How did video games become so popular?
Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be giving a brief history on how games became so popular worldwide.
To truly understand how games became so popular, we must first understand how video games even started out. The first "video game" was made by A.S. Douglas, who was a British professor who made the game as part of his doctoral dissertation. while this is technically not the first true video game, this is the earliest form of a video game due to it being on a Vacuum tube computer. William Higgenbottom is credited for making the world's first true video game which he named "Tennis for Two". and he created it on an analog computer and oscilloscope.
in 1962, Steve Russel would go on to make the game called "Spacewar!" which plays a part in the history of gaming because it was the first showing of what games that were running on better and more advanced hardware could look like and also helped boosted the idea of games becoming popular.
When the console war between Sega and Nintendo started, it was big due to the number of sales that were happening for each company and both companies trying to be the best for their buyers. Both companies going at each other created a huge boost in popularity for the video game industry as a whole and basically revived it from its dead state that it was in previously. One of the biggest boosts that played a pivotal role in the video game industry was when games were starting to be produced with 3D graphics. over the next few decades, 3D graphics started to become a normal thing and were being implemented into various games such as Super Mario 64 and consoles such as the Nintendo 64.
In 1967, a man by the name of Ralph Baer, who is also known as the "Father of Video Games" invented "a prototype multiplayer, multi-program video game system that could be played on a television. It was known as “The Brown Box.” (History.com Editors, 2017). Baer would later license his console to a company named Magnavox who would then go on to sell the console under the name Odyssey.
In 1972, a video game called Pong was created by the company known as Atari Computers which was an arcade game but was re-released in 1975 as a home console game for their console the Atari system. The Atari line of games and consoles kicked off games and helped bring light to the fairly new invention.
The game industry would continue to grow over the next couple of years until around 1983 were the whole ideology and popularity of video games dwindled down a lot and was not as prevalent anymore in North America simply because of the production of very poor games such as E.T and the multiple consoles that there were to choose from. It didn't last forever but it did cause a lot of marketing problems for many companies and even caused some to shut down due to bankruptcy or simply not enough revenue. With the mix of poor marketing, quality, production, and various other problems, the video game crash of 1983 is the closest that video games have come to being dead in today's society.
Video games started to gain popularity again when the Japanese company Nintendo released the NES in the US which gained traction amongst homes quickly due to the improved graphics and amount of higher quality games that were being made compared to the low-quality games that were produced a few years back. One of the games that became really popular and certainly raised the popularity of video games was Mario. Another big company that helped bring back popularity was the company Sega and their line of games, one of their most popular being Sonic.
If you fast forward to the mid 2000's you will see what is in my opinion, the biggest boost in popularity with the companies Microsoft and Sony releasing their take on consoles, the Xbox and PlayStation. When Xbox and PlayStation released their line of consoles, you would have people lining up outside of stores waiting to get their hands on whichever console appealed to them the most, and sometimes even arguing over which one was better.
As of now, there are so many ways that people can play games, whether it be on a PC, console, VR, or even a portable device such as a phone. Video games as a whole are still gaining popularity and hold a very big place in today's society in various ways such as marketing, advertising, enjoyment, etc. with the many new games, DLCs, consoles, accessories, and other products being made and released, I do not see video games dying any time soon.
I hope you enjoyed my research blog and have learned a few things about why and how video games are so popular as of today.
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