The gaming industry took America so far in entertainment for generations of young and old to play for decades to come. Starting from one of the developers of the atomic bomb used in World War II to the present day console wars of PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo games have been played. Computer engineers took steps and chances with their ideas, making them into successful business men in a brand new industry, creating new products of imagination, science, and reality. If there were no video games modern day products and small industries such as apple would not exist since Atari hired Steve Jobs to come work for them and not pushing him to the limit of the apple computer. New worlds were in place for developers and customers to explore and enjoy. The developer of the atomic bomb and first person to take a chance was William Higinbotham. His game started in Brookhaven in which he took charge and calling it Tennis for Two. His invention was “simulated on a screen was a vertical side view of a tennis court showing the edge floor with the edge of a floor with the edge of the net perpendicular to it” (Games…). The game system came with two controls having one knob and button on each one giving players to hit a small dot representing the ball moving back and forth. The actual device was connected to an oscilloscope having a simple design, although Higinbotham worked with technical specialist Robert V. Dvorak, who built it and Alexander Elia is designing, designs the blueprints.
The network effects in the video game industry are derived from the console system that is sold to consumers. If a company is able to increase penetration in this arena, though at-cost/ below-cost pricing or pull created through the development of desirable content, it can potentially lock in the added value of the video games sold for the system. Which is to say, the console locks-in the network effects in the industry and the games serve to reap the profits. The video games, however, may present something of a challenge in that they can be somewhat easily replicated by competitors. Nintendo used an encrypted chip system to reduce this possibility.
Although, seeing as video games are increasingly popular today, not everyone met as unfortunate of a fate. Today, many could credit this to the video game development corporation known as Atari, which arose in 1972 and continuously flourished until about 1982. In 1972, Atari came out with PONG, the first electronic arcade game, and it was an enormous accomplishment that exploded into what is now called the electronic gaming revolution. As time passed, Atari managed to triumph over its competition time and time again, but that is not to say that each of the failed corporations did not feature something that is used today. In fact, a couple of the failed organizations contributed something original to what is common today. For instance, Fairchild Camera and Instrument creating the first system that could play several different games, rather than just one. Another aforementioned group, RCA, was the first to produce and utilize keypad controllers instead of paddles or joysticks. Other consoles that came along, such as Intellivision and Vectrex, sported better graphics than the Atari’s consoles and games, but they still did not manage to gross the amount of money that Atari did because Atari was still on top of collecting all of the most entertaining and enjoyable games of their time. Keep in mind what attracted the masses to video games in the past: fun and addictive gameplay, not how good they looked. Now that the principal eras of gaming have been
“During the 1940s and the 1950s, computers took up entire rooms and were so expensive that only universities and large companies could afford them” (Behring 1). Being as that, computers were too expensive to obtain to be able to create a game, “students Steve Russell and his friends” used their school’s computer to create the “dueling game between two spaceships”, called “Spacewar”. (Behring 1) They game began to be used at other universities that also had computer programs. Ralph Baer who was an engineer, considered using the television to play video games on. Baer then created the first video games for the television in 1967(Behring2). Once the first games were created more games followed. Then what would be known as the gaming industry by a “Nolan Bushnell”, who wanted to use they games for retail. The industry would grow within a short span of time in which the sales declined until evolved games would once again rise sales and future advancements.
“Rivera said video games have broadened his interests and made his mind more agile (paragraph 4).” Video games expand cultural interests and broaden your horizons. When you play games from other countries and cultures you learn a little bit about their culture and way of life. “Noah, now 15, said gaming has expanded his interests. He began studying archery and Japanese culture after seeing them in video games”(paragraph 23). Many people find the culture involved with video games very interesting- like Noah- and decide to start studying or learning about that culture. Therefore, “gaming” helps to find things you're interested in that you may not have even know about without them. Given these points, video games help you discover new things that you may not have even known about and open up to new
According to several studies, women are now making up a significant portion of the gaming demographic, but the industry hasn’t done much to make them feel welcome. During the last decade, the mainstream video game industry has seemed to operate under the same apparent assumptions: girls don’t play big action games, boys like the sexualization of girls in video games and won’t play as a female character unless she is heavily sexualized, and that girls play video games for the attention of boys. These assumptions are what allows the gaming industry to continue to focus on their male players, particularly young men, despite the fact that the number of women playing games today may someday soon rival the number of men.
The gaming industry grew 4 times faster than the US economy in 2012 by bringing in $6.2 billion dollars into the economy. (Nick Statt). Some of the reasons that gaming is bringing in money is mainly by sales whether it is putting out games, downloading content, gaming tournaments involving the game, and advertising the game in giveaways. Video games bring people together; it requires a tremendous amount of skill, strategy, team-work and determination. Traditional sports such as basketball and football involve physical movement of the whole body but video games are limited to only using your hands but that doesn’t mean it should be overlooked as a sport.
Playing games has been proven to improve hand eye coordination , make learning history and science more fun, make new social connections, quicker decision making and teaches patience. On the negative side of playing video games there's a risk of addiction, pathological gaming (a social disorder), depression, anxiety, and, relationships issues . Pathological gamers recorded more time playing video games and seemed to have impulsive behavior and were more likely to be less social compared to people who were not playing video games and pathological gaming isn't something that people can not just outgrow of and forget about. Some people have been playing a variety of games including those in " open world" which means a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given freedom or "multi-player" games on XBOX or PlayStation which have a more linear structure to their gameplay . Video games have been around since the 1970's starting with Atari ,then Sony Playstation in 1994,and XBOX in 2001. In the earlier years the developer was the boss of the whole game and no more than a couple of testers were required. As games became more complex more publishers would hire more quality assessment staff for testing various games from different random developers. Now most game developers rely on their high technical game testers to fix glitches and bugs in the game. As time goes on the systems have just gotten more advanced with different controllers and better graphics. Computer size has shrunk and speed has increased exponentially . Virtual Reality which have 3-D headsets are also the new craze and knowing how they all work takes skill and learning. The number of positions in the gaming industry is probably going to grow faster than ever .Since 2014 according to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) computer and video sales were around $ 7 billion up to the current $60
Video games were originated first in laboratories by scientists. “This first idea came from their imaginations in late 1940s but unfortunately it did not reach the people as they were confined only to laboratories. This situation was observed till early 1970s until arcade games became popular.Then later on a new start-up named “Atari” unleashed a new
Before the video game industry conquered the entertainment market, and before the gaming masterpieces of the modern day we know, video games earned their place in entertainment at public arcades. For classic games such as Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Mortal Kombat, and Galaga, the local arcade was the perfect foundation for the game industry to build upon, as arcades provided a cheap public source to play games. These low cost game corners drew in a community, the community that would become the first gamers, warranting the attention of game creators and their respective companies. Taking note of arcade games and their initial success, game developers began to place their focus on the newest form of entertainment. Companies such as Nintendo, Sega, and Sony learned from the success of arcade entertainment and set their sights on creating home gaming consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega
One of the biggest factors that video games have impacted is peoples health. Video games have good and bad factors to peoples health. For example some problems that video games have impacted are obesity, aggressive behavior and cognition, sleep deprivation and many others. They have also impacted the problem of addiction. One would figure out after researching this subject that just being a male gender increases addiction of video games. Video games can also be a healthy and therapeutic. Games also change how people think and how peoples brain works. They have enhanced peoples visual skills and actually make it easier to create new sensorimotor skills. Peoples thought process have also been impacted because of video games. People that play action video games are proven to have faster decision making but as accurate as people that do not play video games. Video game players interpret the world differently than non video game players. Nolan Bushnell once stated, “Video games foster the mindset that allows creativity to grow” (Colzato). This quote is stating that video games promote creativity and help humanity grow and become more creative in our world. We need creative people in our world to build buildings, become art teachers, and many more jobs. One might be surprised to learn that after researching this subject on how dramatically video games impacted the human
Video games are just like sports, they get our heart pumping, minds racing and you get pumped up like an actual sport. Video games are just like sports with the competitiveness and the skill it makes video games, in fact, a sport. There are now stadiums packed with fans and gaming stars, cropping up in England, Poland, and Germany. Gaming also has its injuries just like
Some people may not know this, but there was a time when video games were not around. Like a lot of things in the world that are distinctly human, video games were made out of a combination of innovation, necessity, and curiosity. The early video game creators would be making something that would seem clunky, and somewhat crude at first. But that would completely change in time by the innovators, and entrepreneurs to something that would some day be consider an art form. (Art of Video Games)
The video game industry has changed a lot since its inception, and a large part of that is due to the video game crash of 1983. Despite this, the market itself has remained roughly the same except for the actual devices in it. The quality of the video games has drastically improved over the years. Unfortunately, something that will never change are the greedy companies looking for a quick buck. While the video game industry has grown and improved since the crash, some similarities are starting to arise.
Former CNN Computer Connection producer, Steven Baxter, once said, “You can 't say that video games grew out of pinball, but you can assume that video games wouldn 't have happened without it. It 's like bicycles and automobiles. One industry leads to the other and then they exist side by side. But you had to have bicycles to one day have motor cars.” Video games are important to both the economy and people’s lives and “have been by far the most significant manifestation of interactive media to date” (Haddon 52). The first computers were large enough to fill entire rooms and their technology was originally intended to be used for complex calculations, and as a way of proving artificial intelligence the first computer games arrived. In the late 1940s games such as chess and tic-tac-toe played on these first computers proved artificial intelligence. NASA began increasing support and funding for basic computer research furthering the development of artificial intelligence, in turn this advanced computer technology greatly. Pong, made by Atari in the 1970s, was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity. This caused other companies such as Nintendo, a Japanese company that previously sold game cards, to get into the video game business. “In 1982 estimates place worldwide home games of video games at between 2and 3.8 billion dollars. The arcade game business at that same time was even larger, grossing 8 billion dollars” (Haddon 53). The rise in competition of
Herman et all (2002) points out that history of video games begins from 1971 year, when Nutting association released 1500 machines with Spacewar video game. At the beginning it was too difficult to control the game process and playing machines had huge dimensions. But by the time with new technologies they become more compact and easier to play. According to the information given by Herman et all (2002), the period between the years of 1978-1981 is called ‘golden age’ of video game industry. In this period the arcade games ‘Football’ and ‘Space Invaders’ were released. All previously known sale records were broken by these two games with nearly equal wages. In this time interval great breakthroughs in the field of graphics were achieved,