The year was 1980, and Roberta Williams, a shy, soft-spoken housewife with little coding or design experience to speak of, rose from obscurity and designed “Mystery House,3” the first-ever computer game with graphics. It’s impossible to conceive of a computer or video game released today without any visuals, but the idea to include them had to start somewhere. And while she couldn’t have known it then, Williams’ kitchen-table hobby would become the origin of graphic design in the world of computing and technology—two industries that now dominate life as we know it. To refer to Williams’ childlike compositions and stick figurestyle caricatures as the equivalent of the cave paintings at Lascaux may be going a touch too far, but they were just as prescient. Then again, to limit her legacy to words and pictures alone is to tell only half
48 In the ’70s and ’80s, powerful new microprocessors made it possible to bring smaller, portable personal computers into the home. Later editions had two colors, green and purple, set against the black-and-white set pieces. Play the full game here: aigaeod.co/mysteryhouse.
EYE ON DESIGN #05: DISTRACTION
Still from “Mystery House,” 1980, via sierrawallpaper.com. Previous page: Still from “King QuestIV,” 1988, via sierrawallpaper.com.
If you’re a computer programmer or digital designer over the age of 40, this is probably how the future began for you. Two simple sentences and a cursor, blinking like a heartbeat, waiting for your command. To anyone else, it might read more like the beginning of an odd and boring story, but the format will be familiar to all those who have ever dabbled in microcomputing1. It was the same way all text-based computer games started: a bare-bones setup and an invitation to venture forth, uncover the clues, and win the game. But it wasn’t just the text, flashing on the screen of an 8-bit Apple II, that shot out like a siren call of the wild—it was the graphics. They were monochrome2, ridiculously rudimentary, and they blew everyone away.
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YOU ARE IN THE FRONT YARD OF A LARGE ABANDONED VICTORIAN HOUSE. STONE STEPS LEAD UP TO A WIDE PORCH. ------------------- ENTER COMMAND? ░
