I don’t come from people of means. My parents worked incredibly hard to provide my brother and I with stability. This meant that, while we certainly had the essentials, we didn’t have an abundance of luxuries. We got our Atari 2600 secondhand sometime around 1982 or so and I immediately took to it. It was, like, most folks at the time, our only means of playing games at home. Then, a few years later, my dad’s parents gifted us a computer: a brand-spankin-new Commodore 64. While I noodled with some of the programs coded from magazines and toyed around with rudimentary BASIC commands, what I really loved was the games. But one of my favorites—one that was so weird and cool and different from others—wasn’t billed as a game at all. It was a glimpse into a new world. A new way of seeing what interactivity could be. It pulled me in then and even now, forty years later, has stuck with me. I absolutely cannot talk about dream projects, without talking about this fun little program about fun little people. Little Computer People, to be exact.
Conceived by Rich Gold, coded by David Crane, and published by none other than Activision back in 1985, Little Computer People is about the, well, little people who live inside computers. Marketed not as a game but as a “Discovery Kit,” when you launch the software for the first time, it constructs a multi-story house and promises you that the person inside your computer will soon move into it. Once they have, you can interact with him or her.
Adding to the awesome is that each copy of Little Computer People generates a unique person with their own name, look, personality, and behavior. No two users will find the same little person in their machine. Which makes sense since the whole conceit is that it isn’t installing a person but drawing out the one already existing cozily in the circuits.
Once your person is moved in, you must now take care of them. They have wants and needs like anyone else. You interact with your person using text input, making sure they are fed, hydrated, and that they don’t get bored. Keep them healthy and happy and you’ll have a good time. You can pet them, play games with them, and give them gifts. Ask them to write you a letter and they will, often telling you how they’re feeling and how you’re doing as their caretaker. Sometimes the person also has a dog which opens up a few more options. You are encouraged to explore interaction via text prompts and the little person has a lot of hidden reactions like dancing, having a conversation, and playing the piano. If you ignore your person for too long, they will ask you to play.
The game is robust and nuanced in deceptively simple ways, giving each player a unique experience. Every virtual person has a matrix of needs and feelings. How the needs are met and how their emotions are balanced determine their mood which determines how they respond to the user’s prompts. It’s a marvel of design and, during a time when most games took 4-6 months, the development of Little Computer People went on for two years.
Little Computer People was moderately successful and saw release on multiple platforms of the day from Commodore 64 to the Atari II to the ZX Spectrum. While diskette was the default version, a tape version was also released though with fewer features. The game was also put out as House on a Disk but I’m not entirely sure what the difference was there. Unlike many of the dream projects I’ve written up, Little Computer People was a single release that was one and done. And while the ensuing decades saw further exploration on the concept of virtual life—from Princess Maker to Jones in the Fast Lane to even toys like Tamagotchi—the video game space didn’t see a big hit until Will Wright led the development of the hugely successful life simulator, The Sims.
From the Smurfs to the Littles to the brownies from Willow to those poor children in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids to Obsidian Entertainment‘s excellent video game Grounded to the tabletop RPG Household, I’ve always liked the idea of tiny folk running around in the world. Being 6’6″, I can only imagine what trudging through small spaces is like. Maybe it’s just that normal-sized things suddenly being huge is cool. Maybe it’s that tiny people are like living dolls. I don’t know. The concept just appeals to me. And I’m dying to bring it back.
I know what you’re thinking: Um, Blair, we have The Sims and Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley and those weird taskbar add-ons and—and let me stop you there. I love so many of those games but they are all so much bigger than what we’re talking about here. They’re somewhere between Little Computer People and god games. With Little Computer People, there’s a delicateness and intimacy those games lack. The masterful restraint of Little Computer People‘s scope—along with its humor and the bond you develop with this one person alone in their virtual world—is its charm. It evokes a connection the other games just didn’t for me and that’s why it continues to stand on its own.
Whether desktop or tablet, laptop or phone, handheld or console, we are surrounded by technology more now than ever before. Aren’t you curious who might be hiding inside? What they might be up to? Someone you could check on a few times a day. Someone with whom you can play games, teach skills, and have conversations. In a world more connected than ever but more disconnected than ever, having a little friend in your pocket sounds great to me.
I could easily see a modernized design for Little Computer People. Interactions, personality, and tone that stands far out from any contemporary offerings. I conceived a kinda-sorta successor to Little Computer People back in 2008 that added a few fun twists. And I’ve pitched some version of that off and on since then. From my perspective, there is definitely room for a game like this. But I highly doubt this forty-year old gem is on Activision’s radar (assuming they still hold right to it). Still, I would love to lead development on a new discovery kit. With all these devices in the world, I’m itching to meet the people living inside them.
