Playing with Wires

Imagine a time when internet access meant using an analogue modem to dial a phone number in order to connect to the internet at speeds of up 7 kilobytes a second! Now imagine trying to play online games such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Euro 96, and even Bridge, over that connection.

Our guests this week, Phil and Stu Ashby, helped to create and run Wireplay, a dial-up based online gaming service from BT (yes, the telephone company) in the mid-nineties. We go on some really deep tangents on the workings of modems, why just enabling anonymous dial-up internet access may spark some questions, and the challenges of keeping latency in online gaming at a (for the time) remarkable 100ms over dial-up. There’s also a discussion of how having Windows Servers in your backend can be somewhat painful.

Do you remember using Wireplay, or a similar service? We’d love to hear from you, so please send us a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, or why not come join the discussion on our Discord server.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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Episode Links

• Do you remember Wireplay? How BT helped to pioneer online gaming around the world – BT via Archive.org
• Wireplay: creating the first online gaming platform in the UK – Phil Ashby on Dev.to
• Wireplay calling – hello 1996! – Ashbysoft
• Half-Life: 25th Anniversary Documentary – Valve on YouTube
• Wireplay invades Brisbane – AusGamers – Adam Williams on YouTube

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:05:00: BT Primer
3. 00:10:07: Internet in the 90s
4. 00:16:58: The Rise of Multiplayer Games
5. 00:29:14: The Birth of Wireplay
6. 00:53:22: The Incident 
7. 01:04:08: Windows Servers In The Backend 
8. 01:12:06: Half Life
9. 01:22:51: The Aftermath
10. 01:36:43: Museum Pieces
11. 01:41:23: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW