Trigger Happy
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products, at least until its X-Box console arrives in
2001.)
Spacewar sprang so fully formed into the
microcosmos that it took a very long time for other
games to catch up. Its structure offered many of the
virtues that are still essential features of videogames:
simple rules with innumerable combinational
possibilities; the competitive urge to destroy your
opponent’s spaceship; the pleasure of mastery over a
well-defined, consistent system; the challenge of
reacting instantly to craft governed by inertial physics;
and the sensual buzz of playing with animated patterns
of light. The game is remarkably similar to Asteroids,
an arcade machine that appeared some seventeen years
later.
Having briefly considered trying to sell this curio,
Russell and his team decided that no one would want to
buy it, so they gave away the source code to anyone
who was interested. Within a few years it was
everywhere, a benign virus, an unstoppable meme,
eating up time all over the world on government,
military and scientific mainframes. And if you can’t
beat them, join them: in the end, Digital Equipment
Corporation used the game as a centerpiece for
commercial demonstrations of their computer. In the
