Where It All Began
Hopewell Valley Student Podcasting Network
Show Name: From Pong To Pixels
Episode Title: When It All Began
Episode #1
You are listening to From Pong To Pixels the podcast with your host Andrew.
In this episode of From Pong To Pixels the Podcast we discuss: the idea and development behind the creation of video games, some prototypes of the first games made, and how the gaming industry was built from the ground up.
Segment 1: Why Does This Exist Anyway?
The reason as to why video games were created in the first place is a bit rough, but it was largely because they were tied to research projects at universities and large corporations. Though these games weren’t made for entertainment, they set the foundation and groundwork for video games in the near future. But to see the first development in video games, we look back all the way to the 50s to when physicist William H. created the first official video game, Tennis for Two. Tennis for Two was created for a display at the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s annual public exhibition after learning that the government research institution Donner Model 30 analog computer (which was just a really fancy computer at the time) could simulate trajectories and wind resistance, perfect for a tennis-like game. Tennis for Two was the first game to be made solely for entertainment, with every game before it being just a step in technological advancement. The game would become extremely popular, with people lining up to see it at the 3-day exhibition. Tennis for Two marked the start of video game creation and opened people’s minds to the possibilities of the industry for the first time.
Segment 2: The Prehistoric Age of Video Games
Now moving on to the 60’s, this was probably the most important year for the development and shaping of video games. 1962 was the making of the earliest digital computer game to be available outside of an institution, Spacewar!. The whole process began when computer scientists started to create simple games and simulations on the minicomputer. The minicomputer being an all-around, smaller computer used for testing and running software. This led to the creation of Spacewar!, developed by Steve Russell in collaboration with other students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (or MIT). Spacewar! was an extremely simple space combat game, consisting of two players having to destroy the other player’s ship by shooting at it. Although the premise and gameplay were simple, they became very influential in the early development of video games. Also during this time the very first home game console was released, being the Magnavox Odyssey. The design of the Magnavox Odyssey was simple, a black, white and brown box connected by wires with two rectangular controllers. It came with extremely simple games, such as Table Tennis, Football and Hockey. Although it didn’t have any revolutionary titles, it single-handedly created the market for home game consoles. Now going back a bit, although the marketing and commercialism for video games at the time were small, due to the cost of computers limiting their distribution to research institutions and big corporations, many were still made by programmers and spread by computer manufacturers. Following the spread of Spacewar!, further computer games developed by programmers at universities were also developed and distributed over the next few years. These consisted of the Socratic System, a question-and-answer game designed to teach medical students how to diagnose patients by Wallace Feurzeig in 1962, and a dice game by Edward Steinberger in 1965. Now this next one was the start of a huge genre of games that still get made to this day. It started with a joint research project between IBM and the Board of Cooperative Educational Services that led to the creation of The Sumerian Game, one of the first strategy games, games with a narrative, and the first edutainment game ever made. The arcade video game industry grew out of the pre-existing arcade game industry, which was previously dominated by electro-mechanical, or EM games. Following the arrival of popular Japanese game company, Sega’s EM game Periscope in 1966, the arcade industry was experiencing a sort of technological renaissance driven by audio-visual EM novelty games. This established the arcades as a healthy environment for the introduction of commercial video games in the early 1970’s.
Segment 3: The Forming of an Industry
Some major industries we know today started their video game journey around this time, such as the one I mentioned earlier, Sega. Sega is an extremely popular Japanese video game company, mostly known for their series of Sonic The Hedgehog games, but I’ll save that for a future episode. Starting as early back as the 40s, American businessmen Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg, and James Humpert formed Standard Games. Their goal was to provide coin-operated slot machines to military bases, due to a demand for entertainment towards the beginning of World War II. After the US banned slot machines on its territory almost a decade later, Bromley sent employees Richard Stewart and Ray LeMaire to Tokyo to establish Service Games of Japan to provide the same slot machines to US bases in Japan. Only a year later, they established Service Games Panama to control the entities of Service Games worldwide. The company expanded to many other territories, such as South Korea, the Philippines, and South Vietnam. The name Sega, being an abbreviation for Service Games, was first used in 1954 on a slot machine, the Diamond Star. Due to investigations by the US government in criminal business practices, Service Games of Japan was dissolved in May of 1960. But in June of the same year, Bromley created two companies to take over its business activities. (Nihon Goraku Bussan and Nihon Kikai Seizō) These two new companies purchased all of Service Games of Japan’s assets. One business focused on manufacturing slot machines, while the other served as a distributor and operator of coin-operated machines, particularly jukeboxes. The two companies later merged in 1964.
Music Credits:
- Magenta Moon (Part II) – Line Noise
- Mr. Pink – Wolf Asylum
- X-2 – nymzaro
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