Spacewar!, an Exhibit

                “ An elegant program does its job as fast as possible, or is as compact as possible, or is as clever as possible in taking advantage of the particular features of the machine in which it runs, and finally, produces its results in an aesthetically pleasing form without compromising either the results or operation of other programs associated with it (Graetz).” After successfully helping with the creation of Spacewar! in 1961 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Martin Graetz commented on game design. He concluded that a code that is able to be both efficient in game play and pleasing to the human eye when players are actually engaged in a battle is a game code that is acceptably elegant. Since the improvements and breakthroughs of technology were just starting, it was easy for Spacewar!  to release then almost instantly get better and better with additions from all sorts of brainstorming ideas of various gamers and programmers.  Despite the lack of technology in computer gaming and code during the 1960’s, Spacewar! continued to improve with updated versions with differences in game design through the addition of ‘gravity’ and ‘hyperspace, ’  improvements in the game’s controllers and changes in background configurations.