History of Games

This week's lecture was based around the history of the gaming industry. Firstly, we explored the fact that with developed intelligence, play and enertainment becomes a necessity.

Dr. Stuart Brown is a pioneer in the research of play and says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults - and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.html

The first outbreak of games saw titles such as OXO, Pong, and Breakout emerge.



During the 70s and 80s, Atari was the recognized leader in all areas of videogames. Starting out and establishing the arcade industry, Atari set the stage for the gaming industry with the release of Pong, the first arcade machine game relesead in 1972.

Early platforms included Magnavox Odyssey, Atari, Vectrex and various coin operated machines. Gaming also made its way into the home on the Spectrum, BBC Micro, Commodore, Atari and Tandy machines.

Over the years, gaming has evolved dramatically to include 3D, multiplayer, virtualisation, real time and open world play.

http://www.gameinnovation.org/

^ Here we can see many of the great innovations made in the industry.

From the early part of the 90s, the industry has seen a huge market growth. With Nintendo's handheld Gameboy, Sony's PlayStation and then, later, Microsoft's Xbox consoles.

The technology has also been developed to incorporate photoreality. It is now possible to create an interactive world looking very close to "real" life.



This is Sony's advert for its Bravia recreated using the CryEngine2.