A History of Video Games: Part I.
There are several ways to explore history, especially with topics like ours that have been covered so many times before. Hardware versus software, by platform, by video game genre, and many more, but in our case here we will go with the bane of any historical essay… chronological order. Due to how much I have chosen to include I have split this post into two parts. The final disclaimer of course is that this is me guiding you through the past which means it will be framed by my fallible bias, so please if I offend anyone by leaving something out, leave it in a comment and I will investigate it with due diligence!
In the beginning, Alan Turing said, let there be computers!
Turing is famously credited with being the founder of computer science and A.I. (Beavers 2013), but it was curious for me to discover that he, along with David Champernowne, devised the first recorded code for a chess game called Turochamp in 1948 (Cochlin 2012). While it was too complicated to be run on the computers of the time, Alan did enact the code in a game of chess to show how the game would have worked. Half a century later machine would defeat human in 1997 when IBM’s infamous Deepblue algorithm defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning chess grand master (History.com 2009).
A machine that was actually built for playing a video game belonged to Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann when they filed a patent for their “Cathode-ray tube amusement device” (Goldsmith and Mann 1948). Perhaps inspired by the previous two world wars, in their game you could fire a projectile or shell at a target with the objective of blowing it up, an important precursor for the games to come!
University Computers are for research only!
Computers used to be machines that took up entire rooms, series equipment that only scientists and codebreakers could use. Enter Bertie the Brain at the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition where Josef Kates demonstrated that a game, “tic-tac-toe”, could be played on a computer (Donovan 2010). Back in the UK in 1952, A. S. Douglas developed OXO, a computer game to play which in Britain was called “noughts and crosses” (Donovan 2010).
Six years later in 1958, we got our first sports game called Tennis for Two created by William Higginbotham for an annual visitor’s day at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The machine was specifically designed for the game, rather than having a game built to show what a computer could do (BNL 2008).
Gaming was taken to the next level in 1962 on MIT’s PDP 1 vector display system when three employees at the university created the iconic Spacewar! (Barton and Logduidice 2009). Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen designed the game supposedly outside of work hours (for anyone who has ever felt guilty procrastinating on a company computer… take comfort knowing humans have been doing so for nearly 60 years). The game locked two players into a dog fight set in deep space surrounded by stars one of which was at the centre and pulled the players into its field of gravity. The game is pivotal in our jaunt through the past for two key reasons. Firstly, because it was coded on the PDP-1 it could be shared (or ported) to other computers (there were only 55 PDP-1’s ever sold), though usually these were found in other university laboratories because the computer’s were so incredibly expensive. Secondly though, Spacewar! directly inspired the creation of arcade cabinets; the next step for video games!
Insert coin to begin. The rise and fall of Arcades.
Inspired by Spacewar! Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney created Computer Space in 1971 (Smith 2019). The game was built into custom-made cabinets with computer hardware built for the sole purpose of playing the game. It was the opposite of a game coded to be played on a computer like the PDP-1 at MIT. They also managed to commercialise it by adding a coin slot mechanism and sticking it in student (or college) bars like the Dutch Goose bar near Stanford University (Smith 2019). The concept and controls however proved too complicated for other potential gamers outside of college campuses.
Enter the father of video games, Ralph H. Baer. While working for Sanders Associates Baer released Magnavox Odyssey in 1972, the world’s first home console (and part inspiration for this blog’s name). This first generation console used plastic overlay sheets that would be fitted onto the tv and came with 12 different games including tennis. This was video games hitting the world stage as a form of entertainment, being the first video game to be advertised on tv and selling a huge 69, 000 units in its first year (Smith 2019).
Bushnell and Dabney incorporated a company to follow up on Computer Space for their next Arcade Cabinet. Hiring Allan Alcorn the newly formed Atari launched Pong in 1972. Quicker to learn than Computer Space and based on a game most people had played before, ping pong (or whiff whaff if you are an eccentric British Prime Minister) (Donovan 2010). In fact it was legally proved to be based on the Magnavox Tennis game by visitor log records from Nolan Bushnell visiting the company (Smith 2019).
Both games drove the popularity of each other with over 8000 Pong arcade cabinets being sold across America. It is worth noting that Pong’s success was in part thanks to the cost of their chosen video display. A vector monitor like those used in the universities cost thousands of dollars while Pong used a tv set worth only a hundred (Smith 2019).
The land of the rising sun
Then the sun rose in the east, when the land of Japan invaded the video game market. In 1978 the Japanese company Taito released Space Invaders, designed by Tomohiro Nishikado (Donovan 2010).
While Space Invaders didn’t initially sell a lot of arcade cabinets it did add fuel to the fire that would become the golden age for arcade games. From the perspective of game design it introduced the concept of “lives”, the “high score” and perhaps most importantly background music. From an industry perspective it also put Midway on the scene, as they manufactured or published the software developed by Nishikado and Taito.
The 1980’s saw the birth and rise of other iconic games along with their developers and publishers. Midway found success again, this time with another Japanese developer Namco in 1980 and the release of the first commercially branded video game character, Pac-Man (fun fact, the name was changed from the Japanese Puc-man to avoid defacement to the cabinets, changing the P to an F. Smart thinking). You can play a version of Pac-Man for free on Google here. Two other noteworthy releases from 1981 were Donkey Kong by Nintendo and Frogger, developed by Namco and distributed by Sega, but more on them next time (Harris 2014).
Despite the success of Arcade Cabinets entering malls across America, the increasing interest in the burgeoning home console market saw it’s steady decline. Kids didn’t need to carry coins to play games anymore, they could play Pong in their living room (Wagner, A 2020).
Join me next time for Part II. where we enter the emotionally charged battles of the console wars, visit the bed room coders of the PC master race and discover how handhelds evolved into the mobile gaming market.
REFERENCES
Barton, M and Loguidice, B. 2009. Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time. Burlington. Focal Press.
Beavers, A. 2013. Alan Turing: Mathematical Mechanist. In Cooper, B. van Leeuwen, J. eds. Alan Turing: His Work and Impact. Waltham: Elsevier.
Brookhaven National Laboratory. 2008. The First Video Game?. Available at: https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php [Accessed: 05/02/2021].
Cochlin, D. 2012. Kasparov versus Turing. University of Manchester. Available at: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/kasparov-versus-turing/ [Accessed: 01/02/2021].
Donovan, T. 2010. Replay: The History of Video Games. Lewes: Yellow Ant.
Goldsmith Jr, T and Mann, E. 1948. Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device. US patent 2455992. [Patent].
History.com Editors. 2009. Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparov in chess match. A&E Television Networks. Available at: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/deep-blue-defeats-garry-kasparov-in-chess-match [Accessed: 01/02/2021].
Smith, A. 2019. They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry. Volume 1 1971–1982. Boca Raton: CRC Press
Wagner, A. 2020. The Evolution of the Video Game Industry. Wagner Road Capital Management. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5aff442cb98a788408dcceb4/t/5f0727ec1770ef566f04922e/1594304494108/2020Q2WRCM+Blog.pdf [Accessed: 04/02/2021].
