

A video game contributed to Unix Development - shubhamjain
http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~lib215/reference/history/spacetravel.html

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lizard
Video Games can do 2 important things (beyond entertainment):

They push the limits of current technology. Video game developers are
constantly trying to get betting graphics out of hardware and software. You
just don't need the lastest GeForce video card to run a word processor. With
modern hardware I can perform thousands of calculations instantaneously with
no optimatizations what-so-ever. But if you try to play the latest AAA titles
on a 5-year old computer, you're going to have a bad time.

They spread ideas. The average person doesn't care about voxels, but they do
like that they can tear down and rebuild almost everything in Minecraft. This
has inspired more games like Terraria and Guncraft putting their own spin
desconstructable worlds. Not to mention the inspiration Notch has become for
indie game developers everywhere.

Personally, this is why I like working on video games: when I work on a game
idea I have to ask what it can bring to the table. Why should people play it?
What will it contribute to their lives? to the world? It doesn't have to be
revolutionary per se, it doesn't have to save lives, but it has to do
something.

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shmerl
This can be said about art in general. So it's not very unique to computer
games (which are a form of art).

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khaki54
I took this class -- Prof. Bruce Molay, great instructor, he was full of
stories like this. He told us all sorts of weird crusty facts about why this
was named that and all of the unix type jokes that you would find reading a
man page for a system utility or c source in the stdlibs etc.

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russ5russ
I have to admit, it's amazing how often video games seem to be in the mix
these days. Slack was developing a game before they happened upon their
product. Gamifcation is being used to help decipher complex genomes etc.
Pretty impressive

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reagency
Flickr was originally a MMO, pivoted.

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pronoiac
Yeah, Stewart Butterfield is kinda the most successful least successful game
developer ever.

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sehugg
I thought I'd also heard that the port of Colossal Cave Adventure from FORTRAN
to C helped to spread UNIX around campuses.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
Does it ever go the other way? Did WoW used to be a word processor?

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mesozoic
Yeah Eve used to be a spreadsheet then they added spaceships.

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jonathantm
( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°)

