Who invented the game? Who invented the first electronic and computer games? Video game culture boom

Initially, the computer was conceived as an electronic computing machine. Only later did people think about equipping the car with additional functions. And, since humanity cannot do without games, software developers, among others, began to make attempts to create computer games.

History of computer games

The first attempt to turn smart technology into a gaming device was made in 1952. The breakthrough was one of the simplest board games - "", with the smallest possible field of 3 x 3 cells. It may seem funny now, but at the time it was a revolutionary innovation.

After 6 years, programmers pleased users with a new prototype. It was the video game “Tennis for Two”. The virtual tennis player had to be controlled not step by step, as in previous analogues, but in real time. Despite the simplicity of the functionality, this game became another breakthrough in the emerging world of gamers.

However, the real virtual explosion occurred in 1962. DEC developed a game controller and, together with the PDP-1 computer, began distributing the previously unparalleled game SpaceWar as a test program! It was the first computer game to become truly popular.

However, computers at that time continued to be bulky. It was still oh, so far away from affordable personalization... Almost 10 years passed before compact boards based on transistor circuits appeared. Thanks to this invention, the game moved from a computer to a coin-operated arcade machine under the name Computer Space. And in May 1972, the Magnavox Odissey was introduced - the first game console for television.

From that moment on, the computer gaming world began to advance by leaps and bounds. Development proceeded in four main directions:

• computers directly;
• television game consoles;
• electronic slot machines;
• pocket electronic games.

In 1979, the American company Milton Bradley released the first pocket game console, which included 12 games at once. In 1980, Japanese Nintendo, having modernized games on a calculator, mass-produced simple monochrome consoles with a series of Game&Watch games. In the Soviet Union, these consoles became the prototype for the Elektronika company’s products—the games “Secrets of the Ocean” and “Well, Just Wait!”, which literally everyone was captivated by.

The next stage was the appearance of the Tetris game in 1989. Officially, the authorship of the “cubes” belongs to the Nintendo corporation, although debate continues over who the true creator is.

Features of computer games

As technology developed, the virtual world was filled with sound, graphics were improved, and video was added. Today, anyone can download games to their computer for every taste:

• shooting games, fights;
• racing, sports games, simulators;
• arcade, strategy, adventure;
• logical, educational, educational games.

You can choose a game for an adult, a teenager, or a child who has barely learned to sit. There are both pros and cons to this.

On the one hand, play is necessary for humans. This is a way of understanding the world, psychological relaxation. The ability to create your own game world is a way to express your aspirations and fears, complexes and ideas about a “perfect” world in the virtual space. Computer games are an opportunity to throw out aggression and get the necessary dose of adrenaline.

Educational and developmental games are favorable for children and are often used by conscious parents, educators and teachers. Both downloaded games and an Internet connection help remove physical boundaries and freely explore the space of the planet. Today, educational and educational games for adults are becoming more common. They are used by the military and businessmen, becoming an effective tool for improving personnel skills.

On the other hand, psychologists and teachers say that it is observed everywhere, especially in adolescents. As they say, “too much is good and not good either.” Often, immersion in the virtual world becomes an obstacle to real life - communication, personality development. If a child’s passion for computers can be controlled by parents, then for an adult, dependence on the “constructed world” can become a real problem. Here, the result of passion depends only on a person’s ability to manage his consciousness, to control his behavior through volitional effort.

And yet the process of development of computer games is unstoppable. They are becoming more diverse and exciting. Personal games have been replaced by browser games, where you can communicate online and jointly solve virtual, but important tasks. Such games, in addition to entertainment, provide an opportunity to master and develop communication and socialization skills, and broaden their horizons. The world of computer games still provides more positive effects than negative ones. It is only important to choose the right games for yourself and correctly dose the amount of time spent in front of the monitor.

Everyone knows that when the first computer appeared, its creators could not have imagined that very soon it would become a must-have thing in every home. Then, in the late 30s and early 40s, the computer was a very complex computing machine, and working with it required at least a serious university education. Nowadays, any elementary school student can work on a computer. True, his “work” is very different from what was done more than half a century ago. Moreover, the creators of computers could not have dreamed in their wildest dreams that it would be possible to play on a computer. After all, they were created in special scientific institutes to process critical data.

But a person is able to adapt almost everything to his needs, and already in 1952, an English scientist presented an interesting program at the defense of his dissertation. It was called OXO and was nothing more than ordinary tic-tac-toe. True, Mr. Douglas did not set himself the goal of entertaining the public and getting everyone to play on computers. His program simply more clearly demonstrated the capabilities of the computer, but this was precisely the first step.

The next step was taken by an equally remarkable man, who was a nuclear physicist by profession and worked in one of the strongest American laboratories. His name was William Higitboten. It is he who is considered to be the creator of the game that the older generation remembers. An avid tennis player, he recreated the court on his computer screen. In the opinion of modern gamers, the game does not represent anything interesting, the ball simply flies from one half of the field to the other, and the players hit it with a vertical strip, moved by two buttons. The funny thing was that he was using an oscilloscope screen that had not been used for a while. The game became incredibly popular, and all the employees lined up to play a couple of sets. But harsh reality required that the oscilloscope be used for work and the scientist had to disassemble the toy. However, the principle that the American used was the basis for many other games.

Poker is considered one of the most popular card games. Now there are many poker rooms where tens of thousands of people play every day. Many people wonder who invented poker and when this game even appeared.

There is no definite answer, since the history of poker began a long time ago. There are only some theories of origin that have not been fully proven.

The origins of the game in Europe

In the mid-16th century, the first mentions of poker appeared in Europe. It is believed that this is where poker was invented. The game was more popular among Italians and Spaniards. The entertainment was not called poker, but "primero". The rules here also differed from modern ones:

• The players were dealt not 2, but 3 cards at once.
• There were no names for poker combinations, but it was possible to collect identical cards by height or suit.
• There was only one round of betting after which the cards were shown.

A little later in the 18th century, an analogue of poker appeared among the British. Here the players were given 5 cards per hand, from which they collected a combination. The principle here is very similar to classic poker. Already in these times, bluffing was actively used to win money. The British still believe that it was in their country that poker was invented.

History from Asia

Many people are interested in the question: when did poker appear? Some sources mention that poker originated in Asia in the 10th century. This game was preferred by the emperor and his subjects. The cards were carved from ivory and cost a lot of money.

In the story of the general Shang Tsung, there is mention of this gambling game. He preferred poker and was considered a fairly strong player. Many historians believe that it was this man who invented poker.

Differences and features of the rules in the 10th century:

• Only 5 people could play at the same time.
• The deck contained only 25 ivory cards.
• There were 5 suits in total.

Most historians adhere to the idea that poker originated in China.

Game in America

There is a version that the game and the basic rules of poker were invented and brought to America by the French. The first games began in Louisiana. It was here that poker arose, which in meaning and rules is closest to the modern game. In 1834, a deck of 52 cards was used for poker in America.

Sailors loved this game very much and preferred to play poker on the ship. Therefore, the rules have spread to other states. In the Wild West, the game became an important part of the culture; almost every person knew about the rules.

There is an assumption that poker was invented Jonathan Green. He mentioned the game many times in his letters, describing the nuances and rules. However, from his text it can be understood that he simply watched the play of his sailor friends and made written notes. No other evidence of his authorship could be found. Green called playing cards sailor's entertainment, since during the trip it was the main leisure time of sailors.

How did poker gain popularity?

Many people are interested in when modern poker appeared and from what period it began to gain its popularity. The game began to gain popularity in America and gradually spread throughout Europe. In the 19th century, almost all European countries already knew the rules of the game, which still apply today.. However, at that time poker did not have such mass popularity; the game was not taken seriously. And only after the First World War a major “wave” of popularization of poker began, everyone began to study the rules in detail and treat the game as a sport.

The most popular type of poker is Texas Hold'em. It appeared in Texas. He later gained popularity in Las Vegas. At first, poker was played only among a small circle of friends. A little later, this game began to appear in entertainment venues in Las Vegas. At the moment, this is where the most poker clubs are opened.

In 1970, the most famous and largest tournament in the world series of poker appeared - WSOP. Players from all over the world come to it to receive the main prize and compete with the best opponents. After this, other, no less large and popular poker tournaments began to appear.

Who exactly invented poker?

Many players believe that the game itself was invented by Doyle Brunson. This player is considered a true poker legend. Brunson truly dedicated his entire life to the game and was able to achieve incredible results. The player himself does not take ownership of the poker game and its rules.

The meaning of the word "poker"

It is not entirely known where the rules first appeared and who invented the game of poker. The same goes for the term "poker". Historians cannot give an exact answer about the origin of this word.. However, there are these versions:

• Many people believe that the German word pochspiel became the first name of the game. However, this fact has not received precise evidence.
• There is a version that poker came from the word poque. The French called this a card game with similar rules.
• In English pосket- This is a pocket or purse. Therefore, there is a version that robbers and sharpers gave the card game its name. Only then did they replace the word pосket on poker.
• The word "poker" from English has an exact translation - poker. However, this item has nothing to do with the game and the rules, which misleads many historians.

Conclusion

Historians around the world find it difficult to answer exactly the question of who invented poker. The game appeared so long ago that many facts about it have been lost. Over the years, the rules and nuances have been changed and supplemented many times. The game began to increase in popularity in the 70s of the last century. Now poker has gained so much fame that it is equated to a sport, and not to gambling entertainment. People do this as their main job. Entire poker schools are opening where you can learn the tactics and psychology of playing poker. In our Poker Academy, players are trained in the Academy Win Strategy course under the guidance of a coach, who helps them easily determine the strength of their opponents and choose a table where a novice player can effectively play according to the strategy we provide. You will understand additional software: you will understand how to work with Holdem Manager 2, set up your own HUD and with the help of this you will learn to read your opponents. You will also receive 3 hours of individual lessons with a personal trainer, after which the results will not be long in coming. Sign up using the link below.

Charles "Chuck" Foley was born in Lafayette, Indiana. It is known that he presented his first invention at the age of 10 - for the family farm, the boy invented a latch for a cattle pen. Chuck studied at school until the eighth grade, after which he began working as a salesman. Foley also visited the army - he served in the Air National Guard in Michigan (Michigan Air National Guard).

After the army, Chuck worked as an assembly line assembler for the Ford Motor Company, and in 1962 he found work at the Lakeside Toys factory in Minnesota. It was there, at the toy factory, that his indefatigable imagination as an inventor came in handy - Chuck Foley invented dozens of toys and games.

The game "Twister" was born in 1966, and in the same year it already became deafeningly popular after Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor played it live on the air of the program "The Tonight Show". For the next decade and a half, Twister was played in living rooms across America. What made Twister good was its versatility - both children and adults played it with passion. It was played at parties, birthdays, it was played at children's parties, in parks and in schools. “A game that ties you in knots” is how Twister officially presents itself. “Sex in a box” - this is how spiteful critics described the game. Meanwhile, Americans continued to play and buy the game.

Foley shared his invention with Neil W. Rabens, and the game was soon sold to Hasbro.

Foley's other inventions include a toy launch helicopter, children's toy plastic handcuffs, a stamp remover, and more.

Chuck later lived for a long time in North Carolina, but when his health began to fail with age, he moved back to Minnesota to be closer to his family. His wife Kathleen died of breast cancer in 1975, and after that Chuck never remarried.

Chuck Foley died on July 1, 2013, after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. He died at the Golden Living Center, leaving behind six sons and three daughters. At the time of his death, the inventor was 82 years old.

Chuck's son, Mark Foley, said that while his father was best known as the inventor of the Twister, it was actually just one of his many wonderful inventions.

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The birth of the world's first computer game. Time - 60 years (more precisely 1962), twentieth century, place - Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The characters are programmers who needed to somehow while away the time not spent working on development, coding (and other activities typical of people in this profession), and had access to computers. The SpaceWar game was released on one of the mainframes.

One can argue about its primacy, since in the same 1952 and 1958 games such as Tic-Tac-Toe (tic-tac-toe) and something like ping-pong were created. SpaceWar can be called the first computer game due to the fact that it was developed purely for use on a computer. The laurels in this matter go to a group of programmers, led by Steve Russell and Martin Graetz, who were fond of science fiction. A simple program was written and literally after a short period of time two missiles appeared on the screen, firing at one another. The game took approximately 200 man-hours to create and was created on a PDP-1 machine. Its processor performed 100 thousand operations per second, RAM - 9 kilobytes.



car PDP-1

In those days there was no talk of raster graphic displays, there were only text terminals. Vector graphic displays, which appeared abroad at the end of the 60s, were at the peak of graphic capabilities; the electron beam no longer ran along lines on each frame, but could draw the contours of objects specified by the program.

The eternal game, as SpaceWar is called, is simple and dynamic, it consists of this: the fighting takes place against the backdrop of the night sky, copying the arrangement of stars over Cambridge, in the center of the screen there is a sun that attracts ships and their cartridges, firing shells, the one who wins will kill another player without falling into the gravitational trap of the star.

The genre of the first computer game was arcade. The very concept of an arcade comes from one detail of a covered corridor where slot machines used to be located (they appeared 10 years after the creation of SpaceWar)

It's not difficult to predict what happened next. The businessmen got down to business. In 1971, the world saw the game Computer Space. Vector graphics, the same plot as in Space War. It was the first commercially available computer game built into an arcade machine. Such an automatic machine was a device that did not have a central processor and RAM or ROM; the system was based on discrete logic and consisted of microcircuits and diodes. It was housed in a stylish case of “futuristic” design, with a 15-inch black and white monitor. But the game was not a success. As Nolan himself said: “You had to read the instructions first before you could play, and people didn’t want to read the instructions. To succeed, I needed to come up with a game that everyone already knew the rules of, something so simple that any drunk in any bar could play it.”

27-year-old Nolan Bushnell did not lose heart; in 1972 a simple arcade game, Pong, was released. Sound effects have been added to the game. The target audience for this game was initially beer bar regulars. The first slot machine was installed in a bar - Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. The game was a success, the very next day the machine broke down... due to an overflowing coin acceptor.

Pure arithmetic: the production cost of one Pong device was approximately $500, one machine was sold for 1200, and for a week of operation such a machine brought the bar owner $300.

Such success did not go unnoticed; competitors appeared. Steve Wozniak developed the next game, Breakout, in four days at the instigation of Steve Jobs. This game was a single-player version of Pong, where you used a ball to smash the wall at the top of the screen. 5,000 green bills were paid for its development; Jobs “honestly” gave half ($350) to Wozniak.

Sega has developed similar games - Gigas and Gigas Mark 2.

Gigas Mark 2

The first video game consoles, Odyssey, released by Magnavox

The first set-top box did not have a microprocessor or chips in the case. The Odyssey device was based on diode-transistor logic and contained 40 diodes and 40 transistors.

A group of developers with William Crowther (in the mid-seventies) developed the game Adventure, it was a text-based “adventure game”, it became the first in the adventure game genre. Adventure ran on DEC mainframes (KA-10 series). The essence of the game is an interactive narrative in which you need to explore the endless labyrinths of the Colossal Cave (its real prototype is the Bedquilt Cave in Kentucky) in search of treasures. Several lines of text appeared on the screen, describing where the game character was, what was happening around him, and all his possible actions. The player could type what action he wanted to perform and, depending on the command, text was displayed on the screen about the consequences of the player's move, and so on until the end of the game.

In 1974, the video game Maze War (Maze) was developed, which became one of the ancestors of modern first-person shooters, the first game with a deathmatch mode. Players moved through the maze (forward, backward, turned right and left (90° each time), the ability to look into doorways was available. Simple tile graphics were used, the player moved along invisible squares. On the screen, other participants in the game were in the form of eyeballs When an opponent appeared on the screen, you had to shoot at him, points were awarded if you hit them, and points were deducted if your opponent hit you.

Maze War (Maze)

Some games (arcade) of the 70s - 80s that conquered the world market

Space Invaders

Asteroids

Battlezone

The game already used vector 3D graphics with a horizontal black and white vector monitor. During the game you were overcome by the feeling that you were physically on the battlefield; one version of this game was developed for the American army as a “simulator” simulator.

Rogue (bagel, as we began to call it)

Became the first in the direction of roguelike games. There was already a game universe randomly created by a computer; the player received almost limitless freedom of movement and action.

NetHack

The Dwarf Fortress

play

Hunt the Wumpus

Ken Thompson founded the Hunt the Wumpus family of text-based adventure computer games in 1972. The player finds himself in a maze, the goal is to find Wampus and shoot him, the path lies through a cave, where from time to time a regiment of bats flies at you, and the road resembles our roads in early spring. There are 20 doors in the cave that are connected to each other, the player, once in one of the rooms, either shoots at one of the three doors, or goes into some room through the selected door. Well, from your weapon you have 5 “well-aimed” arrows. Have a good hunting)

It’s impossible not to remember the famous game

Pac-Man

It was developed by a Japanese programmer, an employee of the Namco corporation, Toru Iwatani. The idea came to its creator suddenly when he was eating pizza, pakku-man (indeed, the hero looks like a round pizza with one missing piece) - that’s what it was originally called, which in Japanese meant “to eat”, and in Japan it somehow it didn’t work, but after it was acquired by the American company Midway, the game captivated many gamers. In the game you had to deal with aliens or monsters, while dodging the ghosts that were chasing the hero. The goal of the game is very simple: the player is in a maze that is filled with “food” (in the form of dots), you need to eat everything in order to move to the next level.

Toru Iwatani:

In the late 1970s, arcades, which we in Japan call “game centers,” attracted boys eager to destroy hordes of digital aliens. I wanted to come up with a game that was no less attractive, with light humor, and that everyone, even women, would enjoy playing.

Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde are ghosts who either attacked Pac-Man from all sides, then retreated.

Zork

In hacker slang it means an unfinished program.

Another text (later graphic) adventure computer game. The player (adventurer) found himself in the atmosphere of an extremely rich and vibrant Universe, in search of 20 treasures he solved various puzzles and went through labyrinths. A game without a graphical shell, everything that happened was described in text.

“The best creator of graphics is your imagination. It is always with you!”

This game combines two modern genres - quests as such and turn-based strategy. All the player’s actions are entered directly into the action line, depending on what kind of command it is and whether it is entered correctly, Zork will react differently. There are a total of 80 commands in the original trilogy that can be used as you progress. For gameplay, an arcade function was added - counting the player's moves, which made it possible to compete with other gamers in the speed of completion.

It’s hard to imagine how you can present the plot of a game without a graphical shell in such a way as to capture the atmosphere of the game. Zork resembles an interactive book that each player writes himself. With each new action, Zork rewards the player with new information that on the other side of the screen, at the end of the game, an approximate picture of what is happening will be created. The game's protagonist, a nameless traveler, finds an unremarkable basement in an old abandoned forest house that will lead him to the great underground empire of Zork. Later, 16 parts of this game were created throughout history.

In the empire, our hero encounters miracles previously unseen in the world: magic, fantastic creatures, mysterious corporations, unknown artifacts, after collecting which he receives the title of dungeon master.

Initially, it was decided to split the game into three parts, since the developers understood that due to a lack of memory on hard drives, it would be impossible to make it one part. They also wrote their own scripting language that would optimize the space occupied by the game. This is how their own engine, Z-Machin, appeared.

Donkey Kong

It was developed in 1981 for arcade machines by Nintendo. The main character of the game was a gorilla named Dunkey Kong. Game developer Shigeru Miyamoto took his inspiration from a scene in King Kong. On the screen in front of the player there is a level divided into several flights of stairs, where a funny-looking man in a red and blue overalls (Jumpman) is running, he deftly jumped over barrels and fireballs rolling towards him, climbed stairs and jumped over chasms. His goal is to climb to the very top, defeat the barrel-throwing Kong and save his sweet Lady. The game became very popular, but Universal studio sued Nintendo. "American film producers demanded that Nintendo buy back the rights to produce and distribute its own game, or, as one option, completely abandon the use of the Donkey Kong trademark." Through the efforts of a lawyer, Nintendo won the lawsuit and gained even more PR.

Donkey Kong became the founder of the platformer genre.

Super Mario Bros

Everyone knows Mario. A man in the prime of his life, moderately well-fed, wearing a red and blue robe with straps and a cap with a large letter “M”, the mustachioed plumber Mario is the most popular Nintendo and video game character of all time. Mario's life story is closely intertwined with the story of Dunkey Kong. In the first part of the Donkey Kong game, Mario was the hero who saved his beloved from the clutches of Dunkey Kong. This is where Super Mario Bros. came from. The game was released on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) console.

Mario character evolution

The game was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling game in the world.

Core War - a game for programmers

More from the history of the development of games of the 80s. Entertainment is exclusively for programming. Its essence is the battle between programs. The goal is to write a fighter who will defeat the rest.

Programs that participate in the battle were loaded into a common memory area and launched simultaneously. The one that works the longest is the winner. If the program executed an illegal instruction, it died. The author does not add such instructions to it..." - other programs “bomb” the memory with them in the hope of spoiling their competitors. In addition, trying to escape the bombing, almost all programs constantly move themselves in memory. The memory is looped - after the last cell it goes first (zero)".

The set of commands in Core Wars is limited: it consists of the mov, arithmetic and jmp commands with minor variations. The classic size of a fighter program is also small - from one team to a dozen.
more details about Core Wars

Only programmers could enjoy writing and debugging an assembler warrior program that destroys rivals in the memory of a virtual computer.

This is not the entire list of games created in the 60-80s of the last century. Time passed, computers slowly became more powerful, games similar to today’s began to appear, 256 colors instead of 16, etc., etc. These years were the foundation for the development of the computer games industry.