
Want to see gaming’s past and future? Dive into the “educational” world of PLATO - rbanffy
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/want-to-see-gamings-past-and-future-dive-into-the-educational-world-of-plato/
======
adam
I'm always glad to see PLATO getting its due. We had a PLATO terminal in our
house - beautiful wood frame with an orange plasma screen, hardwired in to the
University of Illinois mainframe at 1200baud. Besides remembering playing a
lot of Empire with the college kids, there was also a cyber-nanny called "The
Enforcer" which admins could place on "educational" accounts to limit access
to games at certain hours of the day (or if games were taking up too many
resourced on the mainframe.) My Dad used The Enforcer as a very effective
incentive to get my homework done.

------
acomjean
I'm glad I didn't know these games existed , I might have not been studying.
Plato terminals where great for freshman chemistry. example exams and problem
sets were available in the almost always empty room in the tower library..
it's time in the early 90s before the web made info uniquitos, I really
appreciated the quizzes and the explanations of the answers it gave..

------
nevster
You can experience it for yourself by requesting a login here :
[https://cyber1.org/index.asp](https://cyber1.org/index.asp)

As a Wizardry fan, it's fascinating to play the precursors.

~~~
boneheadmed
Wizardry was my all-time favorite computer game growing up! Agree, fascinating
to see the precursors. I had absolutely no idea about this.

~~~
nevster
You might also be interested in the book "Dungeons and Desktops". The guy who
wrote it does really great videos as well. Do a search for "matt chat
wizardry" to see interviews with Robert Woodhead et al.

------
JoeAltmaier
Hey! I worked with John Daleske years later (an embedded project). Its good to
see John and Empire getting some recognition!

------
signal11
I remember PLATO (PLATO Notes, specifically) as one of the inspirations behind
Lotus Notes. It's quite interesting to see how seminal the ideas behind it
were -- given the right commercial decisions, Notes could have pre-empted the
web.

