Talk:Early history of video games

Nintendo

Would the addition of the founding of Nintendo be relevant? It was founded in 1889 as a card-game producer and only became a video game company much later. ThutmosisV (talk) 10:10, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Definition

"definition would preclude …, any game rendered on a vector-scan monitor, …" Asteroids was vector-scan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.220.97.105 (talk) 02:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes? That's why the section immediately goes on to say that most modern definitions don't restrict the display type, because it excludes a lot of games that are generally considered "video games". --PresN 17:54, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Merge Proposal

• No - I don't think a merge is a good idea. The first video game article concisely addresses a very specific topic, while this article is part of a series of timeline articles. I think we need to have both of this things; rewriting first video game as a timeline would decrease its utility and not having a timeline formatted entry at the start of a long series of timeline articles seems inelegant. -- Akb4 (talk) 06:43, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

• What if a section was simply added to the start of this timeline to address the controversy addressed by First video game? — Preceding unsigned comment added by MyNameWasTaken (talk • contribs) 18:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

• mixed - I agree with Akb4, just noticed the tag in fact. However, the material added here needs to be maintained in a way that its cohesive with the first video game article content. If its just a ragtag list of dates, much of which duplicates material already on the first video game page, I don't see a purpose. Likewise the title would need to be reworked, because it denotes an actual prose article on early game history (which also would conflict with the purpose of the first video game article), when what's actually here is a listing of important events related to the evolution of computer games and later actual video games. Maybe the article should be changed to "listing of early video game history" --Marty Goldberg (talk) 19:58, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

• No but - these articles are different but complement each other. Someone interested in Early history of video games would for sure also look for First video game if he knew about. I suggest adding a See also link to it - I would have never found the First video game article if there was no 'merge proposal' tag. GL1zdA (talk) 19:10, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

• YES - I think the biggest problem for me is that these articles are using different definition of what qualifies to be listed. Early history of video games includes proto-games from before those listed on First video game. I take this as meaning that one page is using a flawed definition of video game. To me, there is absolutely no reason why First video game can't be fully merged, and then a section added to address the controversy of which is technically the first. I think this organization would allow for the conversation about "Who was first?" without the unnecessary First video game article. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 18:22, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

• No - While the proposal is a good one I think that this page is mostly about protogames that are not yet considered video games while the 1st generation is mostly about some of the first consoles.

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Early history of video games/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 05:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

This article has grown mightily in the past few months, and I would be pleased to conduct this review. Comments to follow shortly. Indrian (talk) 05:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay, here we go. I want to start by saying this article is truly outstanding and now serves as one of the best primers to 1950s and 1960s video games that exists anywhere in the world. Wonderful work. I have recently made a few grammatical changes, leaving just a few corrections/concerns, virtually all of which minor. Here we go:

General

 DoneTo start off, the only really big complaint I have is with the section headings. The first section claims it discusses "single-game computers," but it also covers software programs available for multipurpose computers. The third section is called "digital computer games," but that description applies to nearly every game discussed in this article, including OXO, Strachey's draughts, and MIDSAC pool. I think we need to do a little better here. The divisions themselves work fine, its just the names that need to change.

Do you have any suggestions? Maybe "Initial games"/"Interactive visual games"/"The spread of games"/"A new industry"? --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I am okay with the new headings.Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Defining the Video Game

•  Done"the earliest known interactive electronic game to use an electronic display" - two uses of "electronic" in quick succession. Perhaps the second use could be changed to CRT.

• Done. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"It was invented by Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1947" - I don't think we really know that it was invented in 1947; we just know that this is when the patent was filed. It could have theoretically been invented slightly earlier. Probably should change "invented" to "patented" in this language.

• Done. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• Speaking of the patent, the text is available through Google patents, so I think that should be the source here rather than a website that does not contain this info.

• That's just where {{Cite patent}} goes; it does have the original source- click "original document" on the left side. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• Not sure how I missed that, but I obviously did. Please disregard. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Single-game computers

•  Done"for the Pilot ACE that ran for the first time in July 1951 at the British National Physical Laboratory" - It did not really run in 1951: Strachey tried to run it, but it did not work. Should be clarified.

• Done. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"successive iterations developed rudimentary artificial intelligence by 1955 and were shown on television in 1956" - Needs a language tweak. Makes it sound like all the successive iterations were shown on television as opposed to the current version at that time.

• Done. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"Their move would appear on the screen, and then the computer's move." - The second clause of that sentence is a fragment.

• Done. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"OXO and Strachey's draughts program are the earliest known games to display visuals on a video monitor" - We need to be a little careful with language here. Those computers incorporated CRT displays, but they did not output video.

• Changed to electronic screen; I don't want to get too caught up on "CRT", as while that was really the only possible electronic screen they could be using, I don't want to get readers unaware that it was all CRTs for decades to get caught up on "the first on a CRT" and wonder if there was previously a "first on some other type of screen", nor get distracted with a big discussion of display technology during the 50s-70s. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• That's fine. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done" the computer game simulated a game of tennis or ping pong" - I think because of the success of Pong, some sources have been tempted to call this a table tennis game. However, it is really just simulating tennis (not that there is a real functional difference at this level of extraction).

• Cut to just tennis. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"and the game simulated hitting the net as well as hitting the ball back to the player" - I assume this means calculating the ball trajectory, but the way it is worded implies that it is a one player game and that the computer returns the ball to the player, which would not be accurate.

• Reworded. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"by a community of undergraduate students in the Tech Model Railroad Club (TRMC) led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and Bob Saunders, included Tic-Tac-Toe, which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and Mouse in the Maze" - A couple of problems here that again go to language precision. First, there were some members of TMRC that were either graduate students (Dan Edwards) or university employees (Steve Russell) rather than undergrads. Saunders, Kotok, and Samson were all undergrads in this period and led the hackers, but there were also some non-TMRC members in their ranks, most notably local teenager Peter Deutsch. I am not suggesting the article should elaborate on all of that, but using a phrase like "a community of programmers, many of them students affiliated with the Tech Model Railroad Club" would get the same point across without introducing potential inaccuracies.

• Reworded; your version captures the reality better than what I had, and better than some of the sources, unfortunately. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  DoneProblem number two in the above sentence is that the TMRC hacker community did not create either Tic Tac Toe or Mouse in a Maze. I do not know who created the Tic Tac Toe game, but Mouse in a Maze was created by Doug Ross and John Ward, who were neither students nor TMRC members.

• Should be better with the above changes. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Digital Computer Games

•  Done" In 1962, students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen, inspired by the previous work by the TRMC, created the game Spacewar! on the PDP-1" - Again, two problems here. First, Neither Graetz, nor Russell, nor Wiitanen were students when they conceived of Spacewar!. They were all university employees at either Harvard or MIT. Also, they were not inspired by the work of TMRC. Outside of their science fiction interests, Russell's main influence in wanting to program the game was the "Minskytron" demo created by MIT professor and AI pioneer Marvin Minsky.

• Well, it's a bit hard to say that they weren't inspired at all by the TRMC- they clearly knew the TRMC guys, and Kotok at least well enough that he got Russel the sin/cos routines from DEC and told him to stop stalling, even if they weren't the main inspiration for the trio or their programs an inspiration for the game itself. Still, all that really means is that they were in the same niche community, not that they were directly inspired by other members of the community, so changed it to focus more on sci-fi/Lensman as their inspiration for the game itself, and noted that they were university employees- hopefully that counters the implication that they were in the TRMC, since TRMC members submitted features to Russel after release. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I tweaked the language a bit more, and think this works now. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"had the players engaged in a dogfight between two spaceships against a randomly generated background starfield" - Awkwardly worded. It really implies that the opponent of the two players is the background starfield.

• I honestly didn't think about how the common usage of "against" could also apply there, but now I see it. Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"A number of games for purchase could be found in an April 1962 IBM program catalog" - So in the early days of mainframe computing, the complete focus was on computer hardware. Software was needed to actually do anything useful on a computer, but that is not what the customer was buying. There were no third-party software companies, and programs were just bundled with the computer rather than sold individually. While I cannot say this with 100% certainty, I doubt the programs in the 1962 catalog were sold; they were probably made available upon request to those leasing an IBM computer. To be safe, I would avoid using words like "sold," "bought," "purchased," etc. in regards to these programs.

• You're right, there's no prices; completely missed that its a reference catalog, not a sales catalog. I agree that when selling a few dozen very expensive machines, the manufacturers wouldn't have been looking for microtransactions. Dropped the "for sale". --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done" Hamurabi in 1969, a text-based BASIC game by David H. Ahl and one of the first strategy video games ever made" - This is incorrect, but the actual sequence of events is a bit tricky. Ahl does not credit an author in 101 BASIC Computer Games nor has he ever taken credit for the program. Traditionally, credit has gone to Richard Merrill, who released a version in 1968. It appears, however, that a version was created by one Doug Dyment of DEC Canada even before that as discussed here. If you don't want to get into the Dyment stuff absent better sourcing, that's fine, but at the very least it should be credited to Merrill rather than Ahl.

• Oh, I see the issue. The 1978 edition credits it to Ahl, because he wrote the BASIC version and the original author was "unknown". We now, of course, know that Merrill did the FOCAL version, and that Dyment may have done a prior version, but that wasn't in the source. I'm going to leave it as Merrill, since I can't cite a mailing list and I'd like a bit more proof that the Dyment education game was an early version of the strategy Hamurabi, and not just a direct inspiration. Leaving Ahl in as "translator" since the BASIC version, by virtue of being in his book and being luckier with the language, is the most well-known. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

A New Industry

•  DoneA lot of people like to state that Galaxy Game was the first video arcade game because Computer Space was released in November 1971, but its actually not. Galaxy Game was installed in September 1971, but according to the book Atari, Inc.: Business Is Fun, Computer Space was first tested on location in August 1971. While that was just a test of a prototype, so was the Galaxy Game installation, so the latter really has no claim to being first. Both games should still be covered here, of course, but the wording should be tweaked.

• Ugh, I wish these video game history books would be more consistent. Had not read Atari, Inc., and foolishly assumed that the other sources had the timeline right; Replay talks about the Dutch Goose like it was after the release, not their prototype location that they used several times, including before Galaxy Game was displayed. Adjusted with new source, and adjusted the lead to not call GG the "first". --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"Only the prototype unit was ever built" - As you correctly state later in the article, there were two prototypes, not just one. The second version was not just the original hardware with a few modifications. They were completely different units.

• Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"Bushnell had also found a distributor in Nutting Associates to sell the game through" - I cleaned this up a little, but this sentence reads awkwardly still. Also, Nutting was a manufacturer, not a distributor. In the coin-op business, this is an important distinction.

• Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"this version was never shown" - Again, some confusion on the history. Version two replaced version one at Stanford and remained there for years.

• Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"While initially this game was to be a driving game that Bushnell had designed" - There was no design, just an inclination to do such a game.

• Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"They were unable to find a distributor, but on the evidence of the success of their prototype installation, decided to manufacture and distribute the game themselves" - Again, manufactures and distributors are two different entities in the coin-op food chain. Atari could not find a manufacturer and decided to manufacture the game itself. Atari did not do its own distribution.

• Fixed; I hadn't realized that the manufacturer sold to the distributors, rather than acting as one itself. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

•  Done"and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was released in May 1972 by Magnavox" - Magnavox made changes to the "Bornw Box" before release, so it would not be accurate to say that Magnavox released the "Brown Box" as opposed to licensing the technology and adapting it. Also, the system was announced to the public in May, but did not go on sale until September.

• Fixed. --PresN 17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

And that's it. The list is a little long, but its mostly just minor language tweaks. I have no doubt this article will pass in short order, so I will place it  On hold while these changes are enacted. Indrian (talk) 03:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

@Indrian: No worries, its all stuff that needed to be fixed. I've gotten to everything you brought up, I think. --PresN 17:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

• @PresN:Sorry for the delay on finishing this; I blame the Holidays. Anyway, I have made a few more language tweaks and am now satifised that the article meets the GA criteria. Well done!. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

WWII training games?

I always thought the first video games were developed for use by troops during WWII. There was one called Identico where various ships would come across the screen and you identified them as friend or foe, and shot the enemy ones. If these are not strictly speaking video games, what are they? --Bluejay Young (talk) 02:22, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

@Bluejay Young: Do you have a link or book name that talks about this? It's... basically impossible for such a thing to be a video or "computer" game. While technically primitive analog computers existed at the time, and technically oscilloscopes existed, there was nothing that could generate shapes to display on a screen, nor a screen that could display shapes- computers did math equations at best and cost absurd amounts of money, and oscilloscopes could just barely move a dot (the end of the cathode-ray beam) fast enough to show the waveforms of an input electric signal. The game you describe could have been done with a motor turning a paper scroll with ships printed on it, possibly with a projector involved, which seems much more likely given that it would have cost several orders of magnitude less. And without a "computer" driving it, much less a monitor of some sort, it wouldn't really be a "video game". --PresN 02:43, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

To answer your last question, though, if it wasn't a video game because it didn't involve a computer or video monitor (under any definition of such) then it would at best be an electronic game, though that article is pretty awful, which covers all games involving electronic components. --PresN 02:46, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

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Non-video computer games.

AFAIK there were plenty of computer games before first (which ever it is) video (no matter the exact definition) game. I think people reading the article might have a bad impression that there were no computer games before video games, but there were plenty. And it would be nice to reference these facts somewhere. 81.6.34.246 (talk) 22:41, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

The best option would be a Precursors or Antecedents section, before the current Initial games. The scope of the article is rightfully dedicated to computer games with a video component, but this needs to be put in the larger context of games created with mechanical or electronic computational components that didn't include a video screen. Diego (talk) 15:15, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what games the IP is referring to, but while it would be nice to have more coverage of electro-mechanical games in general, they were by no means "computer games", with or without video output. You have to draw the line somewhere, and I don't think having a section for "games that used electricity and/or moving parts" really fits in with an "early history of video games", any more than a discussion of board games would. The article already contains discussion of the very first electronic games and the very first computer (without video output of any sort) games, which together are the step before "video games". --PresN 22:49, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

There are electromechanic games with computational components that were described in the article and have since been removed. The idea should be to describe the early context of games implemented on devices that take automated decisions, pointing the reader to other articles where they can expand their knowledge; the article now is not telling the whole story. Diego (talk) 05:20, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is constrained in its coverage by reliable sources. In this case, the pertinent reliable sources to consider for the scope of a video game history article are the dictionaries and encyclopedias that define the term "video game." Every definition I can find in these sources (OED, Merriam Webster, Britannica, Cambridge, etc.) includes either "electronics" or a "screen" as a key element (interestingly, few include both, but all include one or the other). Both of those elements are absent from early electro-mechanical games with computational components such as the Spanish Chess Player. The one EM game that was an influence on an early video game, the Nimatron, is only discussed within the context of the Nimrod computer and not as a video game in its own right. That situation notwithstanding, EM games are simply outside the scope of this article, especially since there is no direct link between any of these games (or indeed most of the games in this very article) and the development of the video game and the video game industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Basically, anything done before 1962 was an outlier and a curiosity only, and this article properly includes only those products that fit the common definition of the term "video game" in reliable sources. Indrian (talk) 06:38, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Agree with everything Indrian said. That said, if you or anyone else wanted to make a "history of electromechanical games" or "early electromechanical games" article, I would absolutely be interested in helping out, and would definitely agree with linking to it from here. --PresN 16:51, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Fad? Dubious

There is a mention under Reception about "others felt it to be confusing and part of a passing video game fad.". A "fad"? How can there have been a fad as this came was arguably the first such example aimed at arcade, this seems dubious. MrNeutronSF (talk) 05:59, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

• I think you meant to post this at the Computer Space article, but we can also discuss it here. I reworked the language a little bit to make it clear that what people actually thought was that video games would amount to no more than a fad as opposed to Computer Space itself initiating a fad, but the overall point is valid: the coin-operated amusement industry has a long history of products that were very briefly popular and then faded away. When video first hit, most distributors and operators believed it would be another one of these passing fads and did not take it seriously. Even Pong, a wildly successful product, was considered a one-off success rather than the beginning of a new form of entertainment. Indrian (talk) 15:23, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Specific claims need citations

If the opening of the article is going to make specific claims, like "Video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with the launch of the commercial video game industry in 1971 with the display of the coin-operated arcade game Galaxy Game and the release of the first arcade video game Computer Space", then those assertions need a citation. It does not matter if the claim is made in the introduction or the body. Once something specific is asserted, then it needs a citation.

Jeffrey Walton (talk) 06:24, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

To echo what Indrian said at the Computer Space talk page: no, that's not how leads work. Everything in the lead is summarizing something in the body, it's not making it's own contentious statement. I don't know why you think "specific claims" in the lead need their own specific citations. --PresN 15:49, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

A valuable source

• @PresN: This 1983 Video Review timeline of video games was written while video games were still in their infancy]. Super fascinating stuff!--Coin945 (talk) 02:13, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

• @Coin945: It is, though don't take it at face value! It's not citing its sources, and for good reason- there's a big whopper on the second page, that Bushnell saw Spacewar in 1965 and even modified the game to make it go faster. Bushnell didn't see the game until 1969 (in 1965 he would have been a senior in high school/freshman in college), and he certainly wasn't modifying the game to make it faster, seeing as he didn't know programming at all and was never associated with Stanford (where he actually saw it) to even have the computer time to attempt such a thing. It is, however, one of the many increasingly-over-time self-aggrandizing stories he told about himself in order to make it look like he was a bigger deal than Ralph Baer. See [1] for a more detailed look at how his story changed over the years.
• This post is actually interesting from a historicity perspective- the poster's and your's conception that this account is "closer" to the time period and therefore has value for that. Because it does, but it's also written 6 to 10 years after the sources that I know they're citing- Baer's book, the relatively-widely reported lawsuits by and against Magnavox that disseminated the history of Tennis for Two and also Bushnell's account of his timeline. It wasn't actually contemporary, it just feels like it since it's almost 40 years old now. None of this was deep reporting. It's more interesting to me that this seems "novel" as it contradicts a lot of the narrative both then (as the magazine article mentions) and as recently as the late 2000s, and the reason for that is that games "journalism" is/was anything but actual journalism, so a lot of poorly researched nonsense has been floating around for decades. None of this information was hidden or lost, and yet tons of people have read terrible chronologies by poor games writers of less value than this 1983 article.
• Still though, all that aside, it is an interesting view on what was known or not known by the gaming press in the early 80s. Thanks for posting it! --PresN 04:37, 10 May 2021 (UTC)