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The best game ever
No graphics, no sound, no razzle-dazzle -- but Nethack is still one of the finest gaming experiences the computing world has to offer.
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By Thomas Scoville
[02/01/00]

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Back in 1996, I helped my boyfriend's father, Curt, get online -- by arranging a six-month subscription to AOL. We thought it would be an easy way to give him a taste of what the Net was like, and that he would quickly graduate to the wide-open Web. After all, Curt didn't know much about the Internet then, but he had had a home computer for ages and engaged in some distinctly non-newbie activities, like defragging his hard drive and editing his digital photos. Curt is a smart man, a retired executive who now teaches management courses at University of Michigan. I figured it would be relatively simple to "upgrade" his Net connection after he got his feet wet. Boy, was I wrong.

I've learned from Curt and others like him that it's not just the stereotypical newbies who like AOL. Among AOL's 20 million subscribers there are some technically proficient people who honestly prefer the proprietary network. It lets them log on from practically anywhere without long distance charges; it makes it easy for them to customize their view of the Internet and funnels right to them lots of information they regularly go online to find.

"There are some things that AOL offers that are very cool, and that AOL had before almost anybody else -- like chat rooms, buddy lists, instant messaging and even things like being able to check the status of an e-mail you've sent to another AOL member, to see if it's been opened yet," says Leslie Miller, a technology reporter at USA Today who first got online in 1985 -- through Quantum Link, Steve Case's first online service. She's had an AOL account since 1994.

Paradoxically, the proprietary service so aligned with the technologically illiterate is a great place to study new technologies. "I use it as a way to know where things are going -- if they implement something I know it's going to be widespread," says Beth Cataldo, former executive producer of Microsoft Sidewalk San Francisco -- someone who's worked in the tech industry for more than 10 years and used AOL regularly since 1993. "I like to see what horses they're betting on. Like when they bought When.com -- it was a big endorsement for calendaring software."

Still, there are many of us who don't easily accept all these arguments; we continue to work over our friends with AOL accounts, hoping to show them the light. I mean, I find it hard to believe that people would choose to stick with AOL, even once they know that it puts an artificial -- and highly commercialized -- filter on the great wilderness of the Internet. And, just like the EarthLink ads project, part of me feels certain that if my friends really thought about it, they would associate themselves not with a giant corporation, but with a more independent-minded organization.

So, like lots of people I know, I found myself on a mission to convert a friend from AOL to a standard-issue ISP. I wanted him to have unfettered access to the Net.

"Why are you sticking with this teeny window to surf in, with all these ugly colored buttons?" I asked Curt in November -- more than three years after I had unthinkingly set up his AOL account. "The screen's all cluttered up."

But Curt likes the all-in-one view. "They put a lot of effort into putting everything I want in one place," he tells me firmly. "Here I have computing, entertainment, health, local news, news from Time. Sure, I can get that on the Internet, but it's right here on one page. It gives me local information. Here it says it's 23 Fahrenheit. That's my weather."

I couldn't see how different that might be from creating a personalized page like MyYahoo, but Curt was genuinely pleased with his experience. And it was easy for him to create this personal screen -- just as easy as setting up our original account. I don't think it's more difficult to configure a similar profile on any of the Web portals, but since the early days -- when regular Netizens had to practically code their own bulletin board posts or navigate unwieldy text-based e-mail systems -- AOL has had a lock on perceived ease-of-use.

"AOL made it a lot easier for people who didn't know much about computers," says Fred Heutte, a computer consultant and Web community builder, talking about the service's initial appeal. "It told you how to hook up this box called a modem, and what the necessary incantations were to get connected. And it was a good choice for a lot of people to contact their families. These people were smart, competent people in their field, but their eyes would start to glaze over if you tried to explain how to send a binary file."

This sounds just like Curt. He's competent when it comes to technologies he wants to mess with -- like his digital photos. But, given a choice, he has opted not to mess with setting up an Internet account with an independent ISP. It's not that he's not capable; it's that he hasn't seen a compelling reason not to let AOL make it easy for him. "They've really improved it over the years," he argues. "They keep close attention to what bugs people, and fix it."

Of course, that hand-holding approach works for a lot of people -- and other ISPs, including EarthLink, are trying to emulate it.

Next page | "Get out of AOL free" -- a hit at EarthLink