A history of computer games, part one: 1950s - 1970s

Who decided to use computers to have fun? What was their background? Initially, the computer system that was used to play the later games and linked to military use was a simulation firing at airplane targets using buttons, knobs and cathode ray tubes. The first real sign of a computer being used for fun was visible in 1952 When A.S Douglas, a Phd student in Cambridge, created the first graphical computer game, a version of Tic-Tac-Toe. Douglas's Phd was wrote on Human-Computer interaction. The student background of gaming  was also shared by the next innovator of computer technology, when William Higginbotham of MIT made the first ever video game called 'tennis for two' in 1958. In the space of 6 years you can already see that computer gaming was beginning to grow inside the higher education sector, using technology that wasn't widely available to the public because the majority of early computer games ran on universities mainframe computers in the United States and were developed by individuals as a hobby. Again MIT continued their exploration with computers but this time designing a game that was meant to be played on a computer in 1961. This was by a man named Steve Russell and the game was called 'Spacewar'. The game put two human players head to head, each controlling a spacecraft .  The simple fact that the game was designed to be competitive by facing players against each other and distributed over the internet, shows me that spacewar was purposely built for entertainment , therefore in my opinion, MIT were the first influential group to use gaming for fun. Even before spacewars, MIT were showing rapid progression within computer gaming with mouse in a maze; where you could control a mouse around a maze to find cheese whilst avoiding obstacles, Hax; which used two switches to control graphics and make sounds and a simple game of tic tac toe using a light pen. The next step for the computers entertainment usage was to be transferred for display on a television set. This was accomplished by Ralph Baer and Bill Harrison. Baer and Harrison were also joined by an MIT graduate. Again education shows its influence when it comes to shaping the early years of computer games.   Development continued till a prototype could run several games like hockey, ping pong and handball in 1968. The early 1970s showed the first signs of video games being used to make a profit, with the first coin operated arcade machine installed at the Stafford student union in 1971. Also in 1971 a coin operated version of spacewar was made, this was a landmark in gaming because it was seen as the first mass produced video game that was up for sale commercially.  Now you can see that the production and use of video games has slowly moved away from the educational sector and starting to become more mainstream due to its availability to the general public through arcades.  From arcades, video games were then made available in the home in 1972. This console was called Odyssey which was released by Magnavox and designed by Ralph Baer. It was released in the USA and driven by big marketing tactics like adverts, starring Frank Sinatra, to boost sales. You can now see a definitive shift in drive to produce games and consoles, they were no longer being produced for a hobby, but to make a profit in the entertainment industry towards the end of the 1970s.