The Pollution Game / "King" (1970, DEC BASIC timesharing / DECUS)

Author(s): James A. Storer, then a high-school student at Lexington High School, Lexington, MA. Later a computer-science professor at Brandeis, and the author of the 1969 Lunar Lander (the “how much fuel” descent game). Sources: Wikipedia: Hamurabi (video game), Jim Storer’s early-games page (Brandeis), Storer’s Pollution Game primary-source folder, 101 BASIC Computer Games, Internet Archive 101basiccomputer0000davi (King writeup p.138, program listing p.139), MobyGames: Pollution Game Category: inspiration, Batch 10 (gameplay-mechanics mining). A pollution-versus-growth feedback loop under a fixed term limit, with several distinct ways to lose. Serves: DYNAMO (assigned by Josh; see cart map)

What it is

One of the first ecology-themed management simulations, in the Hamurabi lineage of “govern a place, balance the numbers, survive your term.” James Storer wrote it around 1970 as a Lexington High School student, in BASIC on a DEC PDP-8 timesharing system (the DECUS catalog id BASIC-8-346 marks it as PDP-8 BASIC). He submitted it to DECUS under the name “POLLUTION GAME” and also sold it to the “Call A Computer” timesharing service (a cancelled check stub survives in his archive). David Ahl reprinted it as “King” in 101 BASIC Computer Games (1973), and its end-of-run performance appraisal is the feature Ahl carried into his BASIC version of Hamurabi. The same James Storer wrote the 1969 Lunar Lander, so both foundational BASIC-era games trace to one Lexington teenager.

Mechanics

From the game’s own description and BASIC listing (101 BASIC Computer Games, pp.138-139):

• Premise. You are Premier of Setats Detinu (“United States” reversed), a communist island 30 by 70 miles. The win condition is finishing an eight-year term of office without major mishap. Turns are years.
• Economy. Currency is Rallods (“dollars” reversed). Each countryman needs 100 Rallods per year to survive. National income comes from farm produce and from tourists drawn to the island’s forests, hunting, and fishing.
• The pollution engine. Your land carries mineral content and can be sold to foreign industry for strip mining, at roughly 2000 Rallods per square mile. Industry imports and houses its own foreign workers. Selling raises immediate cash, and it generates air and water pollution that kills countrymen (“carbon-monoxide and dust inhalation” in the death text) and degrades the tourist economy (smog discourages sunbathers, water pollution ruins bathing, air pollution kills the game-bird population, hotels go shabby with smog grit). Pollution poisons the renewable income you depend on.
• Four decisions per year. (1) square miles of land to sell to industry; (2) Rallods to distribute to countrymen; (3) square miles to plant (crops cost 10-15 Rallods per square mile, and each countryman can work at most 2 square miles, a labor cap); (4) Rallods to spend on pollution control.
• Several ways to lose, each with a distinct trigger. Underfund your people (below 100 Rallods each) and they starve. Let foreign workers grow to outnumber your countrymen and they revolt and take the country (you are jailed or assassinated). Let a third of the population die during your term and the survivors remove you (the flavor text gouges an eye and brands you a “national fink”). Even hoarding is punished: Rallods left unspent in the treasury cost lives.
• Suspend / resume. Answering “1000” to the opening “HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU PLAYED?” continues a prior game; a manual save-by-numbers the player transcribes.
• Verdict at the end. The run closes with a scored appraisal of your reign, the mechanic Ahl reused in Hamurabi.

Mineable patterns

• One tempting move that is a slow-motion loss. Selling land to industry pays now and quietly poisons both the population and the renewable revenue (tourism). A negative-feedback economy where the obvious short-term play degrades your long-term base.
• Fixed turn horizon with a “survive to the end” win. Eight bounded turns and a hard finish line, a finite campaign with a clear objective and no infinite grind.
• Multiple orthogonal failure conditions. Starvation, mass death, demographic takeover, and hoarding each fire on their own trigger. Losing has texture, and the player learns exactly which dial they mistuned.
• Depth from a few coupled sliders. Four numeric inputs per turn (sell, distribute, plant, clean) interact through hidden state (accumulated pollution, worker count, population) to produce non-obvious outcomes.
• A scored verdict as the payoff. An end-of-run performance appraisal that grades the whole reign, giving the session a punchline.
• Human-readable save/continue. A short numeric code resumes a game, legible persistence decades before it became a stated design value.

KN-86 resonance

• The pollution loop maps onto the credits + reputation economy: a faucet that pays immediately while raising a hidden cost that later closes options. Reputation already modulates threat density on the World Engine, so a “cash now, heat later” dial fits the existing model. See campaign-economy.md.
• The fixed-term, survive-without-collapse frame suits a World-Clock-ticked management cart: a hard horizon plus several distinct fail states.
• The end-of-term appraisal rhymes with a CIPHER debrief or a dossier verdict screen (a mechanical scoring surface), and the numeric continue-code rhymes with human-readable Universal Deck State.
• At the concept level this is a governance skin over the deck’s recurring core: manipulate coupled systems under a deadline, the same shape the forensic-accounting and dispatch carts already use.

Sources & verification

• 101 BASIC Computer Games (Ahl, DEC, 1973), Internet Archive 101basiccomputer0000davi (read directly): the “King” description (p.138) and full BASIC program listing (p.139). Primary source for every mechanic above, including the four yearly decisions and the loss triggers pulled from the listing’s PRINT strings.
• Storer’s Pollution Game folder (Brandeis) hosts the original BASIC listing, the DECUS submission scan, and the “Call A Computer” check stub, confirming author, provenance, and the DECUS/timesharing distribution.
• Wikipedia: Hamurabi and Storer’s early-games page confirm the 1970 date, the King republication, and the appraisal-into-Hamurabi lineage.
• Confidence: high on author, platform (PDP-8 BASIC), the c.1970 date, and mechanics (read from the primary listing).
• Corrections / notes. The working title “Pollute” was not found in any source; the game’s real names are “POLLUTION GAME” (DECUS) and “King” (Ahl’s anthology). The People’s Computer Company hint is not confirmed: the documented provenance is DEC / DECUS, the Call A Computer timesharing service, and David Ahl’s DEC-published anthology. MobyGames dates the title 1973, which reflects the anthology printing; the underlying program dates to c.1970 per Storer’s own archive and Wikipedia.