Games database
Eliza cover art
Simulation

Eliza

by Zachtronics·published by Zachtronics, Alliance

1966M44
PCDOSAmigaCommodore 64Apple IITRS-80Commodore PET/CBMBrowserMainframeCP/M

Reader score

6.2/ 10

21 votes

Where to get it

Trailer

Gallery

11

Screenshots

Key art

About

Eliza was the first chatterbot to make a splash in popular culture, originally written and conceived by Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT in 1966 to mockingly ape the style of a person-centered (Rogerian) psychotherapist or counselor, largely by prompting the user to elaborate on topics sampled from previous user input. A typical session would take the form of a typed dialogue (sometimes with simulated typing errors to further the suspension of disbelief), with the computer asking the user a series of questions and being fed responses from which to generate further questions.

The game stimulated early consideration of computer artificial intelligence (or the appearance thereof), not infrequently passing the Turing test and fooling users into believing (for a little while, at least) that they were interacting with a real human being on the other end... blazing a trail subsequently followed down by Perry the Paranoid and Racter. Additionally, the nods its conversational interface made toward natural language processing (or, again, the appearance thereof) are considered to have been influential on the early mainframe development of the interface for text adventure games such as Adventure and Zork.

Considered as a game, it is nearly the polar opposite to Emily Short's Galatea -- instead of the player probing the computer with questions, the computer probes the player with them. Many different stories will still be revealed, but in this case, that's because it'll be people tricked by the program into telling them.

Ways to play

Modes

Single player

Perspective

First person

Languages

10 languages, with audio, subtitles and interface
Languageaudiosubtitlesinterface
Chinese (Simplified)—
English
French—
German—
Hungarian—
Italian—
Japanese——
Portuguese (Portugal)——
Russian—
Spanish (Spain)—

Game details

Business Model

Freeware / Free-to-play / Public Domain

Media Type

Download

Text Modes Supported

80×25

Input Devices Supported/Optional

Keyboard

Multiplayer Options

Modem

Number of Offline Players

1 Player

Also known as

Doctor — Gnu Emacs title

Dr. Apple: Eliza — Apple II release

Dr. Sbaitso — Creative Labs' talkie version

ECC-Eliza — Eden Cohen's version

Eliza: The Amazing Artificial Intelligence — Tag-lined title

Frank — alternate title

Fred — alternate title

MacEliza — Mac title

Meliza — SNOBOL version

MyEliza — Amiga title

Reader ratings

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Facts

Developer

Zachtronics

Released

1966

Platforms

PCDOSAmigaCommodore 64Apple IITRS-80Commodore PET/CBMBrowserMainframeCP/MHeath/Zenith H8/H89

Age ratings

PEGI16ESRBM

Standing

Top 22% by 24hr peak players

Tags

Text-based / SpreadsheetMeditative / ZenInteractive fiction / text adventureText parser