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On The Genesis Of LucasArts' Habitat
Thanks to Oblomovka for pointing to a Habitat Chronicles post chronicling the early days of LucasArts/LucasFilm Games, including the 1984-era "pair of proposals, one for something we called Lucasnet, which would correspond to what nowadays we'd call a games portal, and one for something we called the Lucasfilm Games Alliance, which would correspond to what nowadays we'd call a MMORPG (and indeed, which looked in concept a lot like what Star Wars Galaxies turned out to be in practice, albeit 20 years later)." The eventual product, as documented by the creators, was Lucasfilm's 1986-launched Habitat, "arguably one of the first attempts to create a very large scale commercial multi-user virtual environment", but the detailed post also strays into defining the Lucasfilm ethos in the '80s, pointing out provocatively: "We were absolutely forbidden from doing any [games] that made use of the company's film properties, especially Star Wars. That was viewed as just like spending money, since these properties were, in effect, money in the bank."
...if you use them.
lucas knows this all too well(now).. pump pump pump the franchise pump pump pump the moneeeeyyy, suck suck suck the hooneyyy.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I remember quite well the hype surrounding Habitat. As a QuantumLink subscriber, I looked forward to its release because I thought a graphical interface for user communication was the coolest thing ever.
Habitat was lauded in all the major C=64 magazines of the time, but then sort of disappeared, only to materialize in the form of QuantumLink's Club Caribe. Club Caribe itself didn't last very long (2 years, according to the paper), possibly because it was a premium content feature (that is, you were charged above and beyond your monthly QuantumLink service charge in order to use it). It was also quite feature limited in comparison to the original promised Habitat feature set.
Man, oh man, my first "MMOG" addiction. I had found Club Caribe on Q-Link in 1990, back before I knew what MUD's were...(Club Caribe was Habitat in a resort setting, more like a MUSH than a MUD.) I must have been addicted to it, because in the month of January I racked up $400 in Plus Charges in Q-Link.
Needless to say, my parents were not happy with their middle schooler racking up such a large credit card bill, and they made me stop using it without being able to say goodbye to my friends.
I was building up quite a nice book empire in CC too!
But, when they WISELY used their licenses, they scored BIG time. X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Indiana Jones & Fate of Atlantis, Dark Forces, etc - those were all AWESOME games. Though others hated them, I even loved Rebel Assault.
Only when they started whoring the titles to produce "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine," "X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter," and "Star Wars: Racer" did they start to falter and cause what they originally tried to prevent: staining their cash cows...
Habitat for whatever reason took forever to launch, and when it did, it was in the form of "Club Caribe", a tropical island type of setting.
... gosh, it was cool!
For its time it was very cool. Basically, check out "There.com" and that's what Club Caribe was exactly, but in 2D with "Maniac Mansion" style graphics and interface.
It launched just a little too late, as the Commodore 64 was in decline already. Too bad though...Here we were in 1988 with a multi-user environment already. Custom avatars... chat, "emoticons" (in the form of actions your player could do through macro keys). There was exploration, social events, currency,