Blog Post #4 Assignment

Do a KEY POST based on your research for this EOTO project. This will be graded as a separate assignment. Make this post 500 words minimum. Be sure to think about hallmarks of a good blog post — at least one visual element and at least one link. But since this is a special assignment, I think you should do more. Make it special! 

History: Who invented your technology? What were the circumstances? What problem were they trying to solve with their invention? 

Impact: How did the invention change our world? What problems did it solve? How did it change communication? Did it have any negative effects?

Ever since I was the age of seven, I knew I had a love for video games. I had played video games before, via my family, Playstation 3, but at the age of seven I received my first handheld device, a Kindle Fire HD (2012), and proceeded to download games on it (with the one that won me over being Angry Birds Go). Over the course of the next few years, I eventually got a PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and an MSI gaming laptop, and through those I was able to experience countless kinds of games, and gained a further appreciation for them, to the point that I knew my college major had to deal with video games- whether it was programming them, or creating its world, or composing music for them. I still do not entirely know what I want to do, since so many aspects of games interest me, so for now I am exploring all aspects of game development.

However, there is one part of video games that I have not put much time or research into: Knowing the past of video games, how they started, how they became popular, and what challenges they had to overcome. Of course, I knew a bit in advance, like many of the names of the Nintendo consoles and handheld devices, as well as some of their older titles (though I’ll admit that the Nintendo Switch Online service helped me a bit). Though I feel like that is not enough. I needed to learn a bit more about the past of this rapidly growing industry and form of entertainment.

Most people believe that Pong (1972) was the first video game released, but it is believed to actually be Tennis for Two (1958) However, Pong’s popularity is what let the video game industry first begin. Initially, video games were only really playable via arcade machines, but eventually made its way to console and home computers. Things were looking good for the industry until the video game crash of 1983, when many low quality games, most notably E.T the Extraterrestrial, released from 1983 to 1985. What put the industry back on track was Nintendo releasing the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the US.

Nintendo goes off to create several successful franchises, the two most known being the Mario franchise and the Legend of Zelda franchise. Later, Sega joins the fray and competes with Nintendo for decades. Meanwhile, Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox have also been competing against each other since the 2000s. While the consoles have been fighting for dominance, Steam opens up on PC in 2003, and grew to a level of popularity that they caused a “war” consisting of the entirety of PC gaming against the entirety of console gaming. While Nintendo did end up beating Sega, the other arguments are only just quieting down- gamers are able to agree that each have their benefits and downsides, and that there is no need to argue about this- since we’re here to play video games, no matter how we do it.

Nowadays, the only major thing I can find that could become part of video game history is indie games becoming more popular than AAA games- games made by smaller development teams becoming more popular than games made by large companies like Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard. Over the past few years, indie games have increased their revenue, while for AAA games the revenue has decreased. In fact, they now account for 40% of all units sold on Steam. In this modern age of video games, history is being created and written by a new group of people- a group of people who started not with a large company, but the will, grit, and determination to make a difference in the video game industry, and how we see games as a whole.