“If You Can See Something for its True Essence”: Exploring the Origins of the Personal Computer in TIS-100

TIS-100 is a minimalistic computer game released by Zachtronics in 2015 that focuses on assembly language programming. Structured around black-and-white screens and text input, TIS-100 lacks the visual or auditory flourishes that make up the worlds of many contemporary games. Nonetheless, it features a multilayered world that alludes to a specific cultural milieu and to far-reaching questions about the relationship between the individual and the computer. In offering a retroactive portrayal of early programming methods, the game recalls a 1970s cultural environment that laid the groundwork for the personal computer. During this period, close-knit communities of programmers struggled to gain independence and express creativity while working on computers that were owned by bureaucratic institutions. The narrative of TIS-100 recounts the story of an early programmer who gains personal access to such a computer, launching him on a search to understand the workings of this classified device. Yet his engagement with the computer feeds into an increasingly introspective quest to locate an essential basis to the overarching relationship between the individual and the computer. The narrative, setting, and gameplay of TIS-100 dramatize the tensions and contradictions which develop around the possibility that such an essence exists. In particular, the world of TIS-100 demonstrates how the open-ended flexibility that defines even the most basic operations of a computer can provide a context for the creativity and communal interconnectivity of the individual. Ultimately, the game suggests that, if there is an essence to the interactions between individuals and computers, it centres on the way the latter equips individuals to express themselves in a manner that fosters links to communities of like-minded people.