“Since video games began and chess was on a small computer screen they have developed to now include consoles in arcades and even consoles in our home where we can play games on T.V.’s.”. In the beginning after ‘Chess’ was created by Claude Shannon many other computer games were being created in university and industrial computer labs. At MIT Steve Russell along with others had created a game called ‘Spacewar!’. As more games were being developed what came along were new developments in computing technology for computer scientists to test out and the success of the game known as ‘Pong’, which had come out soon after ‘Chess’, had brought about the creation of companies such as Atari Corporation. At the same time there were developments made into video games in which consoles were developed such as the arcade machines and the first video game console known as the Magnavox Odyssey. While consoles did bring success to video games there were developments being made to the game themselves. The companies were trying to improve the quality of their games and what the games offer in terms of entertainment. One such game that featured new improvement is ‘Hunt the Wumpus’ which introduced a virtual space and had given the opportunity for players to explore a game world. Other game mechanics that were introduced were ‘adventure’, essentially what is akin to Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games, and one such game was ‘Colossal Cave Adventure’. The reason it is important for any developer, designer or programmer to look at this information about the past of video games is to help improve their knowledge. Understanding the history would help them understand how they can better improve not just knowledge but their skill. Seeing the things that developers, designers and programmers were able to create in the past that brought about the evolution of video games could inspire to make great strides in the present.
Video Games 