The video game industry is undoubtedly one of the most successful, profitable industries, but how does the time span over the past few years? What exactly was the pioneering moment for the industry and how did it become so racked up with popularity?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History of the Industry
The birth of the first ever video game began on October, 1958 with a simple game titled 'Tennis for two' that made by Physicist William Higinbotham. Ever since then, video games has skyrocketed in popularity and profitability, belonging to a $100 billion global industry. COVID-19 lockdowns were expected to aid global gaming sales to a 20% rise to nearly $180 billion in 2020, and experts are confident that the growth won't be going away any time soon in 2021 after the release of next-gen consoles like Playstation and Xbox.
Arcade Gaming
When Sega and Taito debuted the electro-mechanical games Periscope and Crown Special Soccer in 1966 and 1967, they were the first companies to attract the public's interest in arcade gaming as well as Atari being the first game firm to truly establish the standard for a large-scale gaming community in 1972.
Atari not only developed its games in-house, but they also created a brand new industry around the “arcade.” In 1973, Atari released the first real electronic video game titled 'Pong' for $1,095, and arcade machines began to appear in bars, bowling alleys, and shopping malls all over the world.
In-Home Gaming Becoming A Reality
The early 1970s saw the introduction of personal computers and mass-produced gaming consoles, in addition to arcade machines becoming popular in commercial centers and chain restaurants in the United States. Advances in technology, such as Intel's creation of the world's first microprocessor, paved the way for games like Gunfight, the first multiplayer human-to-human combat shooter, in 1975.
Gunfight was a big deal when it originally came out in arcades, despite the fact that it was nothing like popular games of today such as Call of Duty. It featured a unique gameplay style, with one joystick controlling movement and the other controlling shooting direction – something never seen before.
The Root Of Multiplayer Gaming
To cash in on the hot new trend, a number of chain restaurants across the United States began installing video games in the late 1970s. The games' nature encouraged and sparked competition among players, who could record their high scores with their initials and were driven to claim the top spot on the leaderboard. At this point, multiplayer gaming was only confined to participants competing on the same screen at the time.
“Empire,” a strategic turn-based game for up to eight players built for the PLATO network system in 1973, was the first example of players competing on separate screens. PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation) was one of the first universal computer-based teaching systems, developed by the University of Illinois and then taken over by Control Data (CDC), who created the machines that the system ran on.
Modern Gaming
Since the early 2000s, Internet capabilities have surged, and computer processor technology has advanced at such a rapid rate that each new generation of games, graphics, and consoles appears to greatly surpass the preceding generations. The cost of technology, servers, and the Internet has plummeted to the point that lightning-fast Internet is now available and commonplace, and 3.2 billion people across the world have Internet access.
The Pandemic's Impact
The video game industry has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. The outbreak has had a variety of effects on the video game industry, the most common of which are concerns about travel to and from China or overseas, as well as delays in video game manufacturing procedures within China
Generally, sales of video games have increased as a result of stay-at-home and lockdown orders from the pandemic, as people turn to video games as a pastime. The NPD Group reported that video game sales in North America in March 2020 were up 34% from those in March 2019, video game hardware up by 63% - which includes more than twice the number of units of the Nintendo Switch console. Net spending across the first quarter of 2020 in the United States reached US$10.9 billion, up 9% in 2020 compared to 2019 according to NPD. Such an increase at this point, near the planned end of the eighth generation of video game consoles, is unusual and attributed to actions of the pandemic. By July 2020, NPD Group that total sales of video game hardware and software within the United States in the first six months of 2020 reached US$6.6 billion, the highest since 2010.
Written by: Lana Alutaibi
References:
American Physical Society, "October 1958: Physicist Invents First Video Game" American Physical Society, October 2008, https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200810/physicshistory.cfm#:~:text=in%20Physics%20History-,October%201958%3A%20Physicist%20Invents%20First%20Video%20Game,Brookhaven%20National%20Laboratory%20open%20house.
Witkowski, Wallace "Videogames are a bigger industry than movies and North American sports combined, thanks to the pandemic" MarketWatch, December 22, 2020, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/videogames-are-a-bigger-industry-than-sports-and-movies-combined-thanks-to-the-pandemic-11608654990
Selem, Rany "The Evolution of Gaming" Rany Selems ePortfolio, March 22, 2019, https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/rselem-eportfolio/2019/03/22/the-evolution-of-gaming/
Comments