Weaver contribute
skills and experience to simulations that come closer and closer to approximating
reality.

Gordon suggests that there are games that so far only have been
imagined and categories that are as yet underexploited. Interactive fiction
is an example. "Today there are basically two kinds of interactive
stories. There's the text adventure where you get a 30-page short
story and try to make it into a 40-hour experience through a bunch of
logic puzzles. Or there's the dungeon fantasy with hit points and
tons of melee. Text adventures right now are sort of like Double-Crostic
versions of novels.

"With the advent of machines with more on-line storage and more
audio/visual capability, there will probably be ways to give someone
a first-person story experience without having to impose such artificial
slowdown points."

Hardware will likewise exert a large influence on graphics software,
but its arrival won't be quick. Even the most advanced machines
on the market currently can go only so far. "Look, for example, at Compact
Disc-Interactive (CDI) technology, with 400 megabytes of disc
storage."

As Gordon points out, 400 megabytes is a finite amount of memory,
easily used up. "It costs us, on the Amiga, something like 18K a
second for digitized sound, and 20K for a screen. Movies go 60 frames a
second, but even if you figure 5 frames a second, you're still looking
at an animation cost of 50K a second. That's 1 megabyte for 20 seconds,
3 megabytes a minute. So 400 megabytes can give you roughly
two hours of just sitting and watching."

Will CDI's arrival change the nature of the home computer market?
"There might be a divergence of the market. Certainly there will
be a broadening of it."

That broadening will only come, however, if computers become
easier to operate. "For all that we in the industry talk about the
ease of use of computers, I don't think they're a whole lot easier to
use than a ham radio. We've found with different products ways to go
after niches, but we haven't been able to make software yet that persuades
a broad spectrum of people to walk by a window and say, 'Hey,
I want to buy *that*!' It's still more abstract and harder to use than a lot
of people are willing to put up with. Right now, there's so much expertise
and experience that you need to have in order to get the enjoyment
out of a rich and deep computer game, that we've shut ourselves off
from a part of the marketplace that just wants to sit and be entertained."

Gordon makes it clear that Electronic Arts is not simply pursuing
"transparent" software. "We're talking about using the power to
give something that can be more like an interactive movie or an interactive
television experience."

**Sid Meier, MicroProse**<br>
*"We're just at the beginning of what can be done with games."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/sid-meier.jpg" alt="Sid Meier">

Sid Meier, cofounder and senior game designer at MicroProse, has
been fascinated with games for nearly as long as he can remember.
"I've always been interested in games since I was young — board
games, card games, war games." In college, Meier began considering a
career in some aspect of the computer industry. "I did mainline, traditional
computing for a while with a couple of companies."

Personal computers presented Meier with the opportunity to combine
his gaming and technological interests. "It was a natural match. I
got an Atari 800 and started to play around with it." Meier met Bill
Stealey and the two started MicroProse five years ago.

"At first, MicroProse was a part-time thing, but our games
were fairly well received, and we turned that into a company." The
company's growth, "gave me the opportunity to write games fulltime,
and it's continued to grow from there."

An air-combat simulation put MicroProse on the map. "*F-15
Strike Eagle* was the first really successful game we had. Since then
we've put out *Silent Service*, *Gunship*, and *Pirates!*"

*Pirates!* is Meier's most ambitious game, recreating Caribbean
history, with players taking the roles of buccaneers or pirates. The
game has strategic, diplomatic, economic, and arcade elements, as well
as a detailed social and historical context.

Meier wanted to write an adventure game — with a difference.
"The adventure games that I'd played weren't really what I'd
wanted out of an adventure game. They were either all text, or they
were very numeric oriented. I wanted to just jump in and be the character
myself — in a lot of adventure games, you're not the character,
you're playing another thing which is the character. Instead of directly
playing the role, you play it as a puppet.

I wanted a game where your skills, reactions, and decisions
caused things to happen. Not how many hit points or agility you happen
to have."

The game had to have animation and action, as well as strategy
and planning. "We tried to put all those things in the game. The situation
demanded it. If we'd been doing a game — as some of our other
games are — with helicopters and airplanes, that's primarily action.
When you think of pirates, there's action, but there's also intrigue,
trading, politics, and so on."

How long did creating *Pirates!* take? "I spent about nine or ten
months on it myself." No game, of course, is assembled alone. "We
had an artist working on the game for five months, and our research
and documentation took another four or five months. In all, *Pirates!*
represents one-and-a-half to two years of work split up among three
people."

Are we moving toward games with deeper, more fully realized
backgrounds? "Yes — as long as it doesn't intrude on the payability of
the game. The more context you have, the more real it is to people,
and the more fun they'll have playing it. The down side is that you
don't want to get so wrapped up in the historical part that you take
away the playability. It's a fine line between presenting it and being
able to play it."

Are games such as *Pirates!* being produced because the technology
and programming skills permit their development, or are they a
response to an increasingly sophisticated consumer? Meier thinks several
factors are at work.

"People are really learning their computers. You can see this as
far back as the Atari 2600 machine. If you compare what was available
when the 2600 was first introduced, and what was available just a few
years later, there's a night-and-day difference. The same thing is happening
with personal computers — programmers are learning how to
get more and more out of them."

Currently Meier and MicroProse are at work adapting *Red
Storm Rising*, Tom Clancy's bestselling novel of World War III. The
novel spans several continents, with combat and drama on land
and in the air and both on and under the sea.

Other current MicroProse projects include *Airborne Ranger*, an arcade-style
game, and *Space*, a science fiction game which Meier
says will fall somewhere between *Pirates!* and *Gunship* in terms of the
gaming experience it offers.

Meier looks forward to the day when the majority of home computers
offer advanced graphics and digitized sound, but he feels those
elements will eventually be taken for granted.

"For a short time people are going to respond to the graphics and
the sound, but after that it's still going to be a question of what's in
the product: What is the experience that I get out of the game — is it fun,
is it challenging? Those are the kinds of games that we want to put out."

**Chip Morningstar, Lucasfilm Games**<br>
"Habitat *is the sort of game people have been speculating about for a
long time."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/chip-morningstar.jpg" alt="Chip Morningstar">

Chip Morningstar wants thousands of people to play his game — all at
once.

As games designer for Lucasfilm Games, Morningstar is working
on an on-line gaming experience called *Habitat*, which is nothing less
than an attempt to fabricate an open-ended environment where
players will, in many ways, make their rules as the game proceeds.

"*Habitat* is a fictitious universe that you access via telecommunications
using your Commodore 64. The monitor represents your view
of the world, with various animated characters moving around on the
screen. One of those characters is you, the others are other people
who are simultaneously logged into this on-line service."

How many people can play *Habitat* at once? "There's not really
any limit — we're doing this on QuantumLink. They support a
large number of subscribers, and conceivably they all could play
*Habitat*. All the players will be in one common universe." Not all of
them will be in the same local area. As local limits are reached, *Habitat*
steers new players to new areas. "We call each area of *Habitat* a region,
like the notion of a room in an adventure game or a screen in a
video game. The screen will show the objects, scenery, and people located
in each region. *Habitat*'s characters are called avatars, and there's
a limit of six 'live' avatars per region, with a higher number of
'ghosts' — players without bodies — per region.

"Ghosts can move from region to region, they can turn themselves
into avatars when they find an open region where they want to do
things, or they can simply watch the action. Ghosting allows for theaters,
where half a dozen avatars may put on a show, and hundreds
of ghosts sit back and serve as the

Morningstar notes that while ghosting offers oportunities, the
main motivation for creating this aspect of *Habitat* was technical.
"We needed to eliminate traffic congestion problems. If you run
into a crowded area between regions, just turn into a ghost and
breeze on past. When the ghost finds a region with fewer than six
avatars, he can become corporeal, an avatar."

What sort of world is *Habitat*? What sorts of things can avatars do
or ghosts witness? "One of our objectives is to make the experience as
varied and open-ended as possible. We want it to be different things for
different people with different interests.

"Activities range from pure socializing, adding a visual and kinesthetic
dimension to one of the things that people already use online
services for. There will be activities which are planned and
organized such as adventures, treasure hunts, road rallies, as well as
board games like checkers and chess, or a capture-the-flag game
that we're working on."

Habitat is an experiment in social structure as well as being a
game. "Urban areas, the core inhabited parts of the universe, are
set up as weapons-free zones where you can't attack other avatars. Outlying
areas will be a little more rough-and-tumble. One of the
things that we expect to happen is that people who are into different
styles of behavior will drift in different directions."

Despite weapons rules and traffic patterns, Morningstar is
committed to making *Habitat* as open an experience as possible.
"One of the things that I'm most interested in is seeing what sorts of
social structures evolve. We're not imposing too much in the way of
government on this world. *Habitat* is pretty much an anarchy."

Anarchy doesn't necessarily mean chaos. "Whenever you get
more than three people together in one place you get something resembling
political behavior. It will be interesting to see if all the people
who live in a particular town decide that they want to have a town
council. The game will leave it up to them to set up their government.
*Habitat* is a sort of sociological laboratory, as well as a game."

Technical work on *Habitat* began in late 1985, although the earliest
glimmerings of it occurred to Morningstar about a year before
that. Now, the work is coming to gether, with play testing under way
and hopes for the game being on line late in 1987.

Morningstar is aware of the risks involved in *Habitat*. "We're
the guinea pigs. *Habitat* is the sort of game that people have been
speculating about for a long time. If we're successful, I think we'll be
seeing a lot more of this sort of thing."

Looking farther ahead, Morningstar sees great opportunities for
on-line games. "With the advent of faster computers, larger memories,
better graphics and telecommunications, some of the constraints will
be removed from what is possible online. It's conceivable that we'll
someday have interactive cable television channels, where several
thousand people will be able to share experiences in ways that were
never before possible."

**David Morse, Epyx**<br>
*"I want people to say we make the
best games on the market."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/david-morse.jpg" alt="David Morse">

Chairman and C.E.O. of Epyx, David Morse is experienced in both the
hardware and software sides of the industry. The founder and president
of Amiga Computer, Morse remained with Amiga for almost a
year after selling the company to Commodore in 1984. Because
Amiga was designed to serve many purposes in computer entertainment,
Morse established close relationships with many of the leading
manufacturers of entertainment software.

Asked to join Epyx's board of directors earlier this year, Morse
found that many of his interests and goals coincided with those of
the company.

He is enthusiastic about prospects for both his company and the
entertainment software industry. "The main thing that's going on
right now is that the business has gotten down to the main companies
that have proved themselves survivors." It's a competitive situation
that he thinks makes for better games.

The industry shakeout that has left only a few key players, rather
than the dozens of entertainment software companies just a few years
ago, coincides with a maturing of programming skills. "We're starting
to get real close to the limitations of the hardware on many
systems, with the possible exception of the Amiga. But it's amazing
the ways that Epyx and other companies have found to make machines
like the Apple and the 64 and even the IBM do some very
advanced operations that nobody even thought of doing just a couple
of years ago."

These increased capabilities are built upon foundations that
have taken years to acquire. "It's a very gradual build, with the result
that we seem to get smarter and smarter about how to do things on
computers."

Development of new products has, as a result, become more intensive.
"Our most recent introduction is a good example. *California Games*
represents more than three man-years of development time. That's a
*lot* — but that's what it takes to make good products." Commitment
of those resources has paid off, with reorders flowing into Epyx
quickly after the game's early-summer release.

For all the shared experience and knowledge, there are still new
areas to explore. "We have a couple of brainstorming ideas a year. Typically,
we'll come up with a few ideas that are improvements on existing
games. But we also come up with two or three ideas that are
totally new, that nobody's thought of before. Of course, just because
it's a new idea doesn't mean that it's a good idea."

Despite the arrival of the Amiga and the 5T, and the increased
market presence of IBM compatibles, Morse sees a lot of life
left in the classic game machine, the 64. "It's probably a better game
machine than, say, the Sega or the Nintendo. Graphically, there's a lot
that can be done with the machine. The 64 accounts for a lower percentage
of our business than in the past, although the unit volumes are
holding up and actually increasing."

Other machines, though, offer more memory and other capabilities
than the 64. Is it a problem to develop for the 64 and then port the
game to other machines? "It's relatively easy to convert from the 64 to
the Amiga or vice versa, despite some obvious limitations. But if you
really want to see limitations, you need to look at IBM machines.
That's the most difficult machine to develop for."

Will that change? Will IBM compatibles become more serious
entertainment machines in the near future? "Obviously, the ability to
play entertainment software is one way to sell machines."

Where are we headed over the next five years? "Two years ago, for
example, the Amiga was the hottest machine around. In many ways, it
still is. But today, technically, we can build machines that would run
faster, do even better graphics, and be far easier to program."

Having participated in the industry from both the hardware and
software sides, Morse is excited about meeting the future from the
vantage point Epyx offers. "I like product development work. Of all
the things I do, that's my favorite. At Amiga, we were working on one
product, admittedly a very complex one, but still only a single product."

Epyx offers more diversity. "At any given time there are probably
10 or 15 projects going on. That's very interesting and exciting to me
to be involved in all of that."

Morse's goals for the next few years? "I want us to be the best
software company. I'd like people to say Epyx has the best games, the
best variety of products. I think we're there in some aspects, and on
our way there in others. That kind of growth is what's going to make
Epyx a fun place to be."

**Ezra Sidran**<br>
*"Imagination is the only limitation you have. Imagination is a lot more
important than programming skill."*

<img class="float-left-narrow" src="/public/img/articles/compute-the-future-of-computer-games/ezra-sidran.jpg" alt="Ezra Sidran">

Freelance software designer Ezra Sidran has just completed his first
major product, *Universal Military Simulator* (*UMS*) for Firebird. Sidran
attended Marycrest College in Iowa, the only college in the country of
fering a degree program in computer graphics. Sidran's own
degree is in computer animation, and he has linked his academic
background with his interest in miltary history and war games.

"I invested a year of my life in writing *Universal Military Simulator*."
That year will have stretched to two-and-a-half years by the time
*UMS* is on the market late in 1987.

Because he was working freelance, and would not submit the
game to publishers until it was completed, Sidran was free to follow
his own instincts in pursuit of the creation of a strategy game that
differed from others on the market. He wanted to come up with a game
that would not only include historical scenarios, but also offer gamers
the chance to set up their own battles, and even design their own battlefields.
Most of all, he wanted the game to have a different look and
feel.

"It's a 3-D game in which players can create and design their own
three-dimensional maps, rotate them, zoom in on areas." Those
maps can be filled with armies from any time period, equipped with
weaponry ranging from bows and arrows to modern firepower to fantasy
implements." By the time the game was finished, *UMS* had expanded
to 22,000 lines of executable code.

Sidran traces the genesis of the program to an artificial-intelligence
program he wrote in college, as well as to other strategy games he developed
as he learned programming. Sidran wrote *UMS* in C, a decision
he appreciates now that he is porting the game to other machines.

In retrospect, Sidran recognizes the size of the challenge he set
himself. "I have to admit that I didn't have any idea how big the
job was. Only now do I understand that the reason nobody had done a
game like this before was because they all understood how difficult a
job it would be."

Dedicated to historical accuracy, Sidran put in as much time in
libraries as in writing code. "*UMS* represents a lot of library time.
Before I wrote the first line of code I spent a full month in the library,
not only doing historical research, but also doing market research. I
wanted to make sure I had a fight ing chance of succeeding with the
program."

Sidran attended the 1986 Summer Consumer Electronics Show in
Chicago in order to talk with game publishers. He found the entertainment
software industry to be friendlier than even he expected —
one major publisher passed on *UMS*, but introduced him to Marten
Davies of Firebird, who became Sidran's publisher. "I had a contract
for the program about five days later."

With *Universal Military Simulator* ready for release, Sidran is
hard at work on new products. "I've got three coming up. I'll be
working with Encyclopedia Britannica next, doing a dinosaurs game
for younger players." The new game will be developed for the PC
first and then for the Apple IIGS and the 64.

Sidran also sees himself doing more strategy games. "We haven't
yet scratched the surface of what we'll be able to do in simulations.
What we call high-tech will be laughable just a few years from
now. Twenty years from now will be a great time to be a programmer.
It will be easier to develop programs, the graphics and sound will
be better, everything will be more sophisticated. Right now, we're at
the computer equivalent of movable type for printing presses."

Sidran cites 3-D as an example. "3-D is an illusion. But there are all
kinds of wonderful 3-D illusions that you can do on computers.
We'll be seeing a lot more vector graphics 3-D in the near future."

What would an ideal game in clude? What hardware developments
will make these ideal games possible? "The biggest thing is that
computers will have much more RAM, much larger memory areas.
Also, we'll be looking at larger disk storage space. Even for the ST and
the Amiga, you have more RAM than you have disk space. So disks
have got to get bigger, or people have to get more hard drives."

For all the new technologies, he also feels that we haven't yet
used up the possibilities of existing technology. "We haven't exhausted
any of our systems, not by a long shot. All good programmers look at
any problem as solvable. Step one is defining the problem and planning
solutions. As always, imagination is the only limitation you have.
Imagination is a lot more important than programming skill. That's
what attracted me to computers from the beginning. There aren't
any physical limitations to what you can and can't do."

Is there need for new ideas? "They're screaming for new ideas.
There's more work than you can shake a stick at."

Currently anticipating a brief vacation from programming, Sidran
is nonetheless looking forward to moving on to new frontiers. "I'm
planning a new kind of adventure game. It calls for an exceptionally
large 3-D map that adventurers will wander around in."

Sidran's adventurers face a situation that he understands well.
"Writing a program is like starting out on an incredibly long journey.
The sooner you put one foot in front of the other, the faster you get
to the end."