Imagine a world without computer games. It’s not that hard considering the first computer game, Space War, was created in 1962. Then it wasn’t until the 1970s that the general public could play the first video games.
Imagine being the person to create the first computer game. There was little inspiration to draw on. Today, we can look back on countless video games and home computer games. Almost everything we create is a derivative of something out of the past.
That first computer game was totally original. Since then, computers have revolutionized the world of games. Plus, we have a lot of inspiration.
Games predate written history. It seems that we have always been interested in building little virtual realities where we can compete.
The first board games were racing games, much like today’s backgammon. One of the oldest game boards in existence is for a game called Senet, which was popular in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago.
The game involved two players, each of whom had several pieces. The players threw sticks, because dice had not yet been invented, and moved their pieces along the board. The goal was to get your pieces to the end, which represented heaven.
This same game was adopted by other cultures for more than a thousand years. Each culture changed the playing pieces and what the game’s goal represented, but for the most part the game was the same.
Note
Senet’s goal was actually to get your pieces to the last few spaces, which represented heaven. Many games used this as their goal. Today’s game of hopscotch actually has the same goal, even though most people who play it don’t know that the last space represents heaven.
In addition to racing games, another early type of game was a variety of Nine Men’s Morris. This game involved a board with connected points. Each player had nine pieces and could move one piece per move along one connection to another point. If a player got three pieces in a row, he was allowed to remove one of his opponent’s pieces.
This type of game evolved into games such as checkers and chess. The goal was to remove your opponent’s pieces, while at the same time protecting yours.
Games like this simulated an all too common theme in human history: war. Other cultures developed games like it, such as Go in Japan.
The ultimate war game, chess, evolved out of these early simple games. It started in 6th century India, but did not adapt modern features, such as the powerful queen, until the 15th century.
Chess spread throughout the world quickly, and is seen today by many as the ultimate game: easy to learn, but hard to master. In the 20th century, the best chess players in the world are seen as celebrities, and chess tournaments make headlines.
The world of board games changed to what it is today in the late 19th century and early 20th. Companies such as Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers started inventing, mass-producing, and marketing games. New standards such as Scrabble and Monopoly were born out of old ideas. In addition, older games were codified by people such as Sir Edmund Hoyle, who set their rules in stone.
In America during the 20th century, a closet shelf full of board games became a standard. Games rose and fell in popularity as efforts by game companies to market them succeeded and failed.
Board games are a casual experience for the most part. A typical game is easy to learn and can be played in an hour or two. However, some gamers desire a more engaging experience.
War games have existed in some form or another throughout history. However, the first modern war games were played in the 19th century. Military experts used large tables covered with sand and elaborate figures to plan out and test strategies.
The main purpose of the first war games was to plan out real battles. However, they soon came to be used as training tools as well. Military students would reenact battles and make up scenarios. It was, and still is, a valuable tool.
Simplified versions of war games began to be used for recreation. The author H.G. Wells is often cited as the inventor of the first recreational war game. Boards with grids replaced the large tables. Instead of doing complex calculations, players used simple dice rolls and rules to decide the outcome of moves.
In the 1960s and 70s, war games were mass-produced in boxes with booklets that described the rules and large paper grids to play on. Several new games were produced annually, and magazines were even published on the subject.
From the world of war games came the world of role-playing games. The inventors of Dungeons & Dragons were out to make an interesting war game scenario that involved soldiers from the middle ages going into an old castle and dungeon. Before they completed the scenario, they ended up with a whole new game complete with a telephone book-sized set of rules. When they published a simplified version of these rules, they created a gaming phenomenon.
Dungeons & Dragons spawned many competitors and also many other types of role-playing games. Just about every type of adventure could be found in a box at your local hobby store: science fiction, espionage, Old West, and even game systems to handle any type of world.
The role-playing games broke down the idea of what a game was and how long of an experience it was. It created a cottage industry of game companies and players that were willing to try new things. This set the stage for the computer age of games.
The first computer game was created by Steve Russell and other graduate students in 1962 on a PDP-1 mainframe computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It involved two space ships that floated around in the gravity-free environment of space and shot pixels at each other. The graphics were actually much better than what was to follow. The game even included a mathematically generated star field behind the ships.
This first game was addicting and fun. It was made freely available by the creators, so it soon found itself on just about every PDP-1 computer at every college that had one. However, commercial success was out of the question, as PDP-1 computers were too expensive to make into arcade machines, and no one owned a personal computer yet.
Meanwhile, the computer game evolved. A game called Lunar Lander consisted of absolutely no graphics, but could be played on computers that had no screen, only a spool of paper as an output device. A line of text would appear to tell you your position, velocity, and fuel remaining. You made a move, and the new position, velocity, and fuel update were printed. The object was to land before running out of fuel.
Not far behind these games was the classic Adventure. This was a precursor to all computer adventure and role playing games. The game was purely text based. It described your location, and you gave commands such as “go north” or “pick up sword.”
The computer game first came into the public eye with early arcade games, such as Pong. These games were first placed in shopping malls, right next to pinball machines and other coin-operated devices. But they soon took over the arcades.
The first coin-operated video game was Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space. It was like Space War, with the user controlling a ship out to destroy an enemy flying saucer. The machine accepted quarters.
Computer Space was not very successful. It turned out that the concept and controls were too advanced for people who had never seen a computer before.
Bushnell took his modest profits, only $500, and created his own company: Atari.
Atari’s first creation was Pong, a game much simpler than Computer Space. The game was a success. Atari distributed the game through the same channels as pinball machines.
The next step for Atari was to sell Pong into homes. Atari teamed up with Sears to sell a home version of the game in 1975. Then, in 1976, Atari introduced Breakout, the first of the more complex video game classics. Not only was Breakout notable because it brought video games to a new level, but also because it was designed by Steven Jobs, who later revolutionized the personal computer industry.
In 1979, a Japanese company, Taito, developed Space Invaders, the first genuine video game hit. It began to take over the arcades. Atari fought back with its own hit, Asteroids.
Also during 1979 and 1980, dozens of other games were invented in which players fought robots and aliens. However, the next big hit came from a simple maze game where the hero was a yellow dot.
Pac-Man was not expected to be a hit. It was seen as too “cute” to be taken seriously. But kids in the arcades loved it. It was also the first arcade game that appealed to girls as well as boys and the first video game to bring in money from merchandizing.
In 1982 there were 1.5 million arcade game machines in America in about 24,000 arcades and many miscellaneous locations. At the same time, 20 million home video games were sold, which cut heavily into the amount of television watched at home. In 1982, the video game industry was bringing in twice as much revenue as the American film industry.
The early 1980s saw a constant stream of new video games by competing companies. The video arcade industry peaked around that time, and then fell back to the more stable level that we have today. This decline was caused by several factors, including the modernization of the mall and the advent of home game systems.
In the late 1960s, an electrical engineer named Ralph Baer began creating the first home video game system. His first models didn’t even use microchips. However, they did connect directly to a standard television set. This eventually became the Odyssey game system.
The Odyssey included 12 different games printed on circuit cards. In addition, players had to place a transparent screen over their televisions to provide the background. Players also had to keep track of their own scoring by marking little sheets of paper.
The next advancement was provided by the General Instruments Corporation, which developed a microchip that manufacturers could buy for $5 or $6 that allowed more complex home video games to be developed. Coleco used it to develop the Telstar system.
Soon, companies such as Fairchild, RCA, Atari, and Mattel introduced new game systems that could be programmed. This allowed other companies to develop cartridges for them. The Atari Video Computer System eventually dominated the field. It sold more than 12 million units and more than 200 game cartridges were created for it.
The home video game system is still just as popular today, but the players are different. Sony’s PlayStation II, Microsoft’s Xbox, and Nintendo’s GameCube system are the three most popular.
These modern home systems rival both the personal computer and the coin-operated arcade machine. The processors are fast, and the CD media or cartridges contain quite a bit of data.
At the same time, the introduction of the personal computer meant that more complex games could be played as well. A huge library of games existed for computers such as the Apple II. It was easy for any programmer, with almost no money, to develop games for computers and avoid the expensive manufacturing process of the video game console.
In the 1980s, just about every successful video arcade game was translated to a game for the personal computer. Some of these games were legitimate versions made by their original creators, and others were imitations.
In addition, new games sprung up for the personal computer. Because no hardware had to be built to make the games available, it cost less to develop a game for a computer. The only things you needed to actually manufacture were the floppy disks and any printed materials.
This meant that games with a smaller potential audience could be produced. When modems and bulletin board systems became popular in the late 1980s, you could even make a game and distribute it free.
Eventually the CD-ROM drive gave game developers the chance to create games with a multimedia flair. Myst set the standard for CD-ROM adventure games that is still followed today. This game has hundreds of detailed still images.
Today’s CD-ROM adventure games feature even more detailed images, along with soundtracks and complex interfaces. In the mid-1990s, Phantasmagoria used seven CD-ROMs to create an intense environment.
In addition to offering a large potential distribution base, computers also allowed developers to experiment with new techniques. Games such as Doom started the “first-person 3D shooter” genre. By the mid-1990s, just about every action game on the market fit into this category.
Macromedia Flash and Shockwave are part of a new chapter in the history of games. The Web gives people easy access to all sorts of content, and at the same time makes it easy for developers to publish their content.
Although floppy disks and CD-ROMs built the computer game industry, they also made sure that games could only be published by those who had enough money to secure shelf space in software stores. With Web-based games, this is not an obstacle.
The result is that more developers can take their games directly to the people who play them. It also means that companies that would not normally be in the games business are making games. For instance, every major Web portal has a games section featuring its own games.
Web-based games are made in either Flash, Shockwave, or Java. However, some games are made with simple HTML and server-side scripting, and others are made with lesser-known browser plug-ins.
At the start of 2002, Flash MX shows considerable promise at becoming the most used game development environment on the Web. Whether this trend continues depends on the developers and what Macromedia has in store for future versions of Flash.
If you are interested in the history of games and computer games, here are some books that you might want to check out:
Screen Play: The Story of Video gamesGeorge SullivanCopyright 1983Publisher: Frederick Warne & Co., Inc., New York, NY
Content: History of computer and video games.
Joystick Nationby J.C. Herz1997Published by Little, Brown & Company Limited
Content: History of computer and video games.
The World of GamesJack Botermans, Tony Burrett, Pieter van Delft, Carla van Splunteren1987Published by Facts on File, Inc., New York and Oxford
Content: History of games. A lot of illustrations.
The Greatest Games of All TimeMathew J. Costello1991John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Content: Interesting stories about old and new games, the game industry, and video games. Highly recommended.
Game Over: Press Start to ContinueDavid Sheff1993Random House
Content: The history of Nintendo. Highly recommended.
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer RevolutionSteven Levy1984Anchor Press
Content: A great account of many computer pioneers, including a lot of information about the gaming industry in the early ’80s.
According to HoyleRichard L. Frey1956, 1965, 1970Fawcett Columbine
Content: Game rules.
The Oxford History of Board GamesDavid Parlett1999Oxford University Press
Content: The history of games.
Family Fun & Games1992Sterling Publishing Company
Content: Game rules.
A Brief History of Home Video Games(An Online Book)Sam Hart1996–1999http://newton.physics.arizona.edu/~hart/vgh