1 computer game in the world. First PC games. Features of computer games

Computer games were born in the distant past, their history goes back more than 50 years. The first games appeared not as entertainment, but more for scientific purposes, because the first computers were huge, expensive, and mainly appeared in educational and scientific institutions. Computer games hit the masses with the advent of consoles and the first PCs, when they became more accessible to most people. Only after the popularization of computer games did they become commercial. And now companies are making fortunes from developing games.

Let's trace the history of the development of computer games in more detail and note the significant games that to some extent influenced the development of the gaming industry. For the first time, the world saw the first semblance of a computer game in 1942. This event happened thanks to two people Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Eastle Ray Menn, they created a rocket simulator. Since that time, the era of computer and video games began.

The main stage in the development of the first computer games falls on the 50-60s. last century. These games were not developed for fun, but as scientific research. The OXO game (analogue of Krestikov-Zolikov) was the honor of A.S.Douglas' doctoral dissertation. But despite this, games have become very popular among students and visitors to educational institutions. For example, such a game is Tennis for Two (analogue of Ping-Pong for 2 players), created in 1958 by William Higinbotham. Games of those times were developed specifically for each computer and did not resemble modern ones, because text terminals and vector graphic displays were used as screens.

The next period is 1961 - 1970. notable for the fact that the SpaceWar game was created for PDP-1 computers and the first prototype of a computer mouse. It was created by Douglas Engelbart and called it like this: the system for indicating the X-Y position on the monitor. This made a big step in the development of computers, and as a result, the evolution of computer games followed.

1971 - 1980 - in this decade, humanity has made a huge step in the development of computers and, among other things, people have realized that game development is a huge source of income. At this time, personal computers and game consoles appeared, a prototype of a local network and the Internet appeared. Players can now play in companies, joining groups using a network. Main events:

• 1971 - the first commercial game Galaxy (modified by SpaceWar) appears, as well as Computer Space (another modification of SpaceWar) - the first computer game released to the general public in the amount of 1500 arcade machines.
• 1972 - Atari is founded with the world's first arcade Pong, which enjoyed great success. In the same year, the world saw the first game console - the Odyssey from Magnavox.
• 1973 - The world's first first-person shooter Mazewar appears, with the ability to play over the network.
• 1975 - Adventure genre is born thanks to Colossal Cave Adventure.
• 1976 Death Race based on the 2000 film Death Race causes outrage because of its cruelty, so it is banned in many places.
• 1977 - The first graphics games are released with the introduction of the Apple II.
• 1979 - the first multiplayer game like MUD (Multi User Dungeon) is created, where players walk, explore the world and communicate through the first analogs of chat. Such games are gaining in popularity.
• 1980 - Pac-Man appears, which later entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular game in the world. A Rogue RPG game is created that gives birth to a new type of game: rogue-like games. Rogue-like (from Rogue) are text-based games where the world, character, artifacts and enemies are displayed with symbols.

In the period from 1981 to 1990, the set-top boxes are going through a crisis, tk. personal computers are becoming available because of the low cost. Text and character games are slowly dying out. They are being replaced by games with more complex graphics, since the first video cards appear, thereby unloading the processor from processing graphics. For the first time there are games, series that later become famous, for example, Metroid, Adventure Island, Space Quest, etc. Significant dates:

• 1983 - the beginning of the era of 8-bit consoles. Also, some experts consider this year to be the beginning of the modern era of electronic entertainment. Such well-known consoles as Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, PC Engine, Atari 7800 appeared. A large number of 2D games with a side view appeared. For the first time, Final Fantasy appeared, in the sequel of which is still played.
• 1984 - the first commercial space simulator, Elite, appears. The game King's Quest is also released - the world's first animated quest.
• 1985 - the famous Tetris game, created by Alexey Pajitnov, is published. Commodore creates the Amiga personal computer. This year the world meets the Mario brothers (Super Mario Bros).
• 1986 Dragon Quest spawned the JRPG genre. The Ubisoft Entertainment company (its original name was Ubi Soft) was organized.
• 1987 - the emergence of such cult arcade fighting games as Street Fighter and Double Dragon. The Amiga 500 personal computer appears. The 256-color graphics appear on the PC, thanks to the development of the VGA standard.
• 1988 Game Developers Conference is the world's first game developer conference held in San Jose.
• 1989 - Intel 486 processors appeared, which made the transition of personal computers to the graphical interface. Such well-known games as SimCity, Prince of Persia, Klondike Solitaire, which began to be present in all versions of Windows, starting with the third, are released. Nintendo's first handheld Game Boy cartridges are introduced.

1991 - 2003 - in this decade there was a revolution in computer games, thanks to the development of computer technology. Now it is possible to create 3D worlds using sophisticated multimedia tools. ID Software released the legendary Doom game, which remains popular even now. This game became unique, it was not like all previous games: a new first-person player control system, a three-dimensional world, a network game (in a team, go every man for himself). Later, on the Doom engine, the equally famous Quake game was developed. At this time, for the first time, gaming clans began to be created, as well as such a concept as e-sports arose. At this time, Half Life appeared - the first multiplayer game that allowed creating mods - modifications. Players could now change the surrounding game world and the hero himself. The games industry is starting to generate huge returns that have come to be compared to the income of the film industry. Key dates:

• 1991 - famous games are released: Lemmings and Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue hedgehog later became the symbol of the Sega company.
• 1992 - the bloody fighter Mortal Kombat appears for the first time, giving rise to a whole series of not only games, but films and cartoons. Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, the world's first 3D first-person RPG, arrives. Alone in the Dark launched the survival horror game genre. Dune II has become the template for RTS games.
• 1993 - Id Software releases the cult game Doom, the world's first 3D shooter. The concept of turn-based combat in X-COM: UFO Defense, which was released this year, has not become obsolete to this day. Atari Corp. Launched the first 64-bit Jaguar console.
• 1995 - the release of the first parts of the famous games Need for Speed ​​and Heroes of Might and Magic. Founding of BioWare. The first exhibition of the computer and video games industry - Eі Media and Business Summit - was held.
• 1996 - 3dfx Interactive releases the world's first 3D-accelerated graphics adapter (Voodoo I), revolutionizing the gaming industry. In the same year, Quake is released with a completely three-dimensional world. The release of the first parts of the popular games Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Diablo. The world's first MMORPG, Meridian 59, appears.
• 1998 - the release of the famous Half-life game, on the engine of which many more games were developed. The Unreal game marked the development of the popular Unreal Engine. Blizzard's StarCraft is released, and the championships are still running. Aliens Online launched the MMOFPS genre. The cult game Vangers from the Russian company K-D LAB is released, which has attracted the attention of the West.
• 1999 Intel releases the Pentium III processor with 3D graphics and streaming media capabilities. Unreal Tournament is released - a new hit in the gaming market and one of the first esports shooters.
• 2000 - elements of artificial intelligence appear in game engines.
• 2003 - the first World Cup in e-sports was held with the participation of about 150 thousand players from all over the world.

Since the beginning of 2004, the world overcomes another step in the development of computer and video games. This time can be considered the beginning of the emergence of modern games. Thanks to the widespread use of the Internet, a huge number of MMORPGs and MMOFPS are emerging. Far Cry is coming out this year - the first game to support 64-bit systems. The most popular (even today) portable console Nintendo DS appears on sale.

Subsequent years, up to the present time, there has been a huge number of releases of computer and video games of various genres and for any platforms. The development of computer technology is also moving forward.

What trend in the development of games can be predicted for the future, knowing how things are with the gaming and computer industries? Decrease or complete disappearance of games on PC platforms due to piracy. More and more games are coming out of video games, and in America since June 17, 2010, a service such as OnLive has been launched. With its appearance, users will no longer need to have powerful personal computers at home. It is only necessary to have a high-speed Internet, because it will transmit the processed graphics from a remote server to which the user will connect to play. What else I would like to say is that developers and publishers have begun to be forgotten and want to pull money out of players' wallets as much as possible by making paid add-ons to games. A decrease in prices in the near future for the provision of gaming services is not expected.

This is how computer and video games developed rapidly, and the trend of their evolution does not stop. Perhaps in the near future we will be able to fully immerse ourselves in the game world, which will be more than realistic.

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

The history of the emergence of computer games

For the first time, they tried to give smart technology a gaming rig in 1952. A breakthrough was one of the simplest board games - "", with the minimum possible field of 3 x 3 cells. It may sound ridiculous now, but at that moment it was a revolutionary innovation.

6 years later, programmers have 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 analogs, but in real time. Despite its simplicity of functionality, this game has become another breakthrough in the emerging world of gamers.

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

However, computers continued to be bulky at the time. Before affordable personalization, it was still, oh, how far ... It took almost 10 years until the moment when compact boards on transistor circuits appeared. Thanks to this invention, the game from the computer moved to the arcade machine with a coin-operated machine under the name Computer Space. And in May 1972, the Magnavox Odissey was introduced, the first TV game console.

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

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

In 1979, the American company Milton Bradley released the first handheld game console, in which 12 games were invested at once. In 1980, the Japanese Nintendo, having modernized the games on the calculator, carried out the mass release of the simplest monochrome consoles with the Game & Watch series of games. In the Soviet Union, these consoles became the prototype of the Elektronika products - the Secrets of the Ocean and Well, Wait! Games, which literally everyone was fascinated with.

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

Features of computer games

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

• shooters, fights;
• races, sports games, simulations;
• arcade, strategy, adventure;
• logical, educational, educational games.

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

On the one hand, play is essential for a person. This is a way of knowing 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 the "perfect" world in the virtual space. Computer games are an opportunity to throw out aggression, to get the necessary adrenaline rush.

Educational and developmental games are child-friendly and are often used by conscientious parents, educators and teachers. Both the downloaded games and the Internet connection help to remove physical boundaries, to freely explore the space of the planet. Today, educational and developmental games for adults are becoming more widespread. They are used by the military and businessmen, becoming an effective tool for improving the qualifications of personnel.

On the other hand, psychologists and educators talk about what is observed everywhere, especially among adolescents. As the saying goes, "a lot is good - also not good." Often, immersion in the virtual world becomes an obstacle to real life - communication, personality formation. If a child's hobby for a computer can be controlled by parents, then for an adult, dependence on the "constructed world" can become a real problem. Here, the result of enthusiasm depends only on a person's ability to control his consciousness, to control his behavior by volitional effort.

And yet, the development of computer games is unstoppable. They are becoming more varied and exciting. Personal games have been replaced by browser games, where you can communicate online, jointly solving virtual, but important tasks. Such games, in addition to entertainment, provide an opportunity to master and develop communication skills, socialization, and broaden horizons. The world of computer games still produces 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 at the monitor.

When thinking about how the gaming industry was born, many people immediately think of Pong. Although the acclaimed arcade machine took the industry to a whole new level, its creation was preceded by more than twenty years of experimentation. And the earliest of them is the project of the American inventor Thomas Goldsmith, developed almost seventy years ago.

1948 - Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device

In 1948, physicists Thomas Goldsmith and Astle Ray Mann were granted the world's first patent for the invention of an electronic interactive game. The patent describes a game in which the player sits or stands in front of a CRT monitor mounted in a cabinet.

Goldsmith and Mann, who had worked with radars during World War II, decided to make something like a rocket simulator. With the help of special handles, the player had to adjust the trajectory of the projectiles in order to hit the targets.

Scientists did not pin any hopes on the resulting game. This was just a small demonstration of the capabilities of DuMont Laboratories, of which Goldsmith was listed as director. The patent was never used, and further the manually created copy, the matter did not go.

1948 - Turbochamp

The legendary English mathematician Alan Turing in 1948, together with his colleague David Chempernovny, developed a chess program. After graduating in the 50th, and calling it Turbochamp, Turing tried to implement the project on the Ferranti Mark 1, but the attempts were in vain - the computer did not have enough power. Then Alan decided to conduct an experimental game against his friend the scientist Alik Glenny, in which he, acting according to the created algorithm, acted as his program. It took Turing half an hour for each move, and after 29 moves he lost to Glennie. However, the experiment showed that Turbochamp is capable of playing like a human. Later, in a similar experiment, Alan managed to beat his wife Chempernovna. And the first full-fledged chess game will be written by Alex Bernstein in 1957 and run on an IBM 704 computer.

In 2012, the famous chess player Garry Kasparov played a game against Turbochamp and defeated it in 16 moves.

You can watch that very game against Glenny.

1950 - Bertie the Brain

The first game with at least some visual component was Bertie the Brain. Joseph Cates designed the Tic-Tac-Toe game for the Canadian National Exhibition. To do this, he needed a computer four meters tall, which offered visitors to the exhibition to play a classic game with artificial intelligence.

Cates built Bertie the Brain, among other things, to prove his invention - his version of the vacuum tube, which he called the Additron tube.

Bertie the Brain was happy with the difficulty, and Cates had to manually adjust the difficulty for each visitor. The player pressed one of the nine buttons, and the result was displayed on the screen hanging in front of the players in the form of "X" or "O".

Immediately after the exhibition, the game was forgotten. Due to rapid technological progress, the same thing happened with the lamps he invented.

Cates once said: "If the solid-state revolution came ten years later, my invention would make me a billionaire."

1951 - Nimrod

It all started when the British electrical equipment company Ferranti promised British Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison to contribute to the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition. The business was contracted by John Bennett, an Australian employee of the company. John got the idea to build a full-fledged computer to play Nim. Bennett wanted to demonstrate the computational power of a computer and the mathematical "Nim" was an excellent example.

The booklet that came with the computer read: “It might seem like we’re wasting time building a gaming machine, but that’s not true. Game theory is extremely complex, and a machine capable of participating in a complex game can be programmed to perform useful tasks. "

Nevertheless, with the exception of a few, the public was not interested in Nimrod's mathematical abilities, but in the game factor.

After showing Nimrod at a couple of more shows, Ferranti forgot about the computer and took up other projects.

1952 - Noughts and Crosses

Noughts and Crosses is considered to be the first computer game with a graphical interface. In 1952, British scientist Alexander Douglas presented it as an appendix to his Ph.D. thesis on human-computer interaction.

It was at that time that the University of Cambridge completed the creation of the electronic computer EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), the world's first computer built on the principles of von Neumann (joint storage of instructions and data in computer memory). Douglas took the opportunity and programmed a simple tic-tac-toe game.

The action in Noughts and Crosses (a game of "Tic-Tac-Toe") was displayed on a 35x16 pixel display, and the game itself was one of the first applications of artificial intelligence.

Douglas' project was well received, earning him a doctorate and launching a successful scientific career. Interestingly, in his entire life, the scientist has never written a single game.

1958 - Tennis for Two

Tennis for Two was the first multiplayer game. Physicist William Higinbotham designed it specifically for an open day at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked.

In Tennis for Two, two players control a dot of light that flies across the oscilloscope screen. By twisting the controller knob, you can change the angle of the ball and launch it by pressing the red button.

In addition to being the first sports game, Tennis for Two also featured two controllers for two players for the first time, taking it one step further towards interactivity.

Despite its popularity, Higinbotam did not receive a patent for the game, and the components of Tennis for Two went to other projects.

In May 2011, the game was recreated specifically for the MEGA (Museum of Electronic Games & Art) project.

1961 - Spacewar!

After MIT acquired a copy of the PDP-1 computer, Steve Russell, Martin Graetz, and Wayne Whitanem were tasked with developing a program for it. As a result, their attempts to utilize the capabilities of a computer in one program turned into Spacewar!

Inspired by Japanese sci-fi films, the game is a duel between two spaceships. Over time, elements such as asteroids or hyperspace were added, allowing players to teleport at random while avoiding enemy torpedoes.

Spacewar! decided to distribute for free, and the game was preinstalled on all subsequent copies of PDP-1 computers. Also, the creators provided the source code to everyone, and completely free.

While Spacewar! and did not start the gaming industry, it had a significant impact on developers, and, in the end, became the prototype for the world's first arcade machine, Computer Space.

You can check out Spacewar! For yourself, for example.

1967 - Inventions by Ralph Baer

American inventor Ralph Baer can be called the real father of the gaming industry. It was he who moved from short-term experiments like those described above to business, suggesting the use of televisions for games. It is interesting that Baer had this idea back in 1955, and he waited eleven years for the right moment and conditions for its implementation.

As Baer recalled, "At the time, forty million television sets in the United States literally begged their creators to use them for anything other than watching the news."

In 1966, with engineer Bob Tremblay, Baer designed a device that allowed players to move and resize a white dot across the screen. Baer put these possibilities together into a game called Chase and offered it to Sanders. The company provided Baer with $ 2,500 funding on the condition that he came up with more interesting gameplay stuff.

Hiring two more engineers to join the team, Baer developed several prototypes over the course of the year, which were eventually combined into the world's first video game console called The Brown Box.

The set also included a joystick and one of the world's first light pistols a la NES Zipper. But, despite the interest in the set-top box of such giants as Motorola and General Electronics, the companies were in no hurry to take the risk of releasing such an innovative project. Only four years later, Baer managed to conclude a contract with Magnavox and release the "brown box" under the Odyssey name.

Odyssey was battery operated, had no sound, and the graphics, which consisted of white dots and lines, required a lot of imagination from the players. Nevertheless, the console quickly gained immense popularity - more than 100,000 units were sold in a year.

1971 - Computer Space

After fellow engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney played Spacewar! on the huge PDP-1, they became obsessed with porting the game to a more compact device. After experimenting with programmer Larry Bryne and even creating Syzygy for the occasion, Bushnell and Dabney came to the conclusion that instead of making a direct port of the game with the PDP-1, they should re-create Spacewar! with the help of other technologies, which, by the way, were already promoted by Ralph Baer.

After completing development, Syzygy entered into a contract with Nutting Associates to produce two types of slot machines called Computer Space: for one and two players, respectively. Gameplay of Computer Space was slightly different from Spacewar !. The attraction to the center of the screen disappeared, and the need to dodge attacks from outside ships moving back and forth across the screen was added.

Unfortunately for the developers, the game turned out to be too difficult for ordinary visitors to the bars, in which machines were most often found. Bushnell and Dabney began to develop new ideas and soon presented the famous Pong to the world on behalf of their new company, Atari.

After Computer Space, every step in the industry was much broader than the last:

• 1975 - Atari's Pong became the most popular Christmas present.
• 1976 - Coleco releases its first Telstar console.
• 1977 - Atari released its first Video Computer System, which used cartridges.
• 1978 - Midway presents the acclaimed Space Invaders.

In the 70s alone, the industry made a giant leap in development and further only continued to gain momentum.

The games and entertainment of modern man are very diverse, and many of them, most likely, came from antiquity. And here one cannot but be interested in the question of how the very first game in the world appeared. If we delve into history, we can say that one of the first games is called Senet.

Archaeologists who excavated ancient Egyptian burials have witnessed such finds, such as peculiar boards, on which lines and various drawings were carved. Such items were even placed in the tombs of great people - pharaohs and princesses.

Studies of ancient civilizations have confirmed the hypothesis of the scientific world that people from the distant past played board games. This allowed them to develop their thinking and create a special strategy, find a way out of the situation not only in the game, but also in reality.

The book of the Dead mentions a game called senet. This word in translation means passing. The board game senet was fond of not only noble people, but even the poor. On the walls of the Pharaoh's tombs, one could find an image of this board game, the working field of which was made of ebony and elephant bones, and the dice were made of colored glaze or faience.

The senet playing field consisted of thirty squares, as well as a dice that helped determine the player's move. There is another version of the board game with twenty squares. Among the boards that are found during excavations, there are those that have different versions of the game on both sides.

There is another ancient game that is popular to this day, this is Mancala, which originated in Africa. Also, some archaeological excavations have become proof that they knew about Mancala in Jordan, where a limestone slab with a field with holes suitable for playing was found in one of the houses.

Some scholars believe that Mancala is much older than the ancient Senet. To play a game of the game, you need to take a handful of pebbles or seeds, which are laid out in the depressions of the field. The winner is the one who captures as many pieces of his opponent as possible.

Among the Vikings, the toughl was very popular, which became the prototype of modern chess. On the playing field, figures were exhibited, among which was the king. The goal of the game was to bring the main piece to the opposite edge of the board, while the other figurines were supposed to prevent this.

Among the games of antiquity, one can also distinguish the mill, the game boards of which were located in Sri Lanka in one thousand four hundred and fortieth year BC. They were made of stones, but in Ireland and Troy such boards were made of bronze. Each participant had three chips on the playing field, from which they had to build a line. If it was possible to do this, then the opponent lost one chip, and the game was over when the participant could not build the mill due to the impossibility of making a move with a lack of a game coin on the field.

One of the oldest games is also the royal hurray, in which the rules have been preserved to this day in the original. Very old play sets were in Iraq in 1920 and were similar to the Senet. The essence of the game was to throw the dice and move the game pieces to the finish line. For a long time, this entertainment was considered the prototype of today's backgammon.

Among the ancient games, one can also distinguish chaturanga, which was played by both Koreans, Indians and Thais. By its rules, it is very similar to chess. The game Mansion of Happiness, which was invented in Great Britain as a teaching of virtues to Christians, also gained great popularity.

The first computer game was created in 1952 by A.S. Douglas. Douglas created his first game at the University of Cambridge (one of the most prestigious universities in England). The world's first computer game was programmed on an EDSAC computer, the image on which was formed using cathode beams. Another computer scientist, William Hijinbasam, created his first video game around 1958. His video game was titled Tennis for Two. In 1962, Steve Russell invented SpaceWar! It is worth saying that this game, SpaceWar !, was the first computer game that was designed specifically for playing on a computer, that is, for computer use. Steve Russell used a mainframe computer to design his game. But, just five years later, in 1967, Ralph Baer first wrote a video game that could be played on TV. The game that Ralph Baer managed to write is called "Pursuit".

The fact is that during that historical period, Ralph Baer worked in an organization dealing with military electronics. In 1971, Bushnell, together with Ted Dabney, created their first game - a maze, a gallery. This game was called "Space". "Cosmos" was based, that is, when it was created, it was based on Steve Russell's earlier game Spacewar !. Just a year later, in 1972, the Pong needle was created. Pong was created by Nolan Bushnell in collaboration with Al Alkorn. In 1975, Atari released Pong as a home video game.

It is worth saying that Larry Kerekman was one of the first to create video games. In 1972, the first commercial video game console was released. Thanks to such a remote control, it was possible to play video games at home, that is, there was no need to go anywhere. Also, it should be said that such a commercial remote control for video games was quite an expensive pleasure, which, however, is not surprising. Any thing that appears for the first time is always very expensive, because in this case such a thing practically claims to be exclusive.

Today, any child cannot imagine their childhood and adolescence without computer games. Today, a computer and everything that is needed for a full-fledged and exciting game is quite accessible to any, even not very well-to-do family. However, it is worth reminding our little computer scientists that it is not worth playing computer games for a long time, as this may deteriorate your eyesight. Some games are capable of causing cybernetic gambling addiction - this is what psychologists call addiction to computer games. It is much more fun to play outdoor games with your friends, to run in the yard, to do any kind of sports.