3 Nov 2007

Week 2.... The Beginning

Week two, task two. A bit late, but better than never.

When ever you think of early video games everyone instantly thinks of Pong, Pac-man and the like. But apparently the video game was born in the early 1950’s.

Early programs were simple, such as checkers and tic-tac-toe. However these programs were not classed as true electronic games as they were representations/copies of the average board game. So even though these were make before, the first “true” electronic game is Tennis for Two by William Higinbotham created in 1958, 6 years after checkers. The purpose of this game was to entertain visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Its extremely primitive, like pong only a lot worse. As u can see =



So this dude Higinbotham was a American Physicist, created Tennis For Two on a oscilloscope. Oscilloscopes are normally use for testing electronic signals, displaying voltages in a graph. So what on earth compelled him to use this as a base? I’m thinking since it was the 1950’s there was nothing else that fit his requirements (just guessing, I could be wrong) I’ll see if I can find anything further. Unfortunately for him he never attempted to market or patent his device and it never really had much impact on the word, so the potential of the electronic game remained unrecognized by the public.

It was not until the 1970’s more that 10 years later that video games were commercialized, this was very hit and miss the industry struggled and even collapsed in 83. But they managed to build the basis for what is now a booming industry. console hardware alone is predicted to make 3.89 billion this year and 5.77 billion in 2010. (I hate statistics, so this is most likely wrong XD)

Games from the 70’s are amazingly primitive with simple targets, but amazingly addictive.
(Wikipedia rocks, best place for information EVER)

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