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History of video games

The history of video games began in the 1950s and

1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games
and simulations on mainframe computers, with MIT's
Spacewar! in 1962 as one of the first such games to be
played with a video display. The early 1970s brought the
first consumer-ready video game hardware: the first home
video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first
arcade games from Atari, Computer Space and Pong, the
latter which was later made into a home console version.
Numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success
in both the arcade and the home by creating clones of the
game, causing a market contraction in 1978 due to A collection of home and handheld video
oversaturation and lack of innovation. game consoles at the
Computerspielemuseum Berlin
By the mid-1970s, low-cost programmable microprocessors
replaced the discrete electronic circuitry of the early
hardware, and the first ROM cartridge-based home consoles arrived, including the Atari Video
Computer System (VCS). Coupled with rapid growth in a golden age of arcade games with titles such
as Space Invaders and Pac-Man, the home console market also flourished. A major crash of the
United States home video game market occurred in 1983 as the market was flooded by too many
poor-quality games, consumers lost confidence in the major companies involved, and the sector saw
competition from inexpensive personal computers and new types of games being developed for them.
The crash set the stage for Japan's video game industry to take leadership of the market, which had
only suffered minor impacts from the crash. Nintendo released its Nintendo Entertainment System in
the United States and other Western markets in 1985, helping to rebound the failing video games
sector. The latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s saw video games driven by improvements and
standardization in personal computers, and the console war competition between Nintendo and Sega
as they fought for market share in the United States. The first major handheld video game consoles
appeared in the 1990s, led by Nintendo's Game Boy platform.

The early 1990s saw two major shifts in technology, the introduction of optical media via CD-ROMs,
and the ability to perform real-time polygonal 3D graphics from further advancements in computer
microprocessors. Both aspects were readily incorporated into personal computers and creating a
market for graphics cards, while Sony used both in its fledgling PlayStation console line, pushing
Sega out of the console hardware market while diminishing Nintendo's role. By the late 1990s, the
Internet also gained widespread consumer use, and video games began incorporating online
elements. Microsoft entered the console hardware market in the early 2000s with its Xbox line,
fearing that Sony's PlayStation would displace personal computers. While Sony and Microsoft
continued to develop hardware of comparable top-end console features, Nintendo opted to focus on
innovative gameplay, and developed the Wii with motion-sensing controls, which helped to draw in
non-traditional players and helped to resecure Nintendo's position in the industry; Nintendo
followed this same model in the release of the Nintendo Switch.

From the 2000s and into the 2010s, the industry has seen a shift of demographics as mobile gaming
on smartphones and tablets displaced handheld consoles, and casual gaming had become an
increasing larger sector of the market, as well as a growth in the number of players from China and
other areas not traditionally tied to the industry. Traditional revenue models were supplanted with
ongoing revenue stream models such as free-to-play, freemium and subscription-based games to take
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See also
References
Further reading
External links

Early history (1948–1970)

As early as 1950, computer scientists were using electronic machines to
construct relatively simple game systems, such as Bertie the Brain in
1950 to play tic tac toe, or Nimrod in 1951 for playing Nim. These
systems used either electronic light displays and mainly as
demonstration systems at large exhibitions to showcase the power of
computers at the time.[1][2]
Spacewar! is credited as
Spacewar! is considered one of the first recognized video games. the first widely available
Developed in 1961 for the PDP-1 mainframe computer at Massachusetts and influential computer
Institute of Technology (MIT) by a group of students there, it allowed game.
two players to simulate a space combat fight on the PDP-1's relatively
simplistic monitor. The game's source code was shared with other
institutions with a PDP-1 across the country as the MIT students themselves moved about, allowing
the game to gain popularity.[3]

1970s

Mainframe computer games

In the 1960s, a number of computer games were created for

mainframe and minicomputer systems, but these failed to achieve
wide distribution due to the continuing scarcity of computer
resources, a lack of sufficiently trained programmers interested in
crafting entertainment products, and the difficulty in transferring
programs between computers in different geographic areas. By the
end of the 1970s, however, the situation had changed drastically.
The BASIC and C high-level programming languages were widely
adopted during the decade, which were more accessible than earlier
more technical languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL, opening
up computer game creation to a larger base of users. With the
advent of time-sharing, which allowed the resources of a single
mainframe to be parceled out among multiple users connected to The on-screen instructions from
the machine by terminals, computer access was no longer limited to Will Crowther's 1976 game
a handful of individuals at an institution, creating more Colossal Cave Adventure.
opportunities for students to create their own games. Furthermore,
the widespread adoption of the PDP-10, released by Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1966, and the portable UNIX operating system, developed at Bell
Labs in 1971 and released generally in 1973, created common programming environments across the
country that reduced the difficulty of sharing programs between institutions. Finally, the founding of
the first magazines dedicated to computing like Creative Computing (1974), the publication of the
earliest program compilation books like 101 BASIC Computer Games (1973), and the spread of wide-
area networks such as the ARPANET allowed programs to be shared more easily across great

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number of these consoles were created in East Asia, and it is estimated that over 500 Pong-type home
console models were made during this period.[5] As with the prior paddle-and-ball saturation in the
arcade game field by 1975 due to consumer weariness, dedicated console sales dropped sharply in
1978, disrupted by the introduction of programmable systems and Handheld electronic games.[5] Of
the American companies that had been active in 1977, only Atari, Magnavox, and Coleco remained in
the console market by 1978.[5]

Just as dedicated consoles were waning in popularity in the West, they briefly surged in popularity in
Japan. These TV geemu were often based on licensed designs from the American companies,
manufactured by television manufacturers such as Toshiba and Sharp. Notably, Nintendo entered the
video game market during this period alongside its current traditional and electronic toy product
lines, producing the series of Color TV-Game consoles in partnership with Mitsubishi.[8]

Growth of video game arcades and the golden age

After the ball-and-paddle market saturation in 1975, game

developers began looking for new ideas for games, buoyed by the
ability to use programmable microprocessors rather than analog
components. Taito designer Tomohiro Nishikado, who had
developed Gun Fight previously, was inspired by Atari's
Breakout to create a shooting-based game, Space Invaders, first
released in Japan in 1978.[10] Space Invaders introduced or
popularized several important concepts in arcade video games,
including play regulated by lives instead of a timer or set score,
gaining extra lives through accumulating points, and the tracking
of the high score achieved on the machine. It was also the first
game to confront the player with waves of targets that shot back
at the player and the first to include background music during
game play, albeit a simple four-note loop.[11] Space Invaders was
an immediate success in Japan, with some arcades created solely
for Space Invaders machines.[10] While not quite as popular in Space Invaders was popular in
the United States, Space Invaders became a hit as Midway, arcades and introduced many
serving as the North American manufacturer, moved over elements which became standard in
60,000 cabinets in 1979.[12] video games

Space Invaders led off what is considered to be the Golden age of

arcade games which lasted from 1978 to 1982. Several influential
and best-selling arcade titles were released during this period
from Atari, Namco, Taito, Williams, and Nintendo, including
Asteroids (1979), Galaxian (1979), Defender (1980), Missile
Command (1980), Tempest (1981), and Galaga (1981). Pac-Man,
released in 1980, became a popular culture icon, and a new wave
of games appeared that focused on identifiable characters and
alternate mechanics such as navigating a maze or traversing a
series of platforms. Aside from Pac-Man and its sequel, Ms. Pac- An American Marine playing
Man (1982), the most popular games in this vein during the Defender aboard a naval ship in
golden age were Donkey Kong (1981) and Q*bert (1982).[10] 1982

According to trade publication Vending Times, revenues

generated by coin-operated video games on location in the United States jumped from $308 million
in 1978 to $968 million in 1979 to $2.8 billion in 1980. As Pac Man ignited an even larger video game
craze and attracted more female players to arcades, revenues jumped again to $4.9 billion in 1981.
According to trade publication Play Meter, by July 1982, total coin-op collections peaked at $8.9
billion, of which $7.7 billion came from video games.[13] Dedicated video game arcades grew during
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Sony to develop a CD-based SNES, known as the Super NES CD-ROM, but this deal fell through just
prior to its public announcement, and as a result, Sony went on to develop to the PlayStation console
released in 1994, that exclusively used optical media.[98] Sony was able to capitalize on how the
Japanese market handled game sales in Japan for the PlayStation, by producing only limited
numbers of any new CD-ROM game with the ability to rapidly produce new copies of a game should it
prove successful, a factor that could not easily be realized with ROM cartridges where due to how fast
consumers' tastes changed, required nearly all cartridges expected to sell to be produced upfront.
This helped Sony overtake Nintendo and Sega in the 1990s.[99] One of the key titles on the
PlayStation that adapted to the CD format was Final Fantasy VII, released in 1997; Square's
developers wanted to transition the series from the series' 2D presentation to using 3D models, and
while the series had been exclusive to Nintendo consoles previously, Square determined it would be
impractical to use cartridges for distribution while the PlayStation's CD-ROM gave them the space for
all the desired content including pre-rendered cutscenes.[100] Final Fantasy VII became one of the
industry's key titles, as it expanded the idea of console role-playing games to console game
consumers.[93][101] Since the PlayStation, all home gaming consoles have relied on optical media for
physical game distribution, outside of the Nintendo 64 and Switch.[96]

On the PC side, CD drives were initially available as peripherals for computers before becoming
standard components within PCs. CD-ROM technology had been available as early as 1989, with
Cyan Worlds' The Manhole being one of the first games distributed on the medium.[93] While CD-
ROMs served as a better means to distribute larger games, the medium caught on with the 1993
releases of Cyan's Myst and Trilobyte's The 7th Guest, adventure games that incorporated full motion
video segments among fixed pre-rendered scenes, incorporating the CD-ROM medium into the game
itself. Both games were considered killer apps to help standardize the CD-ROM format for
PCs.[102][103]

Introduction of 3D graphics

In addition to transition to optical media, the industry as a whole saw a major shift towards using
real-time 3D computer graphics across games during the 1990s. There had been a number of arcade
games that used simple wireframe vector graphics to simulate 3D, such as Battlezone, Tempest, and
Star Wars. A unique challenge in 3D computer graphics is that real-time rendering typically requires
floating-point calculations, which until the 1990s, most video game hardware was not well-suited for.
Instead, many games simulated 3D effects such as by using parallax rendering of different
background layers, scaling of sprites as they moved towards or away from the player's view, or other
rendering methods such as the SNES's Mode 7. These tricks to simulate 3D-rendeder graphics
through 2D systems are generally referred to as 2.5D graphics.

True real-time 3D rendering using polygons were soon

popularized by Yu Suzuki's Sega AM2 games Virtua Racing
(1992) and Virtua Fighter (1993), both running on the Sega
Model 1 arcade system board;[104] some of the Sony Computer
Entertainment (SCE) staff involved in the creation of the original
PlayStation video game console credit Virtua Fighter as
inspiration for the PlayStation's 3D graphics hardware.
According to SCE's former producer Ryoji Akagawa and
chairman Shigeo Maruyama, the PlayStation was originally being
considered as a 2D-focused hardware, and it wasn't until the Virtua Racing was an early example
success of Virtua Fighter in the arcades that they decided to of true polygonal 3D graphics
design the PlayStation as a 3D-focused hardware.[105] Texture
mapping and texture filtering were soon popularized by 3D
racing and fighting games.[106]

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From mobile and free-to-play games, gacha games had grown popular in Japan by the early 2010s,
based on the capsule toy vending machine concept, with the earliest known system being in
MapleStory. In-game, players would earn currency that they could use to earn a random draw from a
set of items based on a preset rarities, often with the goal to collect all of a one set of items to gain a
powerful in-game reward. While players could earn more currency through in-game actions, typically
by grinding, they could also can currency by spending real-world funds into the game. The gacha
concept expanded out into loot boxes through the Chinese game ZT Online, and in Western games
like FIFA 09 and Team Fortress 2 in the early 2010s; players would earn loot boxes through in-game
actions, or which could be purchased through real-world funds, and when opened would contain a
variety of items, randomly selected based on rarity. By 2016, numerous high-profile games had
included loot box mechanics, but this drew attention of world governments and policy makers,
fearing that loot boxes were too similar to gambling, since real-world money could be used to
purchase them. Since many of these video games were being aimed at minors, some countries had
passed laws banning or restricting games with loot box mechanics due to their gambling nature.
Coupled with poor implementation of loot box mechanics in Star Wars Battlefront II and Electronic
Arts's FIFA Ultimate Team game mode, loot box mechanics began to lose favor with consumers by
the end of the 2010s.[202]

China's impact in monetization played a key role during this period, which exceeded over 500 million
players by the mid-2010s. While the console ban had been lifted, China's government still required
that imported hardware be sold through Chinese companies, and requires Chinese operators to
manage online games as to uphold the country's laws on censorship and gameplay limitations for
minors. Chinese companies that were already publishing games within the country began to make
partnerships or other arrangements with foreign firms to help bring their games and hardware into
the company through the complex approvals process. Such companies include NetEase and Perfect
World, but the largest mover had been Tencent, which made numerous investments into foreign
firms over the 2010s, which included full acquisition of Riot Games and partial ownership of
Supercell and Epic Games, as well as minority stake in publishers Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard and
Paradox Interactive. In exchange, Tencent had helped these companies refine their monetization
approaches using their past experience with their own games.[203]

Mixed, virtual and augmented reality games

Virtual reality (VR) systems for video games had long been seen
as a target for VR technology and had been in development as
early as the 1990s, but had been hampered by their high cost and
impractical for consumer sales. One of the initial attempts,
Nintendo's Virtual Boy in 1996, used a monochromatic
stereoscopic display to simulate 3D, but the unit was impractical
and failed to gain developers, leading it to be a commercial
failure for Nintendo. Breakthroughs in consumer-ready VR
hardware came in the early 2010s with the development of the The Oculus Rift headset
Oculus Rift by Palmer Luckey. The Rift was demonstrated at
trade shows in 2013, and proved popular enough to lead
Facebook to purchase the company and technology for $2 billion in 2014. Shortly afterward, Valve
and HTC announced the HTC Vive, first released in 2015, while Sony released its PlayStation VR in
2016. Valve later developed its own VR hardware line, the Valve Index, released in 2019. While
numerous VR games took advantage of VR effectively over "flat-screen" games (those lacking VR
capabilities) for immersive experience, VR's "killer app" came by way of Half-Life: Alyx, released by
Valve in 2020. Half-Life: Alyx brought several new ideas for integrating first-person shooter gaming
into a VR app, and spurred sales of the Index.[204]

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Augmented reality (AR) games, where the game takes a real-time video game image and renders
additional graphics atop it, had also existed before the 2010s. Some PlayStation console games used
the EyeToy, PlayStation Eye, or PlayStation Camera as part of the gameplay, as well as Xbox 360 and
Xbox One games using the Kinect. Most of the games were more experimental since cameras were
fixed and limited what interactions could be made. As handheld consoles including the PSP and the
Nintendo DS line, and mobile phones incorporated video camera capabilities, new AR possibilities
opened up on portable devices. Initial games were still more experimental and toys without
comprehensive gameplay loops. AR-based games took off with the release of Pokémon Go in 2016,
which combined AR with location-based games. Players would use their mobile device to guide them
to where a virtual Pokémon may be found, which they searched for and attempted to capture using
AR atop their device's camera.[205]

2020s

Ray-tracing and photorealistic graphics

NVidia and AMD introduced graphics cards in 2020 with hardware support for real-time ray tracing,
which was also a major component introduced with Microsoft and Sony's next consoles, the Xbox
Series X/S and PlayStation 5, both released in November 2020. Significant improvements in
technology also furthered the ability to display highly-detailed textures, allowing for photorealism in
rendered video game scenes at high resolutions and high frame rates. These changes necessitated
larger storage space for texture memory on the hardware and greater bandwidth between the storage
memory and graphic processor. Both new consoles included specialized SSD options designed to
provide high-bandwidth storage options, which had the added benefit of virtually eliminating loading
times in many games particular those featuring in-game streaming for open world games.

See also
Chronology of real-time strategy video games
Chronology of real-time tactics video games
Game On (exhibition)
International Center for the History of Electronic Games

References
1. Bateman, Chris (August 13, 2014). "Meet Bertie the Brain, the world's first arcade game, built in
Toronto" (http://spacing.ca/toronto/2014/08/13/meet-bertie-brain-worlds-first-arcade-game-built-tor
onto). Spacing Toronto. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20151222164300/http://spacing.ca/
toronto/2014/08/13/meet-bertie-brain-worlds-first-arcade-game-built-toronto/) from the original on
December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 17, 2015.
2. Donovan, Tristan (2010). Replay: The History of Video Games. East Sussex: Yellow Ant.
ISBN 978-0956507204.
3. Graetz, Martin (August 1981). "The origin of Spacewar" (http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creativ
e/SpacewarOrigin.html). Creative Computing. Vol. 6 no. 8. pp. 56–67. ISSN 0097-8140 (https://w
ww.worldcat.org/issn/0097-8140).
4. Smith, Alexander (November 27, 2019). They Create Worlds: The Story of the People and
Companies That Shaped the Video Game Industry. 1: 1971 – 1982. CRC Press. pp. 309–310.
ISBN 978-1-138-38990-8.
5. Ernkvist, Mirko (2008). "Down many times, but still playing the game: Creative destruction and
industry crashes in the early video game industry 1971-1986". In Gratzer, Karl; Stiefel, Dieter
(eds.). History of Insolvancy and Bankruptcy. pp. 161–191. ISBN 978-91-89315-94-5.

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