Introduction
The topic of video games has attracted different kinds of professionals for a long time. The main reason for that is related to the powerful effects of video games over their players. Trying to understand these effects, we have discovered that games do not only have the power to entertain people but indeed to involve the gamers, challenge their skills, transport them to virtual adventures, and even generate feelings.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of games that use elements of classic stories, movies, natural landscapes, myths, legends, simulations of combat, sports simulations, and so forth. Currently, the video game industry is spreading to achieve other areas of application in order to bring the magic of games to the real world, such as in medicine, health, learning, tourism, and so forth. Its simple existence paves the way for research in order to elaborate theories, methods, and technologies to exploit the potential of this entertainment.
Here I would like to go through the development of video games throughout the past few decades.
1980s
With the emergence of publishing companies, the video game industries were faced with the first adversity in growth. Activision’s success as a third-party developer for the Atari Ventures and other home consoles inspired the rise of other third-party development companies in the early 1980s; by 1983, at least 100 different companies claimed to be developing software for the Atari Ventures. According to estimation, this eventually led to the over-sell. Due to so many reasons in the market at that time, consumer tended to purchase low-priced games instead of normal priced and high quality ones.
Then microchips aided the appearance of portable gaming console. In 1983, Nintendo published the first gaming console sith LCD screen called Game and Watch.
video games on PC
The success of Apple II and Commodore made affodable home PCs possible. Rivaling operation systems boost people’s knowlegde in video games, which in turn kind of dominanted the storage of PCs.
An amature hobby then came to light. In the early 1970s, minicomputers such as the Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080 were released. Groups such as the Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park, California, envisioned how these minicomputer systems could be used to create new hardware and software.
Notable games from this period include Richard Garriott’s first Ultima game and Sir Tech’s first wizary game, both of which were basic role-playing games for the personal computer. Elite, a space trading and combat simulation game designed by David Braben and Ian Bell, introduced many new graphical and gameplay features and is considered one of the first open-world and sandbox games.
1990s
The 1990s was a decade of significant innovation in video games. It was a decade of transition from raster to 3D graphics, and spawned multiple types of video games, including first-person shooters, real-time strategy, and MMOs. handheld games became increasingly popular throughout the decade, in part due to the release of the Game Boy in 1989.
SEGA and Nintendo, two major gaming company during this era, produced a lot of new products, especially pocket PC.
Arcade games rose again for a while but then disappeared afterwards.
New Era
Sony took the lead in the market at the beginning of 2000, and then PlayStation2 was invented. Right after that, Xbox from Microsoft, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS.
The prevalence of WWW, online gaming became a new heated topic.The first major electronic sports (eSports) tournaments also began in the 2000s. While Street Fighter II and other fighting games of the 1990s introduced organized video game tournaments earlier, professional eSports emerged from South Korea around 2000, with many of their events revolving around current fighting games and various RTS games such as StarCraft and Warcraft III. By 2010, a number of international eSports tournaments had been established in a variety of game genres.
Tiny games for passing time also emerged, in my childhood memory, the website called 4399 surely played a part.
Nowadays, video games have infiltrated into all parts of our lives, from those national tournaments to simple games when you are waiting for a movie.
The ninth art, there is still a long way to go.
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