Chip Morningstar interview: How the metaverse started with Habitat
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The metaverse is all the rage today, and its lineage goes way back in gaming. The universe of connected virtual worlds might well become a reality worth trillions of dollars, and it might be good to think about where it all came from.
The ideas were fleshed out in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One. But games have played a big role in taking the idea of the metaverse from the realm of science fiction to everyday entertainment as well. It’s easy to think back to the influence of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft or virtual worlds like Second Life.
But those worlds owe many of their features to Habitat, an online world released by Lucasfilm in 1986. If you can remember Habitat, then you’re really an OG. I came across a collection of materials from Habitat in 2020 when I visited the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (MADE) in Oakland, California. Habitat was built by game developers Randy Farmer, Janet Hunter, Aric Wilmunder, and Chip Morningstar.
It was the first real effort to build a large-scale commercial virtual community. Habitat was a graphical MUD, or multi-user dungeon, and was the forerunner of modern online communities. It had a short life on the Quantum Link online service for the Commodore 64 computer. Farmer and Morningstar were recognized for their efforts with a First Penguin Award at the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards for their innovations with Habitat.
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