Video games

A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device – such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device – to generate visual feedback. This feedback is shown on a video display device, such as a TV set, monitor, touchscreen, or virtual reality headset. Video games are often augmented with audio feedback delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes with other types of feedback, including haptic technology.

Video games are defined based on their platform, which include arcade games, console games, and personal computer (PC) games. More recently, the industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through smartphones and tablet computers, virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote cloud gaming. Video games are classified into a wide range of genres based on their type of gameplay and purpose.

The first video games were simple extensions of electronic games using video-like output from large room-size computers in the 1950s and 1960s, while the first video games available to consumers appeared in 1971 through the release of the arcade game Computer Space, followed the next year by Pong, and with the first home console the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. The quickly-growing industry suffered from the crash of the North American video game market in 1983 due to loss of publishing control and oversaturation of the market. Following the crash, the industry matured and established practices and methods around the development and distribution of video games to prevent a similar crash in the future, many which continue to be followed. Today, video game development requires numerous skills to bring a game to market, including developers, publishers, distributors, retailers, console and other third-party manufacturers, and other roles.

Since the 2010s, the commercial importance of the video game industry has been increasing. The emerging Asian markets and mobile games on smartphones in particular are driving the growth of the industry and shift to games as a service. As of 2020, the global video game market has estimated annual revenues of US$159 billion across hardware, software, and services, three times the size of the 2019 global music industry and four times that of the 2019 film industry.

Orgins
Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a "Cathode ray tube Amusement Device" was filed for a patent on 25 January 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on 14 December 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992. Inspired by radar display technology, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen. Other early examples include Christopher Strachey's Draughts game, the Nimrod computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain; OXO a tic-tac-toe Computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952; Tennis for Two, an electronic interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958; and Spacewar!, written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen's on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961. Each game used different means of display: NIMROD used a panel of lights to play the game of Nim, OXO used a graphical display to play tic-tac-toe Tennis for Two used an oscilloscope to display a side view of a tennis court, and Spacewar! used the DEC PDP-1's vector display to have two spaceships battle each other.

Ralph H. Baer (left) receiving the National Medal of Technology from U.S. President George W. Bush in 2006

Nolan Bushnell in 2013

These preliminary inventions paved the way for the origins of video games today. Ralph H. Baer, while working at Sanders Associates in 1966, came up with the idea of using a control system to play a rudimentary game of table tennis on a television screen. With Sanders' blessing, Baer build out the prototype "Brown Box". Sanders patented Baer's inventions and licensed them to Magnavox, who commercialized it as the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. Separately, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, inspired by seeing Spacewar! running at Stanford University, came up with the idea of creating a similar version running in a smaller cabinet using a less expensive computer with a coin-operated feature. This was released as Computer Space, the first arcade game, in 1971. Bushnell and Dabney went on to form Atari, Inc., and with Allan Alcorn, created their second arcade game in 1972, the hit ping pong-style Pong, which was directly inspired by the table tennis game on the Odyssey. Sanders and Magnavox sued Atari on patent infringement over Baer's patents, but Atari settled out of court, paying for perpetual rights to the patents. Following their agreement, Atari went ahead with plans to make a home version of Pong, while was released by Christmas 1975. The success of the Odyssey and Pong, both as an arcade game and home machine, launched the video game industry. Both Baer and Bushnell have been given the title the "Father of Video Games" for their contributions.