[vcf-midatlantic] Halt and catch fire- were the online gaming services really that significant?

[Douglas Crawford]

Hi ya'll:

(1)
I never finished watching the series but I was taken back
by how big of a deal they present the online gaming
development intrigue of that time.  I never joined one
of those services back then, so I may be totally ignorant
of a whole subculture I never got exposed to,
but was it really that big of a deal?  Was it as compelling as
the video series suggests?  Did they make very creative
use of the C64's abilities that is also suggested?
I didn't think so, I never was exposed to the "buzz" of it
but I might have just be oblivious.

(2)
I didn't know anything about PLATO back in the day either, but
that, in retrospect seems like it was the promising online
system for multi user gaming by creating a terminal environment
to encapsulate the experience not unlike how Web browsers did
later.