Mistakenly called videogames, the computer games, wich are in part one of the summits of technology industry, are not having a long history. What we call now the computer games industry, at the beginnings was not even close about an industry in the real meaning. A few early programmers and game designers came up with some ideas which nowadays means the foundation of computer games industry.



All started in 1952, when Alexander "Sandy" Shafto Douglas (a british professor of computer science) wrote in his PhD degree (Doctor of Philosophy) at University of Cambridge about Human-Computer interaction. This was the perfect opportunity for Douglas to creat the first graphical computer game (at that time in Cambridge were one of the only two stored program computer in the entire world). This was a simple where a player could compete against the computer. It was a version of 0X0 (Tic - Tac - Toe). So this is the first step that in the computer games history.

The second step was made after six years from first, in 1958, when William Higinbotham (American physicist) created an computer game called "Tennis for two". Higinbotham also created at Brookhaven National Laboratory an oscilloscope where visitors could play the game. With different mechanics this game has no resemblance to the future games.

The third step came up in 1962, when Steve "Slug" Russell (programmer and computer scientist) invented SpaceWar, considered by many the first game for the computer use. Russell used a PDP - 1 (Programmed Data Processor - 1) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design his game. SpaceWar is a shooter game with animated spaceship on a black and white monitor and two players could play it against each other in order to stay alive. The fourth step was made in 1967 when Ralph Baer (German engineer, known as "The Father of video games") who invent the first game played on a television set. The game was named Chase.

In 1971 the first arcade game was invented. It was called Computer Space and it was based on the SpaceWar, the Steve Russell’s game. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney were those who created it. In 1972 Nolan Bushnell found Atari Computers and in 1973 a new game was created, named Pong, the first commercially video game. Pong was a simple concept, with white rectangles graphics on a black background.

An important step in the computer game history is the Activision appearance, the first company exclusively dedicated to computer games programming. Activision was founded by four ex Atari employees (1979).

In the early computer games history the programmers created only games for more than one player, like SpaceWar and Pong but time from 1977 and 1993 is totally dominated by games for single players like Atari’s “Asteroids” and “Lunar Lander” or Nintendo’s Pac Man, Game Boy, Tetris and Super Mario Bros.

The multi player game reached a huge rate of popularity when Doom (1993) allows for connecting several PC’s for the same time with several players in the same game. We can say with all responsibility that Dome is one of the most influential game ever. Some think that is too violent, but Doom it was making history, leading to a whole genre of games, 3d shooter or first person shooter.