269:. Bowery started working on the game, titled "spasim" as a contraction of "space simulation", as a student in January 1974 while assisting professor Leif Brush with the first computer art class at the university. Brush showed Bowery and the class a PLATO graphics terminal in the Lindquist Center on campus, and Bowery, intrigued, signed up for an individual studies course to assist professor Bobby Brown, who ran the lab with this terminal. Bowery learned to program on the computer, helped by other users such as John Daleske, the developer of
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322:, decided to delete the entire game code from the mainframe and start over, building in strategy and resource management elements into the base game instead of adding them on top. Bowery designed the new version to penalize over-reliance on combat and incentivize cooperation as part of a philosophical stance on what he believed actual space expansion would require. The second version of
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powering their spaceship or managing their planet. Teams compete or cooperate in order to gain enough resources to reach a far distant planet. Mismanaging a team's resources or over-reliance on combat causes dissatisfaction on the players' planets, and can lead to a "planetary proletariat revolt" which greatly reduces the planet's population and resources.
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implemented on the models, meaning that the models appear see-through and the player can see the wireframe of the "back" of an object as well. The positions of the planets and other players relative to the player update once a second. Players can fire "phasers and torpedoes" to destroy other players'
202:, in which up to 32 players fly spaceships around 4 planetary systems. Players are grouped into teams of up to 8 players, with 1 team per system; players add their names to the rosters of the four teams, named Aggstroms, Diffractions, Fouriers, and Lasers, each with a different type of spaceship from
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is focused on space flight and combat. An updated version of the game was released a few months after the initial release that added strategy and resource management; each team's planet has resources, population levels, and standard of living. Players spend their planet's supply of "anti-entropy" on
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is one of the first 3D first-person games ever made; at one point Bowery had a standing offer of $ 500 to any person who could find proof of an earlier such game, or $ 200 for an earlier game that mathematically modeled population versus resource availability and included space resources. The first
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computer network and released in March 1974. The game features four teams of eight players, each controlling a planetary system, where each player controls a spaceship in 3D space in first-person view. Two versions of the game were released: in the first, gameplay is limited to flight and space
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was developed over the course of three days, and the pair released it in July 1974. Bowery released occasional updates to the game until he graduated; afterwards it was maintained by Steve Lionel, who added a tutorial on navigating in polar coordinates.
745:, the video game that lays claim to perhaps more "firsts" than any other — the first first-person shooter, the first multiplayer networked game, the first game with both overhead and first-person view modes, the first game with modding tools and more.
229:. Players can switch their perspective between their ship, their starting space station, and torpedoes they have launched, in addition to changing the angle and magnification zoom of their camera. All controls are entered via single-key text inputs.
111:
combat, and in the second systems of resource management and strategy were added as players cooperate or compete to reach a distant planet with extensive resources while managing their own systems to prevent destructive revolts. Although
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had "quite a following" on the PLATO network and that there was "a late night cult" that was devoted to the game, though the emphasis in the second version of strategy over combat cut the playerbase in half.
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Screenshot of gameplay; the screen at the top shows the player's view of a space station, while the bottom half of the screen displayed details about the ship's position and direction.
782:, an early example of a maze-based "deathmatch", and a game which pioneered the "flick-screen" grid-based movement that would be seen in classic dungeon crawlers such as
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310:, subtitled "An Investigation of Holographic Space", was launched in March 1974. A few months later, Bowery set out to rewrite the game, with the assistance of
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608:
Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012-11-02). "BattleZone and the
Origins of First-Person Shooting Games". In Voorhees, Gerald A.; Call, Joshua; Whitlock, Katie (eds.).
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has previously been considered along with it to be one of the "joint ancestors" of the first-person shooter genre, due to earlier uncertainty over
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that
January while assisting a computer art class. He was inspired to create the original game by the multiplayer PLATO action game
139:; Bowery was assisted in the second version by fellow student Frank Canzolino. Bowery encountered the PLATO system of thousands of
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was one of the first 3D first-person video games; at one point, Bowery offered a reward to any person who could offer proof that
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208:. Players control their ships in first person in a 3D environment, with other ships appearing as wireframe models. There is no
837:"An archive from the 1970s had the source code for the world's first 3D networked game: =spasim=... now a git hub repository"
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student Frank
Canzolino. At first, the pair optimized the 3D graphics of the game, but Bowery, inspired by the concept of
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There's some debate over exactly what the first ever first-person perspective video game was, but it's either
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was intended to include an educational component; players enter instructions to move their spaceships using
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games that came from it. In
December 2022, Bowery uploaded the source code for
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distributed worldwide, running processes on nearly a dozen different networked
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Jim Bowery's 32-player, 3D networked, first-person perspective space shooter
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660:"Spasim (1974) The First First-Person-Shooter 3D Multiplayer Networked Game"
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was the direct initial inspiration for several other PLATO games, including
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281:(1975). Bowery was inspired by the multiplayer and graphical nature of
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History of
Digital Games: Developments in Art, Design and Interaction
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computer network, which by the 1970s supported several thousand
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689:
Williams, Andrew (2017-03-16). "Early 3D and
Networked Games".
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in 1973 and was expanded to support up to eight players at the
530:"A History and Analysis of Level Design in 3D Computer Games"
759:"Blast from the Past: The Dawn of the First-Person Shooter"
401:, another flight simulator, and then the tank driving game
352:
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The game was developed by Jim Bowery in early 1974 for the
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for the PLATO system in 1975, which then lead to first
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Guns, Grenades, and Grunts: First-Person
Shooter Games
351:, a maze game which ran on two connected computers at
468:"Headshot: A visual history of first-person shooters"
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411:has also been cited as a "spiritual ancestor" of
121:as it had shooting and multiplayer by fall 1973,
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249:A PLATO terminal with attached keyboard in 1981
289:perspective previously written by Don Lee and
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381:According to Bowery, the initial release of
367:, to be one of the "joint ancestors" of the
293:, he designed 3D versions of the ships from
275:(1973), and Charles Miller, who later made
153:, and the second version by the concept of
117:is believed to be the earliest 3D game and
915:Video games developed in the United States
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255:University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
137:University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
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507:joint ancestors of the FPS genre.
720:"The first first-person shooter"
363:has been considered, along with
106:developed by Jim Bowery for the
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732:from the original on 2020-06-17
585:from the original on 2017-02-16
546:from the original on 2012-12-02
478:from the original on 2017-10-15
143:remotely connected to a set of
790:for many years afterwards; or
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1:
905:PLATO (computer system) games
835:Bowery, James (2022-12-23).
806:Pinchbeck, Dan (2013-06-18).
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910:Space flight simulator games
812:University of Michigan Press
757:Davison, Pete (2013-07-17).
718:Moss, Richard (2015-05-21).
662:. Jim Bowery. Archived from
528:Shahrani, Sam (2006-04-05).
466:Moss, Richard (2016-02-14).
200:space flight simulation game
97:space flight simulation game
95:is a 32-player 3D networked
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925:Science fiction video games
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389:, one of the developers of
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658:Bowery, Jim (2001-04-10).
571:Bowery, Jim (2013-01-06).
439:First person (video games)
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132:s development timeline.
930:Multiplayer video games
417:(1984) and the line of
73:Space flight simulation
378:development timeline.
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900:First-person shooters
741:This is the story of
614:Bloomsbury Publishing
444:Early mainframe games
306:The first version of
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227:Cartesian coordinates
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369:first-person shooter
221:, e.g. altitude and
119:first-person shooter
808:Doom: Scarydarkfast
788:Eye of the Beholder
335:Bowery claims that
267:mainframe computers
263:graphical terminals
210:hidden-line removal
145:mainframe computers
345:is believed to be
316:positive sum games
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155:positive sum games
141:graphics terminals
48:Mainframe computer
821:978-0-472-05191-5
704:978-1-317-50381-1
623:978-1-4411-9144-1
493:Star Wars: X-Wing
407:later that year.
320:cooperative games
219:polar coordinates
198:is a multiplayer
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241:Development
173:(1974) and
83:Multiplayer
43:Platform(s)
889:Categories
851:2023-01-02
773:2017-10-14
736:2020-06-17
670:2011-06-08
589:2018-04-08
550:2017-09-05
482:2017-10-14
450:References
312:metallurgy
62:March 1974
37:Jim Bowery
695:CRC Press
577:(Video).
535:Gamasutra
385:inspired
300:Star Trek
291:Ron Resch
205:Star Trek
845:Archived
784:Wizardry
780:Maze War
767:Archived
730:Archived
583:Archived
544:Archived
476:Archived
433:See also
399:Airfight
183:Gameplay
179:(1975).
68:Genre(s)
856:Twitter
763:USGamer
725:Polygon
579:YouTube
404:Panther
223:azimuth
213:ships.
176:Panther
79:Mode(s)
59:Release
880:GitHub
875:Spasim
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574:Spasim
505:Spasim
489:Spasim
427:GitHub
423:Spasim
409:Spasim
395:Airace
391:Empire
383:Spasim
361:Spasim
342:Spasim
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331:Legacy
324:Spasim
308:Spasim
295:Empire
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215:Spasim
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171:Airace
167:Spasim
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150:Empire
123:Spasim
92:Spasim
27:Spasim
841:Tweet
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414:Elite
376:'
318:, or
278:Moria
259:PLATO
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786:and
743:Maze
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503:and
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373:Maze
365:Maze
353:NASA
348:Maze
127:Maze
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540:UBM
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