In 1976 at Yale, I took the only computer course I would ever take. I got a “D,” the worst grade I would ever get.
Five years later, I was making my living writing home computer games, and would continue to do so for the next nine years.
In 1976, the phrase “home computer” did not exist. Yale had just proudly installed its first PDP-11 (the size of a large closet). No longer would students need to save their data on thick poker decks of punch-hole card stock. Open reels of shiny magnetic tape were the thing. Each student purchased his own reel of tape for $20. I kept the tape from unraveling with a rubber band; it didn’t even have a case.
We learned languages like Fortran, APL, and LISP from a professor whose first language was Hungarian. I turned every programming assignment into a game. This did not please the professor, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Not for an instant did I think computers had anything to do with my future. I majored in music. I was, so I thought, born to be creative, and nothing with the word “science” in it (like computer science) qualified as being creative. Trying to be creative in that computer science course got me my lousy “D.” Message received, loud and clear.
It was only four years later, as my first attempts at a post-graduate career were foundering, that I noticed the computer game genie escaping the bottle at local taverns and 7-11’s in the Seattle area. What were those machines over there in the corner? They weren’t pinball. They weren’t one of those blocky black-and-white Pong screens. They had color, multiple moving images, and joysticks.
Joy. That’s what you felt when the moving images responded to your hand movements. Wow. I’m a part of these images. I’m in these images.
And every couple of weeks, another type of machine magically appeared, expanding this new realm of motion and – what was that new word – interactivity?
Here comes Lunar Lander – with its emulation of physics. Is this where games will go – all studious and tutorial?
Here comes Pac-Man – with that steady treadmill rhythm, and brilliant turn-on-your-enemies twist.
Here come the tanks in Battlezone – with those vivid neon-crisp vectors throbbing across the screen. Will games now be drawn by these cool blue lines rather than with red hot pixels?
Here comes Missile Command – with that stubborn little bowling ball of a controller. Will joysticks become passé?
Here comes Defender – with its smooth side-scrolling. Could that landscape keep going on forever?
Does all this feel a bit random and chaotic? Well, it was. Make no mistake about it: No one knew what these new audio/visual experiences were going to become. No one knew what they were supposed to be.
No one knew anything.