I was on the Internet regularly 25 years ago. "Simple network games" did not exist, they had incredibly complex protocols and failure conditions (remember set

I was on the Internet regularly 25 years ago. "Simple network games" did not exist, they had incredibly complex protocols and failure conditions (remember setting up Netrek?). Chat services also incredibly difficult to run correctly over the Internet that there was no proliferation, there was... IRC. Which had its own major messes (recalling EFnet netsplits almost hourly in the early 90s). Or let's talk about BBS'. So, you could do ANSI art fairly easily, but let's recall the hassle of handling multiple users on the software of the day. You usually didn't. BBS games (Tradewars, Legend of the Red Dragon, etc.) were turn based - someone dialed in, played their turn for the day, and waited for everyone else to dial in and play their turn. Email and Fidonet EchoGroups came in daily, or maybe twice a day, when you dialed into your upstream provider. The only way you could run a multitasking BBS with multiple phone lines was mostly DESQview, OS/2, or the BBS software itself had its own multi-threading. The Internet didn't replace IRC and BBS'... the Web did. Not that they're gone completely, just no where near as important as they once were. Network games are OTOH are still as complex as Netrek because they don't fit a Hypermedia architecture. But ultimately I think you have nostalgia for a better world that never existed. Which is fine if you want inspiration for new ideas but... it is important to understand why the Web won: for many cases, it was better than what we had.