Early history of Games

It seems there is some confusion into who created the first computer game, so far I have found a couple of ‘creators’ William a. Higginbotham created a demo of a ball which rebounds I think this website was referring to ‘tennis for two’ which was created in 1958 however another website claims the first game concept created by Ralph Baer in 1951 but he never created the game until 1966 which by this time others had created primitive games such as ‘space war’.

The inventors of video games didn’t always think about patenting their ideas straight away which would have made the history a bit easier to follow. they all had the same goal to provide entertainment and see what they can do with the technology; people will always try to stretch what the computer can do and dream to do more with it. For example Star Trek’s Holodeck one day might be a possibility, to create a completely intractable virtual environment and is a dream, like being able to teleport. For me that was the most fascinating thing about star trek and had me contemplating the possibilities of a computer.

I think the first game I ever played was Golden Axe I remember never being able to get very far with it(well I got stuck on the second level)this was a common theme throughout my attempts at gaming until Red Alert and Spyro. With Red alert I only played skirmishes so Spyro was my real starting point, it was the first game I ever completed, I was so excited and proud of myself, and probably the reason i’m doing Game Art now. Spyro was so different from the games my brother played, it wasn’t so dark and scary (I still freak out at Resident evil) and was just what I wanted from a game, well that was ten years ago now and I find myself playing the games I used to be terrified of. But I do play a variety of games from the Sims two to Mass Effect. I have never really got into the army style shooter games but I do love command and conquer and red alert. I have found that games which are based on my interests such as fairytales and vampires I find much more compelling than others. Vampire: the masquerade is one of my favourites, I have heard so many people slate it but still I love it, I think its because for I short while I get to play and become a vampire. Another which I played continuously was American McGee’s Alice. Its games like these I lose myself in completely, (and all concept of time which really got on friends nerves) their games that I play for, I will go through plenty of average games and then find another amazing one, for those games that just capture your imagination, that you can’t stop playing.