From: zweig@cs.uiuc.edu (Johnny Zweig)
Subject: Re: The Military and Video Game Development
Date: Fri, 3 May 91 18:22:05 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept. of Comp. Sci., Urbana, IL



I recall an urban legend that said that there were some Space Invaders(tm)
games with cameras in them that would photograph people who got really high
scores so the Army could track them down and hire them.  I believe it started
as an April Fool's joke, then got picked up in a science fiction story (maybe
it appeared in OMNI magazine in the good ol' days when they used to have
resonable quantities of good fiction) and went from there.

As far as how military technology improvements facilitated the development of
video games goes, and whether the DoD funded development of commercial games
(certainly there are stacks and stacks of wargames/simulators/etc. the DoD has
paid for to let military people do their thang) I don't know.

In fact, when you look at Operation Desert Strom, it appears to me the
causality is the other way around.  I think the guys as General Dynamics
played too much Robotron 2084 (the best videogame ever) and came up with the
idea of laser-guided missiles from that. Smirk!

-Johnny Candide Camera