Update: 1973 Roadmap

Hi all,

Sorry for being gone for a while. Life's been very busy recently. I had the family visit, got sick, then started a second job, quit said job, and then got another second job which has been flat out since. I'm also going back to my home state next week for a family event, which involves two full days of driving to get there.

All this, along with having problems with the PLATO article, kind of sucked all my energy and motivation out of working on the blog for a while. I've had a mind to get back to it, but have only had the time and motivation to slowly put together the list for 1973 over the past week or so.

The good news is, that my 1973 coverage is officially starting! However, there will be some slight changes to how I run things. Number one, is that I'll be dumping the one-article-per-week commitment I set out previously. Work is currently busy and unpredictable, and I have a busy-enough social life to suck all my introvert batteries dry most days, meaning my time is limited to work on the blog. Articles will just come out whenever they're ready for now.

As for the promised PLATO overview article... I still intend to finish it, but it won't be the next thing to come out, as it's a massive project, even compared to the Odyssey project. PLATO has an overly-messily-documented development history, and I have stacks of games to play and record. There aren't any new systems to cover for the entirety of 1973, so I'll be working on it periodically with the aim to have it complete by the conclusion of my 1973 coverage - which shouldn't be too hard to do, since we'll be in 1973 for quite a while.

1973 is, as I've determined from my research and planning, the first real year of video games. What I mean by that is, that the scope of video games expands exponentially in 1973, both in terms of development complexity and popularity. The number of countries producing games is increasing, the scale of the arcade industry is increasing, and the sheer number of games being developed increases dramatically. For reference, 1971 and 1972 had 10 games between them that I covered. 1973, on the other hand, has at least sixty-four games (hah, funny number...) I'll be covering - potentially a few more. These games (on the computer end of things especially) are expanding in complexity, and new genres are being invented, such as adventure games.

A significant contributor to this expansion is the initial release of David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games book of type-in programs. I've been relying on this book (and its 1978 update) quite a lot already, but many of the games from 1973 find their origins in this book. The People's Computer Company newsletters and magazines also contribute significantly to the spread of video games, as they often feature several innovative games. Expect to see these two resources appear frequently throughout the year. All are free to view on the Internet Archive, if you're keen to follow along with me.

Righto, that's all from me for now. Expect to see the first game of 1973 soon!