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Ok, so what is Habitat anyway? Well, for those of you who know what this is... ... think of Habitat as Dreamscape 16 years ago. Habitat was a joint effort between Quantum Computer Services (AOL) and the Lucasfilm Game division, to build the worlds first graphical virtual-world. Some time in 1987, Q-Link had a deal where if you purchased a years membership in advance, they'd discount the membership, and also throw in two things: A book called "Treasure" which had puzzles and riddles in it leading to a real buried treasure somewhere in the United States, and a game called "Habitat". It took quite a long time for Habitat to become available, but after about 9 months, those who paid for that plan were invited to participate in the pilot test. The pilot test began, and ran for a few months. When you first entered the game, you chose your body style, clothing colors, and head type. Once you were finished designing your avatar, you would be brought into Habitat, and assigned an apartment in the PopUStop apartment complex. Every avatar had their own apartment. The avatar and objects in the world were manipulated with a joystick. You would hold the fire button down, then press the joystick up, down, left or right to execute a command. The four commands you could execute were Go (to move the avatar where the pointer was located, or to another region), Get (to retrieve an item), Put (to place down an item), or Do (to activate an item such as a door). Amongst the other testers were many QGuides. QGuides were "remote staffers" who were paid to staff the "Help" room and Lobbies, helping users in need, and taking care of any disruptive users. Since they had "overhead accounts" (non-billable accounts), they were usually on more often, and were usually the ones who organized the events for the paying avatars to participate in. They also owned multi-room houses rather then the single room apartments that we had at the PopUStop. (Regardless of where you lived, your home was your 'Turf") The pilot test was a lot of fun (see the stories section for details), but eventually came to an end. We all wondered what would happen to our belongings, and when would the game be released. After all, the game was very entertaining, and addictive. Months and months would pass, but Q-Link was highly secretive about the status of the game. Q's members would speculate that they're fixing bugs, or making Habitat even bigger for the release. What we didn't know, was that Quantum was developing it's IBM compatible service called PC-Link, and needed to take back some of the server resources being used for Habitat, and use them for PC-Link. A year later, another pilot test would start. Habitat's server-side software had been stripped down as well as its 20,000 regions, down to approximately 5,000. Habitat had been scaled down from a universe where each avatar lived in his own home, to a tropical island where everyone was homeless. Habitat had become, Club Caribe. You can view the details of that beta on the Club Caribe section of this site. Once Q-Link had shut it's doors, AOL was offered the ability to port the Habitat technology over to it's PC service. They declined, so the technology went elsewhere. Lucasfilm sold the software to Fujitsu Cultural Technologies, who then ported Habitat to a Japanese PC platform, and played on a network called Niftyserve. It was known as "Habitat II", although the games original developers referred to it internally as "Japitat." In the mid 90's, Fujitsu ported the game back over to the US as "Worlds Away", accessible via Compuserve keyword: GO AWAY.. Fujitsu eventually sold the right to the software to a company called Stratagem, which now operates Dreamscape and two other "worlds". For those of you who played Habitat or Club Caribe, check out Dreamscape if you haven't already by clicking on the banner at the top of this page. The game operates almost identically, and is just as addictive if not more so. The avatars even have the same quirks. On the website you'll see stories and screen shots of the actual Habitat and Club Caribe pilot tests. Look around, and if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please let me know.
Except where indicated, all contents included on this site is copyrighted (C) 2003 by Keith Elkin.com and may not be reproduced in part or in whole without permission. Q-Link, PC-Link, AOL, Habitat, and Club Caribe are registered service marks of America Online, Inc. We are in no way affiliated with America Online, Inc. Comments, questions, suggestions? Send email to keith@keithelkin.com.