furniture, and other useful or artistic objects. Apartments could be purchased, furnished, or sold. Other popular past-times were playing Bingo and other simple games. These games were not a part of the original software, but were made by third party developers as plug-ins. Dreamscape Dreamscape was the first graphical online chat environment built on the WorldsAway platform. It allowed users to create an avatar to represent themselves in a 2D world and interact with other users and virtual items. The player chooses an avatar, which is the graphical representation of the player. The avatar can text chat, move, gesture, use facial expressions, and is customizable in a virtually unlimited number of ways. Avatars earn money, own possessions, rent apartments, and make friends. The environment itself is composed of thousands of screens, in which the player's avatar moves about. Popular culture Much of the second and third seasons of the American TV series Halt and Catch Fire is centered around the development and troubles of the fictional tech startup Mutiny, heavily inspired by the story of PlayNET and Quantum Link in the 1980s. In the show, Mutiny transitions from an online games company to eventually delivering an online subscriber-based graphical chat community for Commodore 64 users, mirroring Habitat. Reception Roy Wagner reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "this game effectively optimizes the local storage, processing and graphics power of the low cost Commodore 64/128 home computer that is in over four million homes and the real-time, person-to-person, interactivity made possible by a low cost nationwide network that is accessible with a local phone call". Reviews Commodore Microcomputers Run References Bibliography Literature Farmer, F. R. (1993). "Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry". Virtual Realities: An Anthology of Industry and Culture, C. Loeffler, ed., Gijutsu Hyoron Sha, Tokyo, Japan "Habitat Anecdotes and other boastings" by F. Randall Farmer (Fall 1988), Electric Communities External links Playing Catch Up: Habitat's Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer on Gamasutra by Alistair Wallis (October 12, 2006) VZN's guide to Club Caribe Screenshots and comparisons to the modern version of habitat, Vzones COMPUTE! magazine article about Habitat from COMPUTE! ISSUE 77 / OCTOBER 1986 / PAGE 32 Enter The Online World of Lucasfilm RUN Magazine Issue 32 VZones Website VZones Network Archives archives of locales, screenshots and info from 1995 to 2003 WorldsAway Graphics archived screenshots from 1996 Original WorldsAway DreamScape Website 1986 video games Commercial