Video Game: History and
Industry
Week 3
The First 25 Years of Video Game
I
Chronicle of Video Game
Generation
Years
Early Years
1960’s – early 1970’s
1st Generation
1972 – 1977
2nd Generation
1976 – 1984
Video Game Crash
1983
3rd Generation
1983 - 1992
4th Generation
1987 - 1996
5th Generation
1993 - 2002
6th Generation
1998 – 2006
7th Generation
2005 – 2012/13
8th Generation
2012 – present day
1960’s and Early 1970’s
• 1961- 1962 Space War! MIT on PDP-1
• Sega release Periscope:
1971 – 1974: Birth of Commercial
Games
• 1971: Computer Space – Nolan
Bushnell(Nutting).
• 1972: Bushnell starts Atari.
• 1973: Pong by Atari.
• 1974:
– Tank by Kee (Atari).
– Trak 10 (Atari), Gotcha (Atari).
Nolan Bushnell
“I really saw that they were going to totally screw it up. The only thing that
I was wrong about is that it took them two year longer that I thought it would.”
Nolan Bushnell
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1969: Syzygy
1972: Atari
1977: Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre
1980s: Catalyst Technologies VC Group
1990s: PlayNet/Aristo
uWink, entertainment/dinning
Atari, SA
Anti-Aging Games, LLC
BrainRush, education game
1972 - 1976
• Adventure Game: The Colossal Cave
– William Crowther and Don Woods.
– First text-based adventure game.
– Run on DEC mainframes (PDP-10).
Late-70’s : Atari Expands
• 1976: Bushnell sells Atari to Warner for $26M.
– Warner markets Pong to home as a single game.
– Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak designed Breakout.
• 1977: Atari introduces the 2600 VCS (sold 6M by 1980).
• 1977: Apple starts selling Apple II.
• 1978:
– Adventure by Atari.
– Space Invader by Taito (Japan).
• 1979:
– Activision is formed by Atari developers
– First MUD by Trubshaw & Bartle, first MMO (text-based)
1982-1983: Crash
• Atari sales down 50%
– Atari buys right of ET for $22M.
– Produced more PacMan cartridges than system.
– PacMan has very poor production quality on Atari
system.
– ET game is a disaster.
1980-1981: Rise
• 1980:
– Philips Odyssey2 and Mattel Intellivision.
– Namco has Pac-Man
• > $1 billion ($2.3M in 1997 dollars)
• 300,000 arcade units sold
– Atari doing $1 billion
– Zork released by Infocom.
– Ultima by Origin System.
1980-1981: Rise
• 1981:
– Game industry > $6 billion by sales.
– Nintendo: Donkey Kong.
– IBM introduces the IBM PC.
DOS & Microsoft
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Found by Bill Gates & Paul Allen on April 4, 1975.
1984-94: Windows and Office.
2006-10: Windows Vista, mobile, and Windows 7
2011-present: Rebranding, Windows 8 and Surface.
1983:Crash
• Mattel losses $225M from Intellivision and
pull off from video game market then.
• Atari loses huge amount of money.
• Video game retailers in US lose their faith in
video game.
Crash & Resurgence
• 1984:
– Industry drops to below $800M.
– Apple introduces the Macintosh:
• Birth of modern computer.
• 100,000 units sold in first 6 months.
– King’s Quest by Sierra On-Line
• 1985:
– NES console by Nintendo
Apple’s Apple 1
Apple’s Macintosh
Steve Jobs
Steve Wozniak
Apple iPod/iPhone
What company Apple actually is?
First batch of home console
Representative Games in this era
• Representative examples included:
– 3D Monster Maze
– Pole Position
– Dragon’s Lair
– Rock band Journey
– Zork (it was commercially released)
– Mystery House
– King Quest