The 1970s saw the rise of video games as a cultural phenomenon. Video games have grown from simple tools that made computing technology understandable to forms of media that can communicate cultural values and human relationships. The first video games functioned early on as a form of media by essentially disseminating the experience of computer technology to those who did not have access to it.Īs video games evolved, their role as a form of media grew as well. Tennis for Two created an interface where anyone with basic motor skills could use a complex machine. In a time before personal computers, these games allowed the general public to access technology that had been restricted to the realm of abstract science. These games would generate little interest among the modern game-playing public, but at the time they enthralled their users and introduced the basic elements of the cultural video game experience. Figure 10.2 Tennis for Two was a rudimentary game designed to entertain visitors to the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1952 a computer simulation of tic-tac-toe was developed for EDSAC, one of the first stored-information computers, and in 1958 a game called Tennis for Two was developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory as a way to entertain people coming through the laboratory on tours.Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen, Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008), 50. However, the precursors to modern video games were created as early as the 1950s. Pong, the electronic table-tennis simulation game, was the first video game for many people who grew up in the 1970s and is now a famous symbol of early video games.
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