Spacewar! Was the First Video Game to Spread Between Computers
Zusammenfassung
Spacewar!, created at MIT in 1962 on a DEC PDP-1 minicomputer, was the first video game to be widely distributed across multiple computer installations. It spread through the small network of research institutions that owned PDP-1s — an early form of software distribution that predated commercial software by a decade. Stewart Brand, who covered a Spacewar! tournament for Rolling Stone in 1972, called it “the clearest expression of the computer’s unique capacity.” The game directly inspired the founders of Atari and seeded the commercial video game industry.
The Game
Steve Russell, a graduate student at MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club, began writing Spacewar! in 1961 and completed a playable version by February 1962. Two spaceships — “the needle” and “the wedge” — engaged in combat while orbiting a star with realistic gravitational physics. Each ship had limited fuel and a finite number of torpedoes. The entire game was approximately 9 kilobytes of assembly code.
The PDP-1 had a circular cathode-ray tube display that was unusual for a computer at the time — most computers had no display at all. The vector graphics were sharp and compelling. Within weeks of completion, Spacewar! was the most-used program on the MIT PDP-1; staff played it during lunch breaks and late into the night.
Viral Distribution Before the Internet
The source code spread by a mechanism that had no name yet: when DEC shipped a new PDP-1, the Spacewar! binary was often included on the paper tape. The game propagated to research labs, universities, and defense contractors that owned the machine. It became the first piece of software to be used at virtually every installation of a particular computer.
Russell gave the game away freely. He saw no mechanism for commercial software distribution and no reason to restrict what he considered a demonstration of the machine’s capabilities.
The Industry It Started
Nolan Bushnell played Spacewar! as a student at the University of Utah and was transfixed. In 1971, he created Computer Space — a coin-operated Spacewar! variant — which became the first commercially sold arcade game. In 1972, he founded Atari and created Pong. The commercial video game industry traces a direct line from Spacewar! through Bushnell to the $200 billion industry that exists today.