history of video games

History of video games 1950’s-1970’s

It is believed that the first concept of a computerised game originated in 1952 with A.S Douglas, who designed a version of tic-tac-toe which was playable on the EDSAC vacuum-tube computer. However it was ‘Spacewar’, a game made in 1962 by the MIT which is generally considered the first fully evolved computer game. The game consisted of two rockets (one for each player) and the aim was to eliminate the players rocket before he eliminated yours. This was played only by university students who operated the room sized computers that this game ran on. Upon seeing the potential of space war, Nolan Bushnell created a game in 1971 similar to space war intended for the general public. It was called computer space and while it was a well designed game it wasn’t well received by the public. The problem was that the game had a set of complex controls, and a lot of the 1500 machines produced were installed in bars meaning that it was very difficult to play if someone was drunk. And so in 1972 with Al Acorn, Nolan created a much simpler game based on a sport that people recognised and easily understood, that game was called pong (not ping pong due to copyright). Atari went on to create a whole selection of popular games through the 70’s, and later re-released pong as a pong video game in 1975.