The inclusion of gun running and narcotics was also a potential sticking point with publishers – Thorn EMI had emphatically said so in its earlier rejection letter to Braben. Acorn eventually came round to the idea after much persuasion, but the potential controversy of buying and selling narcotics for a profit would hang over the team until the first sales figures were returned. The inclusion of such elements are tame by today’s standards, and Elite can at least be defended on the grounds that a moral choice must be made. “The idea was that you could get a much better benefit from carrying narcotics,” replies Braben, “but, of course, you’ve got the downside of police intervention.”

Acornsoft must also be credited with a great deal of the praise for the early impact of the game. A competition was devised based on the concept of becoming the best – the Elite. The competition was run at the end of each month after release, for six months. Results were published in the most popular games magazines. The play-off between the six winners went on to the grand final at the Acorn User Show. Not only was it the first home videogame-related competition of its time, but more importantly it became an early anti-piracy measure. Looking back, Braben marvels at the way the competition prevented lost revenues to the pirates. “It was very interesting actually, chatting to people who had entered. I asked them, ‘Did you buy the game?’. ‘Erm, no,’ they said, ‘but when I realised I was in with a chance I thought, right, I can do better than that’. They went out and bought the game just to get the entry card.”



Channel 4 News quickly picked up on the phenomenon. An experimental starfield with vector graphics had suddenly become national news and was being played by just about every teacher and child who had access to a BBC Micro. One story suggests that the then ITN News editor went down to the news room and found nearly every journalist playing Elite on their terminals. Braben replays the scene: “‘What the hell’s going on?’ asks the editor. ‘Don’t worry, we’re just playing a game’. ‘No, why is everybody playing the same game? This is a news item in its own right!’”

The report was broadcast at peak time, and Braben acknowledges the boost it gave the game: “Both Ian and I were looking embarrassing in our student attire, but we got some brilliant quotes from it. Peter Warlock, who was then the editor of PCN magazine, said, ‘It’s the best game since… it’s the best game ever!’ That was really nice. He didn’t imagine it being bettered in the sense of the impact it had.”

When asked about the fortune made on the back of one of the most influential videogames ever, Braben remains predictably guarded. “It went from hardly having two pennies to rub together to talking about potentially very big money,” he says. “Although people don’t realise it’s actually a long time before the money actually followed on.” In a brave and perspicacious move both Braben and Bell kept a firm hold on the Elite brand. The move would prove to be a foresighted business decision. “We gave Acorn the rights to just the BBC Micro platform,” recalls Braben. “They didn’t realise we were serious about it, because I withheld not just the game rights but the film rights too. I think that they had not realised quite how valuable the other platform rights would be.”

Though the popularity of Elite seems not to have come as a huge shock to the two authors, the sudden media attention and change in lifestyle did take some adjusting to. “You see these programmes on TV about lottery wins and how people can’t handle the changes in lifestyles,” ventures Braben. “There’s truth in that. Elite was like a lottery win because although we had worked hard, it was still a hobby. It was never a money-driven thing. It eventually caused a rift.”

The rather unconventional fame which came after Elite still remains with the two coders. Bell dedicates a website to the game, and is more than happy to indulge anyone still interested in queries about the space dredgers or how to avoid witch space. Braben, too, is sometimes uncomfortable with the attention over a 25-year-old videogame: “I was at a party a fortnight ago when someone asked for my autograph and it’s a bizarre feeling. Then two other people wanted it. As far as parties go it's an honour but it does begin to separate you off from the other people there.”

It is unlikely that fanatics turning up on either programmers’ doorsteps to discuss the finer points of this space trade game will ever really go away. The game was played by too many people for too many hours and at such a formative time for it to fade away into obscurity. One frightening thought is that Elite probably affected a huge proportion of the population at some stage and in some way. As Braben acknowledges: “So many people approach me and say, ‘I failed my exams because of you’. But more say, ‘I got into the industry because of you’."

This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared in E88.