Computer Games
The worldwide, multi-billion dollar computer and video game industry has been and remains one of the fastest growing markets linked to consumer technology goods. It is an industry that has fed not only the consumers' desire for entertainment, but also their collective fascination with technology. It seems natural, then, that this is an industry that was born nearly as soon as technology would allow.
In 1958 William Higinbotham was working with an analog, vacuum-tube computer (with an oscilloscope for a display) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Out of what was probably simple curiosity, he connected a few modules together and was able to produce bouncing balls on the screen. Thinking this could make an interesting game, he created an inverted "T" in the middle of the screen and wound up with a simple tennis game. Thus, the first video game was born. The game was operated solely with the hardware, so when the computer was dismantled in 1960, the game was lost.
Not until 1962 was another milestone reached. It was in this year that a student named Steve Russell at M.I.T. created a computer game called SpaceWar, a game with two torpedo-firing spaceships, controlled by the players using toggle switches. This game was created on a PDP-1 (Programmed Data Processor 1) mainframe computer developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and it was the first that allowed multiple users to access the computer simultaneously. Although this computer was the size of a large automobile, it was considered a "modestly sized" computer at the time. Russell was a member of one of the numerous campus clubs called the "Tech Model Railroad Club" (TMRC). The TMRC had access to the mainframe, and several of its members liked to use the computer not only to create new programs but to modify, or "hack" (a term coined by the TMRC), existing ones. Russell decided to write the most ambitious hack to date, an interactive game. It took six months and 200 man-hours to complete the first version (it would be called a "beta" version in today's terminology) of Spacewar.
By the time the programmers had finished, the game had an accurate map of the stars in the background, a "sun" in the foreground with "gravity" that would affect the spaceships, and even remote controllers (the first joysticks). Although the game was very popular with visiting engineers, it was impractical to market commercially. One of those visiting engineers was Nolan Bushnell, an electrical engineering student at the University of Utah, who also worked at an amusement park. He believed that Spacewar would be very popular in an amusement arcade. Working in his spare time, he developed a commercial version of the game and called it Computer Space. This was in 1971, and later that year a games manufacturer called Nutting Associates bought the rights to Computer Space for $500. Nutting Associates went on to produce 1,500 units. The game was not successful. Bushnell felt the reason for its lack of success was that people were unaccustomed to controlling complicated, albeit simulated, spacecraft on a TV screen. He felt a simpler computer game would be more popular, at least until consumers were more comfortable with this new technology.
Armed with the $500 he earned from selling Computer Space, Bushnell started his own company and named it Atari, which is a term adapted from the Japanese game called Go; it's roughly equivalent to the word "check" in chess. He hired an engineer named Alan Alcorn and instructed him to create the simplest game possible. The game he came up with was Pong, so called because the players used vertical lines on the screen (paddles) to bat a ball back and forth, and because the name Ping Pong was already in use.
Bushnell tried to market his game to several games manufacturers, but was turned down by every one. Confident that his creation was marketable, he placed the prototype in the corner of a bar in Sunnyvale, California, called Andy Capp's. That evening the bar called to inform him that his game had broken down. Upon inspection Bushnell immediately realized the problem. The box containing the quarters had exceeded its capacity. Computerized entertainment, as a consumer industry, had arrived.
At about this same time Ralph Baer, an engineer working at a New Hampshire-based defense contracting company called Sanders Associates, suggested the idea of a video game that could be used with a television set. Working with two of his employees, Bill Harrison and Bill Rusch, they came up with a concept for another "pong" type game. By the late sixties defense contractors like Sanders were downsizing and eliminating all but the most profitable divisions; Sanders Associates was therefore in no position to switch to toy manufacturing even if they been inclined to do so. Seeking a consumer-goods manufacturer for his invention, Baer sold the system to Magnavox in 1971. The game was marketed as the Magnavox Odyssey, and did not sell well. This is probably due to the fact that Magnavox over-engineered the device and sold it for over $100.
Although the history of video games is not terribly long, some of the major players in today's market have histories that far pre-date the industry as we know it. It was in 1889 that Fusajiro Yamauchi started a playing card company that would grow into Nintendo. It was 1891 that Gerard Phillips established a company in the Netherlands to produce incandescent lamps and other electrical products--today's Magnavox. In 1947 Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka create the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering company, the first foreign company to license the transistor patent from Bell labs, which they used to create the first pocket-sized transistor radio. Believing the English translation of their name would be to long in English, they modify the Latin word for sound (sonus) to Sony, a word that essentially has no meaning. In 1954 Korean war veteran David Rosen began exporting coin operated pinball and arcade games to Japan. Called Service Games, the company name was eventually compressed to form Sega.
Arcade gaming accounted for most of the industry's market, up until the time that home game systems became technically feasible and their manufacture cost-effective. Starting in the late 1970s a few companies such as Atari, Sega, and Nintendo battled for market primacy; their weapons of choice wear increasingly powerful processors, wide selections of games, and innovative peripherals such as positive-feedback controllers and, eventually, internet accessibility.
The most dramatic change for the industry came with the rise of affordable home computing. Almost as soon as home computers became popular, programmers and designers began supplying games. The earliest games were restricted both by the available software platforms--usually floppy discs--and limited processing power. As computing power increased and CD-ROM became the software standard, game creators were able at last to give full rein to their imaginations.
Commercially available computer games have now completely eclipsed all the gaming types that have come before. Graphically stunning games--often with complex themes and brilliant AI systems--are now available in dozens of categories. Hundreds of websites and scores of magazines are devoted to offering today's gamers the most up-to-date intelligence, strategy, and tips. As technology improves and available titles keep pace, there is no reason to suspect that computer game aficionados will ever be disappointed by the industry that has grown up to serve them.
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