"The senior members of this group were Steve Colley (see Steve's history of Maze here) and myself. We had written a lot of useful software for the Imlac, but never any games, and we were feeling like it was time that we proved that we, too, could write fun code. As we were sitting around brainstorming one day, we came up with idea of a networked, multiplayer maze game. I suggested to Steve that it would be really cool if it could be 3D, but Steve didn't think that the Imlac had the necessary processing power. But then I pointed out that a maze with all 90 degree angles might enable a simpler 3D rendering than the general case. Steve got excited about this, and as he often did, came back the next day with an implementation of the graphics for the maze navigation. Within a short time, networking code was added to get the multiplayer version going (we had been experimenting with ad hoc LANS for the Imlacs as part of our more serious work)."
source: www.digibarn.com/collections/games/xerox-maze-war/index.html#palmer