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Press Start

  |  Command Line Heroes Team  
Application development and delivery
Open source
Tech history

Command Line Heroes • • Press Start | Command Line Heroes

Press Start | Command Line Heroes

About the episode

Before the terms 'open source' and 'internet' were even coined—there were gamers. They created proto-open source communities, sharing and building upon each other's work. For many programmers, gaming led them to their careers.

In this episode, we explore the creative free-for-all of early game development over ARPANET. Game development brings together a massive mix of creative and programming talent. But while creating video games started as an open process, a lot has changed. Hear how you can get involved in building our very own Command Line Heroes game—and in the spirit of games, hunt around for this episode's Easter egg.

Command Line Heroes Team Red Hat original show

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Transcript

A group of friends is partway through a game of D&D. They lean in together and listen to their dungeon master. Okay, so you're casting the, so yeah, you grab your staff and you channel the forces of nature into it. And you can see vines coming out of it and it just bonds to you. And you, it feels differently weighted in your hands now and you feel much more powerful. So that's what you do, you cast a spell that surrounds... Alright, so you do that and you still have an action. What do you do? Okay, a confession: when I was growing up I never sat in a basement playing D&D. I did not long to be a dungeon master, whatever that is. I did not find my first boyfriend while LARPing in the woods or bond with my BFF while cruising the aisles at Comic-Con. It just wasn't me. But what I do get is that games brought people together into communities. And, for a huge number of developers out there, games were the gateway drug into programming. It was games that taught them about computers and got them in a room where they could geek out with pride for the first time. It was the love of gameplay that made them want to build a game themselves. Then go beyond gameplay to just build. And that's something I'm very much into. In our first season, we explored where open source came from, and how it's shaping every part of the developer's world. This season we're living right on the command line itself: what it means to be a developer today. And all that starts with finding your people. So let the games begin. Before the terms open source and internet were even coined, there were gamers. And those gamers wanted to connect with each other. When the world started going online, they were at the front of the pack. And they would build whatever it took to connect and share and— Oh, and it goes up. Oh nice. And it goes crazy. Yep, the weapon's damage die becomes 8. There you go, you were right. So stab it, yeah. Which, the druid-- I did it! Yeah, and play. I'm Saron Yitbarek and this is season two of Command Line Heroes, an original podcast from Red Hat. Today's episode, Press Start, gaming and open source communities. You are standing at the end of a road before a small, brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. Do you recognize those words? If you do, ten points for knowing your history. But, if you're like me and they did not ring a bell, those are the opening lines of Colossal Cave Adventure. What is Colossal Cave Adventure? That, my friend, is the 1976 that changed everything. That road, that brick building by the forest, that stream flowing down into a gully, nobody knew it at the time, but this text-based game—yep, no graphics at all—would be a shiny red door that led the way to new forms of community and collaboration. Colossal Cave Adventure was a type of game that's known as a text-based adventure. You interact with the computer by typing in commands: go west, get sword, climb mountain. That's Jon-Paul Dyson. He's a VP at the Strong National Museum of Play and the director of their Center for the History of Electronic Games. So, yeah, pretty fun job. Colossal Cave Adventure was a very different type of game. It was more of a free flowing, exploratory game, like Dungeons and Dragons, which comes out at just this moment in time. And so it opens the imagination. So it was a really revolutionary game. It's no accident that a new kind of game appeared in the mid-'70s. Right at that time, the internet's granddaddy, the ARPANET, was coming to life. What happened is, one of the guys working on ARPANET, a guy named Will Crowther, had this idea for developing this cave exploration game. Now he created this game based loosely on a section of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky that he had explored. And it was really revolutionary in the way that it gave players a chance to explore this environment. But what's interesting was because ARPANET was now around, he went on vacation and someone else, this guy, Don Woods, was able to discover the game, and then make all these adjustments. So almost from the very beginning, the game was a collaborative process because it had been shared on this network. And it was just a good example of how a game could be developed, and modified, improved and then distributed widely because these computers were connected. So immediately after computers become networked, we're starting to use those networks to share games. And those games are evolving along the way. Here's the thing, though: it wasn't just networks improving games, it was also games improving networks. Because the more people wanted to share those games, the more they needed usable forums for a community. So you've got game technology and the communities that love them sort of egging each other on. A positive feedback loop. Likewise, the game developers are inspired by each other, growing off each other's ideas. The ARPANET was hugely fertile ground. Here's Jon-Paul Dyson again: So text-based adventures like Adventure operated at this space that was occupied by pioneering technologists who also knew how to be silly, laugh, and to have fun. Early games really offer a pattern for how communities of developers can work together. Remember, we're not talking about Minecraft here, we're not talking about League of Legends, we're talking about lines of green text on a black screen just reading out a story-based game and inviting you to make your decisions. It's a much simpler gaming culture. But it gave us huge rewards. There's this communitarian belief in the benefits of sharing, that more collaboration produces better results than producing proprietary products. And so the result is that you have games developed that emerged out of communities and that are themselves open to being changed and encouraging people to make changes that might alter the game in minor ways or significant ways. But there's a feeling that if the game is made better, then that's all for the good. And so I think there's this early spirit in the history, especially of computer games, that really is important in pushing forth computer communities. Professor Dennis Jerz has studied the history of games and Colossal Cave Adventure in particular. For him, these proto-open-source communities were a free for all of creativity. The culture at the time involved people building upon and sharing their own ideas. And it was very common to find the source code, and then the first thing you would do is add another room to the existing source code. It was pretty much like the idea of fan fiction, the whole idea that you have people who are creating their own stories that fit in between various chapters of Harry Potter books or here's what happened to the minor characters in Katniss' world from the Hunger Games. This culture of adding to, and elaborating and building upon a main narrative. Want to learn more about early open source community and the origins of open source gaming? There's loads more content waiting for you over at the Command Line Heroes website. You can dig deeper by visiting redhat.com/comandlineheroes. Before we say goodbye, I want to let you know about a special treat we've got waiting for you over in the show notes. It's the story of Warren Robinett, who created the Atari game Adventure, a game inspired by Colossal Cave Adventure. He tells us how a run-in with his bosses led to the creation of the very first video game Easter egg. It's a great story. A lovely part of our development history, but we wanted to give it the space it deserves. So take a listen over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. Command Line Heroes is an original podcast from Red Hat. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you do your thing. I'm Saron Yitbarek, until next time, keep on coding.

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About the show

Command Line Heroes

During its run from 2018 to 2022, Command Line Heroes shared the epic true stories of developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels, and how they revolutionized the technology landscape. Relive our journey through tech history, and use #CommandLinePod to share your favorite episodes.