PlayNet (or PlayNET) was an American

online service An online service provider (OSP) can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, ...

for

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

personal computers A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

that operated from 1984 to 1987. It was operated by the PlayNet, Inc of

Troy, New York Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany a ...

History

PlayNet was founded in 1983 by two former

GE Global Research GE Research is the research and development division of General Electric. GE Global Research locations include: * Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, established as the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady in 1900 and ...

employees, Dave Panzl and Howard Goldberg, as the first person-to-person, online communication and game network to feature home computer based graphics. The founders launched the business initially with their own money. They then raised over $2.5 million from a variety of investors, including the venture capital funds of the Town of North Greenbush NY, Key Bank, Alan Patricof & Associates, and the New York State Science and Technology Foundation, and a group of individual investors through a limited R&D partnership led by McGinn Smith. In 1985 PlayNet licensed their system to

Control Video Corporation AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

(CVC, later renamed

Quantum Computer Services AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

), which in October 1991 changed its name to

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. The modified version of the PlayNet software (

Quantum Link Quantum Link (or Q-Link) was an American and Canadian online service for the Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated starting November 5, 1985. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia, which later became ...

or Q-Link) was ported by Quantum to the PC to create the first version of the AOL software. As recently as 2005, some aspects of the original PlayNet

communication protocols A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchron ...

still appeared to be used by AOL. The PlayNet offices were initially located in the J Building on Peoples Avenue in Troy, NY part of the

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute () (RPI) is a private research university in Troy, New York, with an additional campus in Hartford, Connecticut. A third campus in Groton, Connecticut closed in 2018. RPI was established in 1824 by Stephen Van ...

incubator program. It subsequently moved to RPI's Technology Park in North Greenbush NY. PlayNet declared

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

in February, 1986 and ceased operations in 1988 after Quantum stopped paying royalties. The service had two membership options, an $8/month service charge plus $2.75/hour connect time charge, or no service charge and $3.75 per hour connection charge. File downloads were charged a flat rate of $0.50 eac

Software details

PlayNet was originally designed around online interactive games which allowed chatting while playing. PlayNet also featured

electronic mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronics, electronic (digital media, digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, ...

online chat Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time text, real-time transmission of text-based, text messages from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participa ...

bulletin board A bulletin board (pinboard, pin board, noticeboard, or notice board in British English) is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise items wanted or for sale, announce events, or provide information. B ...

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...

libraries, online shopping, and

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

(using ''On Line Messages'', or ''OLM''s). Games were mostly 'traditional' games and some well-known boardgames. Games were programmed in a mixture of

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

and

assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

. Unlike other online systems of the era, PlayNet was highly graphical and required client software, and included error correction in the communication protocols. The server software for PlayNet ran on

Stratus Stratus may refer to: Weather *Stratus cloud, a cloud type **Nimbostratus cloud, a cloud type **Stratocumulus cloud, a cloud type **Altostratus cloud, a cloud type **Altostratus undulatus cloud, a cloud type **Cirrostratus cloud, a cloud type Mus ...

fault-tolerant computers and was written in

PL/1 PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...

. AOL continued to use Stratus computers and parts of the PlayNet server software until the late 1990s or later. * The client software on the Commodore 64 ran a multitasking pseudo-operating system based on a

Finite State Machine A finite-state machine (FSM) or finite-state automaton (FSA, plural: ''automata''), finite automaton, or simply a state machine, is a mathematical model of computation. It is an abstract machine that can be in exactly one of a finite number o ...

language.

Game list

Checkers Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers ...

Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

Backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia and Pe ...

* Hangman *

Bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

Stratego ''Stratego'' ( ) is a strategy board game for two players on a board of 10×10 squares. Each player controls 40 pieces representing individual officer and soldier ranks in an army. The pieces have Napoleonic insignia. The objective of the game ...

Connect 4 Connect may refer to: Music Albums * ''Connect'' (album), an album by Australian rock band Sick Puppies *''Connect'', album by Mark Farina *'' Tha Connect'', a 2009 album by Willy Northpole *''Connect'', a 2009 album by Dave Schulz (musician) * ...

Chinese Chess ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as ''shogi'', ''janggi'', Western chess, ''chatur ...

* Go *Several others Games/features never finished/released: *Multiplayer

Dungeons and Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). ...

Poker Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, however in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game w ...

*Various other card games and wargames *Auditoriums and panel discussions Connections to PlayNet were made by

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

s at 300 baud via

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

providers such as

Tymnet Tymnet was an international data communications network headquartered in Cupertino, California that used virtual call packet-switched technology and X.25, SNA/ SDLC, BSC and Async interfaces to connect host computers (servers) at thousands of lar ...

and

Telenet Telenet was an American commercial packet-switched network which went into service in 1975. It was the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. Various commercial and government interests paid monthly fees for dedicated lines ...

. In 1985, pricing was $6 per month, with additional fees of $2 per hour, after a one-time membership fee of $30.Lockwood, Russ. "Tracking the Affordable Home Service." ''A+: The Independent Guide for Apple Computing'', April 1985: 54-56. The system competed with many other online services like

CompuServe CompuServe (CompuServe Information Service, also known by its initialism CIS) was an American online service provider, the first major commercial one in the world – described in 1994 as "the oldest of the Big Three information services (the oth ...

and The Source (service), as well as

Bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

s (single or multiuser). PlayNet's graphical display was better than many of these competing systems because it used specialized client software with a nonstandard protocol. However, this specialized software and nonstandard protocol limited its market to the Commodore 64. In 2005, hobbyists managed to

reverse engineer Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

the communications protocol and allow people running the QuantumLink software on an emulator or original hardware (via a serial cable) to run a reduced version of the service called Quantum Link Reloaded.

Reception

Ahoy! ''Ahoy!'' was a computer magazine published between January 1984 and January 1989 in the US, focusing on all Commodore color computers, but especially the Commodore 64 and Amiga. History The first issue of ''Ahoy!'' was published in January 198 ...

'' in 1986 called PlayNET "one of the best values around for Commodore users". The reviewer stated that he had found the network's users "to be just about the friendliest group of people around", but criticized the slow disk load times and the network's weekday hours of operation.{{cite news , url=https://archive.org/stream/Ahoy_Issue_25_1986-01_Ion_International_US#page/n79/mode/2up , title=PlayNET , work=Ahoy! , date=January 1986 , accessdate=July 3, 2014 , author=Behling, B. W. , pages=81–84

References

External links

PlayNET page

Remember Q-Link

Quantum Link Reloaded

RUN Magazine Issue 20
Commodore 64 Online video game services Pre–World Wide Web online services Internet properties established in 1984 1984 establishments in New York (state)