VIDEO GAMES 1988 - John Madden brings football to NES
1989 - SimCity arrives (with a few haters)
: an electronic game in which players
control images on a video screen
: a game in which
the player controls moving pictures on a television
screen by pressing buttons or moving a short handle:
With current generations raised on the
lightning-fast processing speeds and crystal clear
graphics of Xboxes and PlayStations (and with the
tide of virtual reality-based video games fast
approaching), it’s easy to forget that just 50 years
ago, digital gaming existed in only a few laboratories
around the world, the experiments of unknown
Ph.D. students or well-known scientists and
mathematicians who’d made their name in more
traditional fields.
Today, video games are an entrenched part of our
cultures and routines. According to
the Entertainment Software Association, 59% of
Americans played video games in 2013. That same
year, consumers spent $21.5 billion on video games,
the association reported.
Gamers today aren’t only packs of teenage boys,
either. The average American game player is 31
years old and 48 percent of all American gamers are
women, the ESA reports.
From the laboratory to arcades and, later, onto
shelves and into the cloud, video games have rapidly
and radically evolved in the past half century. Here’s
a peek back at how it all happened and a glimpse of
what’s to come.
1889 - Nintendo is founded, and its first ventures
aren't PG
1952 - The first computer game... of sorts
1955 - The Cold War hits the computer
1958 - Tennis for Two
1962 - Spacewars
1964 - Computer programming language arrives
1971 - The first commercial arcade game
1971 - The Oregon Trail
1972 - Magnavox Odyssey, the first home
console
1972 - The rise of Atari
1976 - The first video game controversy
1977 - The Atari 2600 sets the home console
standard
1978 - Space Invaders arrive
1979 - Activision gets into the game(s)S
1980 - Pac-Man chomps into arcades and home
consoles
1981 - Donkey Kong storms in, and Nintendo is
done with vacuums and vice
1984 - Tetris falls into place
1985 - NES debuts at CES
1989 - Game Boy catapults the portable gaming
industry
1989 - Sonic the Hedgehog is here'90S
1991 - Super Nintendo vs. Sega Genesis
1993 - Doom stirs the pot and regulators get
involved
1994 - Warcraft begins to divide and conquer
1995 - Sega Saturn vs. Sony Playstation
1996 - The Nintendo 64
1999 - Sega's last hurrah
2000 - PlayStation 2 sends shockwaves with
stunning graphics
2001 - Microsoft fires back with the Xbox
2005 - The Xbox 360 picks up where the Xbox left
off
2006 - The Nintendo Wii gets gamers off the
couch
2006 - Sony and Microsoft go head-to-head
2008 - Apple opens the App Store; mobile gaming
grows
2013 - The Xbox One, the third Xbox, finally
arrives
2013 - Sony fires back with the PS4
2013 - Remember Tetris?
2014 - Is Oculus Rift the future of gaming?
Today, video games make up a $100
billion global industry, and nearly two-thirds of
American homes have household members who
play video games regularly. And it’s really no
wonder: Video games have been around for
decades and span the gamut of platforms, from
arcade systems, to home consoles, to handheld
consoles and mobile devices. They’re also often
at the forefront of computer technology.
Video games have been around since the
early 1970s. The first commercial arcade video
game, Computer Space by Nutting Associates, was
introduced in 1971. In 1972, Atari introduced Pongto
the arcades. An interesting item to note is that Atari
was formed by Nolan Bushnell, the man who
developed Computer Space. He left Nutting
Associates to found Atari, which then produced
Pong, the first truly successful commercial arcade
video game.
In October 1958, Physicist William
Higinbotham created what is thought to be the first
video game. It was a very simple tennis game, similar
to the classic 1970s video game Pong, and it was
quite a hit at a Brookhaven National Laboratory
open house.
Since the 1980s, video gaming has become
a popular form of entertainment and a part of
modern popular culture in most parts of the world.
One of the early games was Spacewar!, which was
developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video
games developed from 1972 to 1978. During the
1970s, the first generation of home consoles
emerged, including the popular game Pong and
various "clones". The 1970s was also the era
of mainframe computer games. The golden age of
arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982.
EFFECTS:
Problem solving and logic
Hand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills.
Planning, resource management and logistics.
Multitasking, simultaneous tracking of many shifting
variables and managing multiple objectives.
Teamwork and cooperation when played with others
Concentration
Strategy and anticipation
Quick thinking, making fast analysis and decisions
Accuracy - Action games, according to a study by the
University of Rochester, train the player’s brain to
make faster decisions without losing accuracy. In
today’s world, it is important to move quickly
without sacrificing accuracy.
Violence - increased aggressive thoughts, feelings,
and behaviors, and decreased prosocial helping
Socially isolated
Learn wrong values
Confuse reality and fantasy
Bad effects to health like obesity, seizure, etc.
Addiction. According to the Council on Science and
Public Health in the US, addiction to video games
seems to occur more likely in children who start
playing video games at younger ages. Different
studies have shown that up to 15% of video gamers
can be considered addicted. That means that out of
10 of your friends that play video games, one or
more may be affected. The World Health
Organization in June 2018 declared gaming addiction
as a mental health disorder. A study by the
Minneapolis-based National Institute for Media and
the Family suggests that video games can be
addictive for kids, and that the kids’ addiction to
video games increases their depression and anxiety
levels. Addicted kids also exhibit social phobias.
How video games were made?
Writers, artists, designers, and programmers
must collaborate to create all the parts of the story,
including the characters, the settings, the music and
other sounds, and the possible paths the story can
take. Unlike movies, which contain a single storyline,
video games must account for all the potential paths
intense gameplay can take.
Today's gamers expect life-like video games with the
best graphics possible. Characters are expected to
move like real people would and objects are usually
expected to loosely follow the laws of physics.
Settings must look like the real world…or whatever
fake world exists in the video game. The level of
detail that artists and designers must achieve is
challenging. That's why it could take over a hundred
people to develop a single video game!
Once all the elements of the video game have been
designed, it's up to computer experts to put it all
together to make it work effectively as a video game.
All the characters, settings, sounds, and gameplay
elements must be programmed to work together
seamlessly.
Computer programmers must write millions of lines
of computer language instructions — called code —
that control all aspects of the game. Code can be
written in a variety of different computer languages,
such as C++, Python, Visual Basic, and Perl.
If you think about controlling a
particular character in a game, there's a seemingly-
endless variety of things you can do with that
character . Code must be written to account for all
the possible choices you can make with
your character. Each move you make leads to
changes in the setting, as well as a whole new set of
options for your next move. Complex computer code
controls all these factors and makes playing the
game a seamless experience for the user.
Once a video game is nearly finished, it enters the
testing phase, where players test every element of
the game in order to find and fix any errors — called
bugs — before the game is released. Upon release,
the game is marketed to the general public and you
get to enjoy the fruits of the thousands upon
thousands of hours that went into making the game!