David Wolf has been hooked on easter eggs since his college days. Not the colorfully painted ovoid confections children are known to search high and low for, but hidden treasures buried deep in the code of many computer programs as well as DVDs, games, and even things as staid and straightforward as movies. Originally a diversion largely known only to the programmer community, these small insertions flourished through the eighties and nineties as a kind of rebellion against large corporations like Microsoft and IBM where these programmers worked, according to Martin Meredith, a 22-year-old open-source contributor. A developer would insert an egg, which was a small program that was left behind on the software he was working on — similar to an artist’s signature on his painting. The program could be anything from a small graphic to an entire game. Popularizing it was simple: He’d tell a few friends, who in turn would tell others, and soon the whole developer community would know who was responsible for the creation of that particular code. And so the easter-egg phenomenon remained the secret realm of a handful of insiders until the late nineties when it went mainstream. Now they’ve become so commonplace that it’s hard to know what’s an easter egg and what isn’t.

While no one is sure about how they came to be referred to as easter eggs, there is little doubt who their progenitor is: Warren Robinett. A game developer for Atari Inc. in 1979, Robinett wanted credit for his work on the creation of Adventure, a hit video game that sold more than a million copies. Atari, like most software developers at the time, knew they risked losing talent to the competition if programmers’ identities were known. So most forbade game developers from attaching their names to the software they created. Robinett’s solution was the first easter egg — an object hidden in Adventure’s code that would allow the player to reach a screen displaying the words “Created by Warren Robinett.” His feat earned him instant fame and spread like wildfire through the programmer community. (Robinett has refused to give any interviews since then. People who know him says he is not proud of being associated with his creation. He wants to be known for his work and not for the easter egg.)

Fellow programmers seized upon the idea and inserted their own eggs, Eventually moving beyond simply signing their creations to tucking other fun stuff into their programs. Microsoft Word 97 had a pin-ball game concealed within its code while Excel 97 had a flight simulator game. Just like the original easter eggs, these were extremely hard to locate. Try this: To locate the flight simulator on Excel 97, press F5, type “r97c12:r97c24,” enter, press the TAB key, and hold down control + shift. There it is, but you’d never be able to find it without the inside information provided.

And that’s where Wolf comes in. A computer programmer by profession, he’s one of the reasons these hidden quirks have become so popular. In 1997, while still in college, he discovered his first easter egg – the flight simulator game in Excel 97. He was told about the simulator game by someone who had found out through the grapevine. He got so enthusiastic that he set up a Web site, eeggs.com to spread the news. “I thought there was so much cool stuff out there and wanted to know more about it,” he says. “This was also a way to get others to share their information and expand the sub-culture.”

With more than 10,000 postings, his site chronicles the spread of easter eggs over the past few years. Some regular visitors to the site say searching for an easter egg is like going on a treasure hunt as one never knows what they’ll end up with. Aaron McAnelley, a language instructor is particularly fond of DVD easter eggs and visits the site every time he buys a new DVD to see what hidden menus it contains. These menus usually have bonus material such as censored scenes. (Calls to movie studios went unanswered.)

Innocuous as these games and hidden menus in DVDs might seem, they resulted in something that was completely unforeseen by their creators. Now that people outside the programming community could easily find them, they began to lose their original meaning as a hidden secret between programmers. The idea has been transformed from a treasure deeply hidden in a program to anything that was not readily understood or instantly apparent. For instance, Nokia phones have a standard message tone that in morse code spells out the words “Connecting People” – Nokia’s slogan. Because this is not something that would be easily understood by a layman, it qualifies as an easter egg under the new expanded definition. Over the years — as the definition has expanded — they have become immensely popular and can now be found in mobile phones, movies, DVDs, computer software, TV programs, and even books.

The increasing popularity has caused some purists to believe that the concept is being diluted. Their favorite whipping boy: DVD easter eggs. Now, they say, people almost always expect new DVDs to contain an easter egg and the path to finding the egg is often predictable. “When the DVD industry churns out easter eggs in almost every disc, it’s analogous to having the (traditional) easter-egg hunt confined to a single room,” says Andy Leong, a Malaysian easter-egg enthusiast.

Another sticking point are easter eggs in music CDs. Some say all hidden tracks should be included in the category; others argue that the tracks must be hard to find. For instance, a hidden track found after a 30 second pause in a Broadway musical Hairspray CD doesn’t make the cut, but one found after a 10-minute gap should be considered a true easter egg. Go figure.

Cameos in films also have stirred debate. Often movies have small parts (usually restricted to a single scene) that are played by the director, or friends or family of the director. Famous directors are easily identifiable — Martin Scorcese has made cameo appearances in most of his films — and the purists are divided over whether these can be called easter eggs. “It would depend on the circumstances in which he appeared in the film. If he was in plain view, then it is not an easter egg,” says Dominic Feargrieve, who screens submissions at eeggs.com. For lesser known directors, he is willing to make an exception.

In making the call for eeggs.com, Wolf says he is flexible and looks at intent and how easy the eggs are to discover. His site has a lively discussion board where users debate “What Qualifies as an Egg.” Eeggs.com merely posts the eggs and doesn’t tell users the steps taken to find them. “We still want people to go out and find the eggs on their own. That’s all part of the experience,” says Mr. Wolf.

As eater eggs have moved into the mainstream, there is little doubt that the concept has changed considerably from what the programming community believed it to be. Programmers interviewed believed this was a good thing but refused to say this on the record for fear of being ostracised by the community. One said, “As more and more easter eggs are hidden in new products all I want to say is “More power to those who hide them.” Clearly they are just happy to see these hidden objects move into the mainstream. The next time you discover a quirky hidden tidbit, don’t just frown and move on. Share it with others. Who knows, you might have discovered an easter egg.

 Print |  Email

BER Business Times is published by the Business & Economic Reporting Program in the Department of Journalism at NYU.

© New York University