Benton’s initial attempts to sell the game himself faltered in the face of distribution problems: Computer enthusiast magazines, the only network connecting a large but dispersed population of potential buyers, turned down his ads, unwilling to risk already slim profit margins on potentially offensive material. (Such bottlenecks eventually inspired innovations like the 1981 Dirty Book, a black-market-style catalog of adult programs that was advertised in computer magazines—selling a pamphlet of porn software was considerably less objectionable than selling the software itself, it seems.) Benton’s independent sales were painfully hand-to-hand, conducted from vendor booths at trade shows and computer fairs.

Softporn disk (Photo courtesy Brad Herbert

and The Art of Sierra)

The boost Benton needed came when Ken Williams, one of the Apple II world’s youngest, most recklessly ambitious software titans, picked up a copy at a trade show. Williams was the 26-year-old president and co-founder of On-Line Systems, a software company he and his wife Roberta had launched with the 1980 release of their graphical adventure game Mystery House (Ken programmed the game but Roberta designed it, making her one of the first female computer game designers in the world). Since then, the Williamses had fostered an indomitable series of graphical adventure games and arcade copycats, long forgotten titles like The Wizard and the Princess and Missile Defense. Ken, along with a handful of other late-twenties fast risers in the Apple II world, experienced their fame as an unstoppable ascent for the best and the brightest. In other words, Ken had both the self-importance and the naivety to put his well-respected company label on a sex game.

On-Line Systems’ contribution to Softporn’s success went beyond the simplicity of a licensing agreement. The game’s visual lacquer, that hot tub photo better remembered today than the game itself, was all Ken’s idea—it was even staged in the Williamses’ redwood paneled hot tub on the ground floor of their family home. The female models were all company employees: Diane Siegal, On-Line's production manager, holds a half-eaten apple in a coy pun on Wozniak's forbidden fruit; in the middle, Susan Davis, On-Line's bookkeeper and wife of programmer Bob Davis; and on the right was Roberta herself, looking as if she had all eternity to meet your gaze. The gentleman in the photo is Rick Chipman, a waiter from The Broken Bit, a restaurant just down the road on California State Route 41.

Softporn advertisement, September 1981. Courtesy Softalk Apple Preservation Project

The photo itself was shot by Brian Wilkinson, an editor at the local newspaper who knew Ken as a guy around town, the kind of guy he might drink beers with. “I’m no Ansel Adams,” he told Ken Williams, “but I can take a photo.” Wilkinson shot multiple reels of Kodachrome and Ektachrome film, but only a handful of those original photos survive. These sparse vignettes give dimension to a process, rather than the singular, famed result that crops up under a Google search. Afternoon fades to sunset fades to evening. The women grow bored and irritated. An apple is slowly eaten over the course of the shoot. A backdrop is propped up, made from the round lids to the pool. At some point the Apple II was either brought in or taken out. No one in that hot tub imagined Time magazine on the other end of the lens. These people were friends, screwing around in the times before Twitter and Instagram, doing regrettable things they couldn’t really fathom the ultimate reach of. There could be no better testament to just how small, insular, and utterly naive the early independent microcomputer software scene was, a corporate culture wrought from the volatile mixture of inexperience and exponential growth.

Unreleased images from Softporn cover photo shoot. Courtesy Brian Wilkinson.

Unreleased images from Softporn cover photo shoot. Courtesy Brian Wilkinson.

The hot tub ad first ran in the September 1981 issue of Softalk, an Apple II enthusiast magazine that was a major advertising venue for On-Line Systems, and instantly became a lightning rod of controversy (as instantly as anything could happen in the days of paperbound magazines and mailed letters). Notably, the controversy was not just about Softporn. From September 1981 onward, Softalk, like other computer magazines, was increasingly accepting the advertising dollars offered by other “adult-themed” software products, like the sex scenario generator Interlude and prostitution business simulator Street Life. For almost a year, the pages of Softalk’s “Open Discussion” section was a platform for one of the most involved, contentious, long-ranging debates to ever take place on the subject of technology, obscenity, and equality in early game and computer culture.