Superheroes battle monsters and space invaders in fast action
games. Players take on the role of these superheroes in epic battles. In
other games players race cars, boats, motorcycles, helicopters and
planes against villains and even less evil opponents to win high stakes
races.
Game titles such as Burnout3: Takedown, ESPN, NHL - 2K5,
Silent Hill 4: The Room, Terminator 3: The Redemption, Donkey Kong 3,
and, Pokemon have joined the national lexicon as kids have flocked to
the lure of electronic games.
Parents, teachers, preachers and
politicians, have criticized and in some cases even banned electronic
games. Electronic games have been blamed for poor grades, poor conduct
and even poor health. If you listen long enough, electronic games are
responsible for all of the problems our young people experience today.
One thing is certain. Kids love them. They buy and play them in ever increasing numbers. Electronic games are here to stay.
People
have been trying to play games on computers almost since the days of
the very first computer. As early as 1950, Claude Shannon, a
mathematician and engineer, believed that computers could be programmed
to play chess in competition with humans. He became intrigued with the
concept of artificial intelligence. In pursuit of this idea researchers
and scientists designed crude games that could be played on the huge and
clumsy computers of the 1950s and 1960s.
The first actual
electronic games as a consumer product were built as coin operated
arcade games in the early 1970s. In 1971 Nolan Bushnell, Ted Dabney and
Al Alcorn formed the first game company, Atari. Soon after they produced
the first game console and their first electronic game, Pong, as an
arcade game. Pong was immediately successful.
This success led
Atari and other firms to begin work on home game consoles that could be
hooked to TV sets. Atari released its first home console in 1977. Soon
games were put on cartridges that could be changed at the whim of the
player.
By 1979, the company, Activision, was formed by former
Atari game designers. The purpose of this new company was to focus
strictly on game software. They decided to leave the development of
equipment to play electronic games to other people. This was the first
company to build a business of developing and selling electronic games
software.
In a short time a spate of game companies sprang up
trying to develop software for the infant electronic game industry. The
result was a glut of poorly conceived games hitting the market.
Consumers turned away in droves and the home electronic game industry
faded hit the skids.
By the early 1980s, electronic games were
being developed for personal computers. Color graphics, flexible storage
capacity and general purpose processors made games much easier to play
on personal computers. The game console business was all but dead.
In
the late 1980s, two Japanese companies introduced a new generation of
game consoles that were technologically capable of handling the new
electronic games being produced. These companies were Nintendo and Sega.
These game consoles had graphics capabilities that exceeded those of
most personal computers. Nintendo also offered a feature that let the
console record the game action so a player could pause the action of a
game.
Right behind Nintendo came Game Boy, a hand-held game
console. Game consoles enjoyed a resurgence of popularity during the
1990s. A new, even more sophisticated generation of electronic games
was introduced by 2001. These consoles included Playstation2 and Xbox.
Electronic games continued to become more complex with more action and
more graphics.
Electronic games, today, have achieved art form
status. They are sort of a wonderful combination of board games and
comic books all rolled up into one medium with spectacular graphics and
compelling audio. Curiously enough, most electronic games are similar to
board games. They have one of two central themes. The first is racing
and the other is capturing area or opponents. Perhaps it is because of
these similarities that electronic games have begun to capture a wider
audience.
As electronic games have matured they have begun to
attract more mature audiences. Initially these games were primarily toys
for boys. The growth area in the game industry is no longer adolescent
males. It is mature adults, both men and women. Many of the most popular
board games have been adapted to electronic game formats. Where
youngsters hooked game consoles to TV sets, adults are playing games on
their PCs, often against other players across the Internet. Grandparents
are playing electronic games with grandchildren. They are also joining
game clubs to play electronic games on the Internet with other senior
citizens in another state or half a world away. Many of the top game
companies are betting that older adults are the new growth market for
the game industry.
Claude Shannon believed that computers could be
programmed to play chess. In a sense he was right. He certainly never
imagined chess players reaching across cyberspace as they exercise chess
strategies on computerized game boards. Nor could he have imagined
video poker, Internet casinos and all of the other popular electronic
games people of all ages are playing. Electronic games aren't just for
kids anymore.
