The Great Galactic Conflict, (GGC), was a turn based

Massively multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, although t ...

(MMOG) which was available in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

around 1985. The game was accessed through a text based dialup service from

Telecom Australia Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets related products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 stock index, and is Australia's largest telecom ...

known as

Viatel Viatel Inc., founded in the United States in 1991, was a Nasdaq-quoted technology company which operated fiber optic networks in several countries, including in the United Kingdom during the mid-1990s. Viatel Technology Group, a Dublin-based te ...

. Briefly, the game mechanic required players to enter their moves during a one-week period. Once a week the

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

would process all entered moves and compute a result which became the basis for the following week's moves. An entire game took 10 weeks and GGC games were played 3 times. GGC moves were heavily influenced by negotiations between players which formed a significant portion of the game play. In 1988 the winner of the game was eligible to receive a prize of $2500. The game was written by Ian Davies for

Microtex 666 Microtex 666 was an Australian Prestel-based videotex system that operated from 1986 to 1989. The service was accessed through a text based dialup service from Telecom Australia known as Viatel. Microtex 666 was dedicated to microcomputer en ...

from 1983 to 1984.{{cite web, url=http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ian-davies/7/379/27, title=Ian Davies GGC was engineered to support 1,000 players, but peaked at around 600. Back end software running on DOS-based PCs would take several hours to determine the collective outcome of the players' moves. Viatel's "bulk update protocol" was used to upload and distribute the new game state to the players.

References

Australian games Inactive massively multiplayer online games