Conclusions

Gossip had the bad luck to be published in 1983, just as Atari was beginning its death spiral. With all the chaos of the layoffs, jobs like publishing games proceeded at a snail's pace and without much in the way of verve and élan. There is some question as to whether it ever appeared in the sales catalog; I myself don't know. I don't even know its sales figures; it seemed that, every time I called someone to ask, that person had been laid off. I'm sure it sold poorly; few people recall the game.

But Gossip deserves a place in history: it was the first computer game about people instead of things. It opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities for further development. Games in which the gossip mechanics are extended to cover additional modes of expression. Games with larger groups. Games with gossip augmented by other dimensions of behavior. Sadly, nobody else ever followed up on these ideas; even today, the most people-oriented game on the market, The Sims, boasts a level of interpersonal interaction no higher than that offered by Gossip in 1983.