Break Into Chat

Tag: door games

  • Amit Patel, creator of “Solar Realms Elite”

    Amit Patel, creator of “Solar Realms Elite”

    In 1990, Amit Patel created the BBS door game “Solar Realms Elite.” In his other life he has worked with programming languages, scientific equipment, data analysis, visualization, geological exploration, simulation of complex systems, economic modeling, maps, trend analysis, artificial intelligence, and web software. He’s now working on interactive reference materials for game developers.

  • Solar Realms Elite memories

    Solar Realms Elite memories

    What made SRE magical was the number of people who were playing at the time I encountered it. These games were not meant to be played solo; they were meant to be social experiences as you tried to dominate other players and build the mightiest empire. And when I began playing, SRE was a popular…

  • BBS doors: innovative social games?

    I came across a fantastic essay written by Andrew Chen in 2009: BBS door games: Social gaming innovation from the 1980s He makes the case that BBS door games pioneered many techniques used today by social games. I think he’s right on, especially in this passage: You may notice from all of these screenshots that…

  • BBS Documentary clip: TradeWars

    Here’s a short segment from the BBS: The Documentary where folks discuss TradeWars (There’s also a mention of Legend of the Red Dragon.) I am a big fan of Jason Scott and of the documentary. It was very thorough on many topics, and included wonderful chapters about the artscene and Fidonet among other things. One…

  • So it begins.

    So it begins.

    Wikipedia deleted Space Empire Elite. Well, they killed the article, anyway.

  • The birth of “Break Into Chat”

    The birth of “Break Into Chat”

    In October 2012 I logged into Wikipedia and found three alerts waiting for me: “Proposed deletion of Space Empire Elite” “Proposed deletion of Space Dynasty” “Proposed deletion of Solar Realms Elite” Not good, I thought.