Got around to reading Bill Gurley’s MMPORG article and enjoyed the walk down the Unix role playing game lanes. When I talk to the LA crowd about MMP (Massive Multiplayer) gaming, they always love the connection to Rogue, Adventure, and Zork. In fact, on the Symmetic 375 we have the best versions of rogue, and since the kids now own the machines (20 years old, NS32000 BSD Unix, and work perfectly – I have PCs that have failed in 2 years), they prefer the 375 versions to the “enhanced” ones today (see A Wandering through the Vintage Computer Faire).
I remember telling Jim Anderson (Adventure) years ago about how I was inspired by his invincible thief, so when I was asked to create an arcade game (PackRat) that would appeal to girls in 1982 for Atari Coin-Op, I put in a character of an invicible rat who would pick up the valuables and walk off (the graphic artist took it further and she put the rat in a leather jacket – he was very cool).