I' Quenta en' Computer Tyalier, Kirma Er: 1950’s – 1970’s

The History of Computer Games, Part One: 1950’s – 1970’s

 
Computer games actually stretch back a lot farther than I had originally thought, holding their origins with Alexander “Sandy” Shafto Douglas, who created a graphical version of Tic-Tac-Toe in 1952. Douglas created the game after writing his PhD in human-computer interaction at the University of Cambridge. Six years passed and William Higinbotham created his game called ‘Tennis for two’.A few more years later, now 1962, Steve Russel created a game entitled ‘Spacewar!’. The game consists of two players flying spacecrafts around a planet trying to shoot each other, a simple enough concept. The game shows its age not only from its graphics but even more so when you consider the computer it was created on was the size of a car; the PDP-1.

As you can see the growth of computer games at this point is slow, having a game produced every few years. In 1972 Nolan Bushnell created one of the most iconic games in history; Pong. The game is very simple; players protect their side from a dot that bounces about the screen using their ‘paddle’, which is displayed as a simple white rectangle; the rectangles movement is limited to vertical pan. Also in 1972 Magnavox created the first home games console titled the ‘Magnavox Odyssey’, which was invented by Ralph Baer. The Odyssey wasn’t popular by today’s standards; it wasn’t until Pong was available in the home that computer games became popular. Pong was created just a year after Bushnell and Ted Dabney made Computer Space, which was the first arcade game ever made. The same year Pong was made Bushnell and Dabney started Atari Computers and re-released Pong as the first commercially available game for the home in 1975. 

Because of Pong’s popularity Magnavox had to cancel the Odyssey and released a simpler console, the ‘Odyssey 100. This ‘simpler’ console only played Pong and Hockey so along side the 100; they released a ‘higher end’ 200 version. Though the 200 only added on screen scoring for up to players and also a third game; Smash. Atari released their equivalent console at practically the same time through the department store chain, Sears.

1975 marked the end of the first generation of computer games, with the second welcoming a new console; the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES). Fairchild released the VES a year behind Atari and Magnavox, but the VES used single ROM cartridges which allowed games to be run from the cartridge itself, apposed to previously just activation a game preloaded on the console. RCA (Radio Corporation of America) and Atari release their own cartridge based consoles soon after.

Only two years after consoles began being produced for the home, manufacturers sold their inferior consoles for a loss in an attempt to clear stock, causing Fairchild and RCA to completely abandon their consoles. This left only Atari and Magnavox producing home consoles.
And that concludes the 1950 – 1970’s Computer games history.

Mára mesta.

 

Mára aurë!

Well my names Luis Harrison I moved from a town called Nuneaton that’s just twenty minutes drive from Leicester. I now reside in a house that’s roughly 5 or so minutes from DMU and I live with two friends from my college course.

When I was deciding upon which course I wanted to apply to, I looked for two main qualities; firstly, I wanted a course that was very heavy in development of traditional art skills, secondly, I wanted to learn how to use 3DS Max as required for the games industry (I had only learnt the basics from my college course). Not only did De Monforts Game Art Design course satisfy both, but it offered a great deal more, the tutors haven’t just taken a course in their area and jumped straight into teaching, they all have years of experience working in their field and that experience is an invaluable tool to their students. Now by this point the course was sold but to top everything off we get guest lectures from people working in the industry and established companies assign us projects and crit them themselves. By now I could not wait for September to come around, providing I got offered a place that is.

Oh and of course I love art in all its forms as strange as some can seem and I love to play computer games, so what better for me to study than Game Art Design!

Ambitions, Ambitions… Although there are companies that I love and admire, I don’t think that I would want to work for them. The reason being that because I love their games if I was to work on their titles I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them the same as I would previously. So my point being I would like to work for a company that I’m not necessarily unfamiliar with but can establish my name with a new title that I can become associated with. Essentially I would rather not ruin my favourite games by working them to death, and leave it to the people that have made them so awesome in the past.

Outside of the world of games and art, I delve in the world of Middle-Earth; I am a huge Tolkien fan! His style is so unique, using simple vocabulary though applying it in an intellectual manner he communicates his visions of Middle-earth so vivid; his imagery is unrivalled. Tolkien, even during World War II, still continued to expand upon his fantasy world, writing most of The Lord of the Rings whilst serving in the war. I know of no other author that had such passion for his work, that even during a world war he found the time to put pen to paper to create what is now a masterpiece world renown and also the second most sold novel ever written!

‘How, given little over half a century, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?’

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