Andreessen Horowitz October 9, 2022
In 1986, the early internet provider Quantum Link and the entertainment company Lucasfilm Games released what might be considered the first ever MMO: a social, avatar-based world called Habitat, which could be accessed via a 300-baud modem ($0.08 per minute) and a user’s Commodore 64 ($595, or roughly $1,670 in today’s terms). Habitat was a departure from text-based MUD games (which were multiplayer but lacked graphics) and free-ranging USENET forums (which of course were text-based but lacked formalized gameplay) that dominated the early net-connected market at the time.
In short, Habitat was a virtual civilization, with real-time player chat, trading, and interaction. Habitat was also arguably a forebear of what the now-contested (both definitionally and territorially) “metaverse” may one day...
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