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The Gaming Industry & Origin of Video Games

Video games aren't just for children and adolescents. In fact, the average age of people who use some form of interactive entertainment is 30. Moreover, according to the Entertainment Software Association, 32 percent of the parents with children under age nineteen who own a game console or play computer games play video games with their children weekly. In 2004 Americans purchased more than 248 million computer and video games. In other words, interactive entertainment and the gaming industry have become a part of everyday life.

The Origin of Video Games
The origin of video games can be traced to 1958, when William Higinbotham created a game called Tennis for Two. Created with an oscilloscope, Tennis for Two was the first example of interactive entertainment and was used to entertain visitors at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

The video game industry developed alongside computer technology. The development of personal computers, which became more widely available in the 1970s, fueled the origin of video games and the development of the gaming industry. In the 1960s, computer technology was not sufficient to support a video game industry, although individuals did experiment with creating video games.

The Development of the Video Game Industry
By the 1970s, technology had advanced, and early video games manufacturers were some of the first to see the potential for interactive entertainment.

The first video game to be commercially released into arcades was Computer Space. Designed by Nolan Bushnell, it was considered to be too complicated and was a commercial failure. Its technology was impressive, however, and marks a key development in the history of interactive entertainment.

On November 29, 1972, Atari released a video game called PONG, based on the sport of table tennis, or ping-pong. Also designed by Bushnell, PONG was the first video game to achieve widespread popularity, and as such marks the beginning of the gaming industry. In 1974, Atari released a home version of PONG. By 1976, Atari and the interactive entertainment industry had really taken off: Warner Communications bought Atari for $28 million.

By 1977 the popularity of PONG was so high that numerous other video games manufactures flooded the market with copies, hoping to cash in on the burgeoning video game industry. In 1978 video games manufacturer Taito released the wildly popular Space Invaders and Atari released Asteroids. Both became popular arcade video games. By 1980, color games such as Pac-Man became more popular in the video game industry.

The development of interactive games on university mainframe computers also took off in the 1970s. Some highlights include:

• A combination hide-and-seek / text adventure game called Hunt the Wumpus was created in 1972 by Gregory Yob.
  
• Several versions of a Star Trek video game were created in the early 1970s on a Sigma 7 minicomputer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This game is important to the origin of video games because it was the first significant interactive entertainment to be used by students on multiple hardware platforms.
  
• While studying at Claremont Graduate University, Don Daglow, the founder of Atari and creative force behind PONG, wrote the first computer role-playing game in 1975. This video game was called Dungeon; it was an unlicensed interactive entertainment version of Dungeons and Dragons.

Video Games Manufacturers Bring Interactive Entertainment Into the Home
In 1977 a group at MIT began designing the now-legendary text adventure interactive game Zork. Dave Lebling, Marc Blank, Tim Anderson, and Bruce Daniels, the writers of Zork, saw the potential in the video game industry. They founded Infocom in 1979 in hopes of moving these interactive games to home computers.

Adventure interactive games in the gaming industry did not achieve widespread commercial success until the release of the Kings Quest series in 1984. This popular series featured an onscreen character controlled by the player, with commands entered via text.

In the 1980s, the video games manufacturers Atari and Nintendo sold the most popular video game consoles. By the mid-1990s, Sega Genesis was also a leading video games manufacturer. In 2006, the two most competitive video games manufactures are Nintendo and Sony Playstation.

In April 2006, Nintendo released Wii (pronounced "we"), which features an innovative new controller shaped like a remote control. This new controller, which Nintendo hopes will encourage more people to play video games, works through direct motion control. In other words, whatever the video game player does while playing the game affects what happens in the video game.

How Are Interactive Entertainment and the Gaming Industry Regulated?
In response to growing concern over violent and sexual content in interactive entertainment, the ESRB ratings system was established in 1994 in the United States as the video game equivalent of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) film rating system. Video games are rated according to the minimal suitable age for players.

Wal-Mart, an important retail chain in the gaming industry, has a policy of checking the identification of young children or teenagers who attempt to purchase video games and interactive entertainment rated "Mature." To purchase interactive entertainment rated as "Mature" from Wal-Mart, the purchaser must be at least 17 years old. However, this is not a national government policy and the majority of teenagers who want to purchase graphically violent games can do so with minimal difficulty.

An Important Part of American Culture
Video games are a major part of American popular culture and have been for more than thirty years. Given its popularity among children and adults, the video gaming industry will likely continue to be worth billions of dollars.