50 Years of Text Games by Aaron Reed
Aaron Reed's book '50 Years of Text Games' explores the history and evolution of text-based games from their origins to their modern resurgence. The review highlights how text games thrived despite hardware limitations that favored graphics, due to the high storage cost of written content. It also notes the renewed relevance of text interfaces in the age of AI, where language models naturally interact with and generate textual worlds.
- ▪Text-based games were not the earliest form of computer games, as early hardware constraints actually favored simple graphics over text storage.
- ▪Storing text was expensive in early computing because each character required a byte, making text-heavy games a significant challenge on limited systems.
- ▪Two distinct types of text-based games emerged early: those focused on narrative and those emphasizing simulation or gameplay mechanics.
- ▪The book connects the legacy of text games to modern AI systems, which are fundamentally built on processing and generating text.
- ▪Despite their decline in mainstream popularity, text games have experienced a niche revival, particularly through AI-driven platforms like AI Dungeon.
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Record
| Original publisher | Hacker News (Newest) |
| Canonical URL | https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-50-years-of-text-games-by |
| Publication time | Sat, 16 May 2026 22:01:24 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-16T22:10:19.058Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-16T22:10:19.058Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | QXCA4LgM6m5m |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
REVIEW: 50 Years of Text Games, by Aaron ReedJohn PsmithMay 11, 20261512425Share50 Years of Text Games: From Oregon Trail to AI Dungeon, Aaron A. Reed (Changeful Tales, 2023).>YOU ARE ON SUBSTACK. YOU SEE A BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN PSMITH. YOU SEE A TROLL POST BY RICHARD HANANIA. YOU SEE A BOOK REVIEW BY SCOTT ALEXANDER. WHAT DO YOU DO?open last post>I’M SORRY I DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT.click scott alexander post>I’M SORRY I DON’T KNOW THE VERB: ‘CLICK’read>‘READ’ WHAT?read scott alexander>YOU CANNOT READ A ‘SCOTT ALEXANDER’read book review>YOU SETTLE IN TO READ A BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN PSMITH. THE REVIEW IS NINE THOUSAND WORDS LONG. YOU BEGIN MAKING A CUP OF TEA TO KE^Cstop>EP YOU GOING FOR THE LONG NIGHT AHEAD. THE REVIEW BEGINS WITH A WILD AN^Ccancel>D UNJUSTIFIED ASSERTION.
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