Sunday, January 11, 2009

Lucasfilm’s Habitat

Lucasfilm’s Habitat from 1988 was an early experiment in creating an online social world. However, it turned out the program may have been ahead of its time, at least technology-wise. According to the book Rogue Leaders on the history of Lucasfilm games, the 500 users of the prototype ate up a full 1% of the system resources of partnering online provider QuantumLink. Consequently – though the project was later licensed to others and also spun off successors and might have influenced reminiscent projects – the US release of Habitat was canceled.

Concept art for the box cover

[Image from Rogue Leaders.]

Lucasfilm’s Habitat by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (8)

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