History of gaming By Ryan McGraw

The Early years The first ever recognized gaming machine was shown by Dr. Edward Uhler Condon during the New York world fair way back in 1940, This game was based on an other game under the name of ‘Nim’ and was played by roughly 50,000 people over the six months that it was displayed for them to play this game was based on a old mathematical game, but the first home console was released for commercial use nearly 30 years later when a prototype was released called “The Brown Box” released in 1967. (Continue on next slide)

The Brown Box This Brown box was a vacuum tube-circuit that could be connected to a television set and allowed the user/users to control cubes that would chase each other around the screen, the box could be programmed to play a few sets of games these include things like ping pong, checkers and four different sports games for what seemed then to be a huge selection, this was once the preceded of the Atari by a few months this is why it is often mistaken for the first games console.

Atari and Arcade gaming The two companies Sega and Taito were in fact the first companies to catch the publics interest in arcade gaming when they released the electro-mechanical games in 1966 and 1967, But in 1972 Atari became the first company to set a high standard for a large scale gaming community.

Multiplayer Roots In the late 1970s a number of restaurants started to install video games to capture this new trend and bring people in, this sparked competition among players to top each other high scores and get the initials onto the top of the leader bored on screen at this point multiplayer games were limited to one screen for everyone. The first example of this was in 1973 with the hit game ‘Empire’ that could hold up to 8 players and according to data found users played more than 300,000 hours playing it but then in 1973 a game called spasim was released and was considered first ever 3D multiplayer game with up to 32 players playing at once.

Home Gaming Happens Gaming consoles becoming popular in commercial centers and chain restaurants the early 1970s started to see the start of personal computers and mass-produced gaming consoles becoming a reality. Also the Technological advancements such as Intel’s invention of the world’s first microprocessor this led to the creation of games such as Gunfight back in 1975 this is the first example of a multiplayer player vs player combat shooter. In 1977 Atari released the Atari 2600

Personal Computers The Huge increase in video gaming caused by the popular space invaders saw a massive number of companies sprout out of no where resulting in the huge market saturation that began, at this point their was many gaming consoles maybe even too many and not enough games released for them this led to the fall down or the game clash in 1983 leaving poor quality games such as E.T. the game buried in the desert of new Mexico, this is when the personal computers came in with processors powerful enough to bypass the consoles and opened a new door to advanced gaming. Early computers such as the Macintosh allowed users to connect together and play together this grew even more when doom was released.

Online Gaming on console Before the giants SEGA and Nintendo moved into the picture many companies attempted to use the telephone lines to allow users to download games and software using a fixed telephone connection and a cartridge that can be inserted into the Atari this allowed users to download games from multiple programmers across the globe and could be played 8 times it also gave the users free games on their birthday but the device failed to get support and crashed back in 1983. The real advances in online gaming came along with the 4th generation the 16 bit-era of consoles in the early 1990s after the internet became part of public domain.

The modern age The Internet capabilities have exploded and computer processor technology has improved at such a fast rate that every new game better graphics and consoles it seems to blow the previous generation out of the water. With the cost of technology and running servers servers as well as the Internet itself a huge number of people in fact 3.2 billion people across the globe now have access to the Internet and at least 1.5 billion of them use internet to play video games in some way, Online stores such as Xbox live and Nintendo E-shop changed the way people buy games and extra editions to them. In conclusion of this era it has helped millions of people to connect and enjoy gaming as a shared activity.