The History of Video Games - Part 1
Pressing Start
A Massive Industry
The video game industry is a juggernaut. It’s a 200 billion-plus dollar entertainment giant, with an estimated 3 billion active gamers when combining mobile, PC, consoles, and any device that lets you play a game. When they started to enter the public consciousness, they were considered high-end toys. However, today, they are now seen as a form of art that has told powerful stories and brought us memorable characters. From brands like Nintendo to stories from PlayStation to incredible experiences from Xbox and the addictive gameplay of mobile games, video games are now part of the entertainment life of mankind.
In 2023 alone, you can see the impact of this medium. The Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of the most successful animated movies of all time, as it joins Nintendo’s new theme park lands opening across Universal parks and firmly planting gaming’s most famous character, Mario, into permanent pop culture history to a level not seen since Walt Disney. Corporate giant Microsoft is in the middle of trying to close what will be the biggest cash-only deal in financial history because they now see gaming as the door to a permanent entertainment money machine for decades to come. And while it used to be “uncool” or “nerdy” to identify as a gamer, YouTube and Twitch are filled with gamers of all different backgrounds and genders playing their favorite games.
Video games are becoming more and more ingrained into our lives. The fastest-rising demographic is women. You don’t need a dedicated game console anymore, as mobile and PC gaming give you multiple ways to play. Just like in movies and TV, subscription services are becoming a way to get games. The Video Game Awards get more eyeballs than the Oscars. A new type of competitive sport, e-sports is a thing. The younger the generation, the more likely a child grows up playing games. Characters like Mario and Lara Croft are so famous that even non-gamers know who they are. And last, but certainly not least, the biggest media franchise in the world was born out of video games – Pokémon.
I love video games. It’s easily my favorite entertainment and storytelling medium. My most treasured and memorable entertainment-based experiences in life have come through video games. My childhood was essentially wrapped around Nintendo. And its one of the major reasons I decided to start this substack newsletter, and potentially hope to expand the 1UP Vault brand to more concepts and ideas in the future. But what is the history of video games? How did this industry start? Who was the first developer? Who created game consoles? What is the story behind the most famous developers, such as Shigeru Miyamoto? That’s what I hope this series explains.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you everything in this series is the official and perfectly detailed history of video games. Like many things, you should always do the research if you really want to know all the nitty gritty details. I can only write about so much. But what I will attempt to do is explain the history and hit all the big and notable moments, people, brands, and more around gaming. This first part will look at how the concept even started and what are essentially the first video game developers and games. So I hope you sit down and read as we begin the journey all the way back… to World War II.
In the Beginning…
World War II and the battle against fascism led to the rapid development of weapons and technology, specifically from the United States and the allies. Hitler had already made sure to land Wernher von Braun, a leading German scientist, to develop long-range missiles for the war effort. Braun would go on to work for the United States after the war and lead the space program on the U.S. side of the space race. The military wanted to expand its technology fast, not just during World War II, but eventually after, when the Cold War began, and the United States needed any advantage it could get over the Soviet Union.
Codebreaking is a big part of the history of computers. Alan Turing and his team created Bombe, an electromechanical device that helped cracked the code of Enigma, a German machine sending secret messages. This led to the need to decipher the German Lorenz SZ devices, which were more complicated. Tommy Flowers, an engineer, created the Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. Turing for his part is more important to video games than you would think, because gaming is a part of computing, of course.
Turing wrote about the concept of what we today know computers to be in his paper On Computable Numbers. Turing would go on to become a major figure in the history of computing overall. His ACE computer concept would be a key player in getting video games started.
With the war over, and the Cold War getting going, the same engineers and scientists that help fight the Nazis (or in some cases aided them), were put in projects that would advance computing for purposes of military goals and the space race. Many institutions had engineers working around the clock on computers and looking to test what they could do. It was only natural that some type of interactivity would be thought of.
In 1947, a patent was issued for a new device called the Cathode-ray Tube Amusement Device. Created by physicists Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, it was a device that used ray tubes with electronic signal outputs to project a signal onto a TV. Goldsmith thought of the device by thinking about the radar displays he worked with during the war. However, the device was never made. During this time, there were many concepts and projects being made around the emergence of computing and new technologies, but that didn’t mean they would become something. Many, including me, do not consider this the first video game as it was only a patent, and the interactivity was more analog-based than on a computer or electrical display. But what the device did show is that people were ready for some type of digital or technological interactivity.
The First Games
In 1951, Christopher Strachey, a British computer scientist, used the National Physical Laboratory’s Pilot ACE, a variation on Turin’s ACE computer. He began to play around with the device and look to create something to interact with. He attempted to create a game of Draughts (or checkers for many of us) but couldn’t quite get it to run. He then reached out to Alan Turing for the manual on a more capable computer, the Manchester Mark 1. Strachey was able to get Draughts running in 1952 on this computer. Today, many see Draughts (also known as M. C. U Draughts) as the very first true video game ever made. This would make Strachey the first game developer. Even more interesting, this means video games are arguably a British creation (though the concept was technically thought of by Americans) and also, Strachey (as well as Turing) was a gay man, meaning video games (and quite frankly a good chunk of early computing history) are tied to LGBTQ history.
There were other “games” or concepts around at the same time as Strachey and Draughts. Most involved blinking lights, checkers, or tic-tac-toe like Alexander S. Douglas’ OXO. Before Draughts, there was Bertie the Brain, which simulated a tic-tac-toe experience as well, but that used lightbulbs for display and some don’t count it as an early video game (including me). But these were all concepts and quite frankly more of the engineers playing around with what could be done. While these other computer scientists deserve credit for their early work in the world of video games, it’s Christopher Strachey and Alan Turing that stand out to me.
To me, it was Turing and Strachey that got the ball rolling. And they both are the first major notable figures in the history of video games. Turing went on to have some harsh final years after being chemically castrated when he was found out to be gay. Luckily, today, Turing is remembered for his contributions to computing and what that’s done to our society. However, Strachey is much lesser known. Strachey deserves to be known as the first true video game developer and his own contributions to computing. In the future, I would like to write more about Strachey, since he is the first game developer and had an interesting life. But in the end, it’s these two that are the closest thing to the founding fathers of the video game medium.
Now let’s fast forward to 1958. American physicist William Higinbotham is working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. William had worked in the electronics division of the Manhattan Project (yes, THAT Manhattan Project). Brookhaven held yearly exhibitions for students and the public. He decided he wanted to attempt to create something more lively for 1958. He realized his Donner Model 30 computer could calculate missile trajectories or a bouncing ball with wind resistance. This gave him the idea to create an interactive project for the upcoming exhibition.
"It might liven up the place to have a game that people could play, and which could convey the message that our scientific endeavors have relevance for society." - William Higinbotham
He chose to make a game around tennis. He used an oscilloscope for display and made a controller with a button to hit the ball and a knob for the angle of the shot. Two players could face each other, making it an early multiplayer title. It was called Tennis for Two. As expected, it proved to be a hit in the exhibition, the first major event video game if you will. The following year in 1959, an upgraded version simply called Computer Tennis came out, which added new features like different gravity levels and a bigger screen. The game would go on to be dismantled and forgotten but made a comeback after it was rediscovered through court documents and testimony in a case that saw Magnavox sue regarding the Odyssey. Tennis for Two is considered by some the first “true” video GAME, as it wasn’t made for academic or concept reasons.
In 1961, Steve Russell and a group of his colleagues would create the influential Spacewar! The game ran on the PDP-1 computer, the same computer that would be the first to start “hacker culture”. From what I could see in my research, the game was basically made of boredom and wanting to make something fun. It became a hit across colleges as the programmers that helped Russell would make variants of it as they left for other places across the country. As a result, this is the first game that became playable and accessible beyond one research institution.
As of this article’s publishing (May 19, 2023), Russell is still alive. The game was named one of the top ten most influential video games of all time by the New York Times. The Library of Congress has also chosen Spacewar! for preservation due to its importance in digital and computing history.
Pong
One person heavily influenced by Spacewar! would be Nolan Bushnell, who would go on to create Computer Space with Ted Dabney in 1971. Computer Space played like Spacewar! and is the first commercially available video game, as it was the first arcade game. Bushnell created a new game company to license his ideas to other companies, called Atari Inc. Seeing the potential for what video games can become in terms of mass market appeal and money, Bushnell is in many ways the first true idealist to see what this new emerging technology could be. He hired Allan Alcorn to help make the first game for Atari, which would be developed for Bally Manufacturing Corporation.
Alcorn never created or worked on a video game before, which would make this his first game project. The original idea was to do a driving game, but Bushnell decided to work on something simpler to help him out. Alcorn would go on to design two paddles that would bounce a moving ball in the middle of the screen to get a point by bypassing the other player’s paddle. He used sound effects by using the sync generator to create sounds that tried to mimic cheers and boos. And then to wrap up the whole thing, he purchased a Hitachi black and white TV for the display. Bushnell and Dabney immediately fell in love with his creation.
The guys chose a local bar, Andy Capp's Tavern, which they already had a good relationship with by supplying pinball machines and Bushnell’s first game Computer Space. The game became an overnight sensation, and Bushnell called it Pong. There’s a famous story that has the owner of the bar complaining the machine wasn’t working and wanted Alcorn to fix it. He went over to inspect the machine and quickly found the problem… there were so many quarters that it overflowed the coin mechanism. They had a hit.
Bushnell lied to Bally and competitor Midway to make them believe that each of the companies had told him they weren’t interested in Pong, making it seem like a bad investment. He did this because he wanted Atari to be the full publisher of the game and make most of the profits. Eventually, using tactics like hiring people sitting in unemployment offices, Bushnell got employees to help build the Pong arcade cabinets. The investment to bankroll Pong came from Wells Fargo. Eventually, the game began to pick up steam, and Atari started to bring it to foreign countries. Atari even opened a Japan variant of the company, which would later become a part of Namco. There would be other Pong clones, especially in Japan such as Sega's Pong Tron and Taito's Elepong.
The impact of Pong is massive! It was the first to use the term video game and launched the first major era of video games, the arcade era. A home version would later be released with the Sears Corporation and be the hottest item of the 1975 Christmas season. Atari would go on to become the first major brand and in some ways the creator of the modern video game industry. Pong today is part of the Smithsonian Institution due to its important cultural impact.
Pressing Forward
With Atari’s Pong becoming the first massively popular video game, a new player would come that was ahead of its time. Following the footsteps of Strachey, Turing, and Bushnell; would be a German Jewish immigrant that had escaped the Nazis at a young age and created the biggest piece we use in gaming today – the video game console. From there, more and more companies began to tackle this new emerging industry, and Atari would lead the first big boom in the late seventies and early eighties. The video game industry was just getting started, that’s in the next part of this series.
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