Week 2- The history of computer games: 1950s-70s

Computer-games have a very surprising history. Getting their roots from missile computers and the technology surrounding radars, the first games were very different to the ones that we are playing today.

Argueably, the first interactive elecronic game was a missile simulator created by Thomas T Goldsmith Jr and Estle Ray Mann in 1947. The game operated on a cathode ray tube and was inspired by radar displays from World War 2. It used analogue circuitry to control and position a dot on the screen.

Following this, in 1952, a game was created by a man called A.S Douglas and was written for the EDSAC computer. This game was a game of naughts and crosses called OXO that did not become very popular due to the EDSAC computer only being available at Cambridge. This was probably the first game to be played against the computer.

Then, in 1958 "Tennis for Two" was created. It played on an oscilloscope and was a game based around tennis or pingpong. Again, based on analogue computing, it was created by a physicist, William Higinbotham. Higinbotham created this game as a form of entertainment for visitors to his Brookhaven National Laboratory, in which he worked. Following this in 1962 "Spacewar" was created.

Having played none of these games, I find it hard to comment on any of them. However I have played games that I am sure will have developed based on these first few. Pong, the most famous early game was realeased in 1972. I remember one of my best friends getting out his old Atari when I was about 11 and the ridiculous amount of fuss getting the machine to work: blowing into the machine to fix it for a good 5 minutes seemed to work! There was something special about turning a dial to control the paddle. It was a lot more physical than, for instance, pressing a button. Although a very simple game, it offered alot of competitive atmosphere when playing with a friend, something alot of modern games lack.

Throughout the 70's the common gaming community were university students who were using expensive computer equipment to make their own games. Games such as "Star Trek" were then later published for a wider audience. Home computers became available and these games that were created by students began to become available.

Following a minor crash in the industry, cartridges became a common way for games to be published, allowing for gamers to collect a library of games. The Atari 2600 was a cartridge based console that was published in 1977.