Daniel Stoll
70-643 blog entry
Gaming
There
are many have been many different games invented in the past few centuries.
Many of these games involved playing a sport or board game and needed multiple
people within a small area. The new wave of gaming that has emerged as a result
of technology is video games. The history of video games goes as far back as
the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United
States patent request for an invention they described as a “cathode ray tube
amusement device”. This consisted of a machine in which a person uses knobs and
buttons to manipulate a cathode ray tube beam to simulate firing at “air-borne”
targets. However, video games did not really become popular until the 1970s and
80s, when arcade games, gaming consoles, and home computer games were released
to the general public. The first coin-operated video game, Galaxy Game, was installed at a student union at Stanford
University in 1971. Online gaming and computer games then came out in the late
1970s and early 1980s. This created a whole new wave of gaming that would
evolve even more in the future.
Currently, gaming is at an all time
high as video games become more and more realistic and complex. On top of that,
online gaming is all the rage. No matter how complex the computer AI programs
become, playing games is always more enjoyable when competing against another
human being. This is where online gaming has replaced the opponent needing to
physically be there. Due to the advancements in technology, it is possible to
play with and against other people all over the world. This has led to most of
the more popular games being centered on the online capabilities that they
possess. While people still enjoy the role-playing games where they play with
themselves against a computer AI, the majority of games will also have online
capability in order to compete with other human beings. Many of these games are
console games, but some online PC games (such as World of Warcraft and League
of Legends) have also become immensely popular. The current top gaming
companies, making both console and PC games, include Nintendo, Activision
Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Sony, and Microsoft.
One of the more recent developments
in gaming has been the introduction of games onto the World Wide Web. While
these games are often not as in depth as console and PC games, they still play
a big role in the field of gaming. A big spike in Web gaming has come as a
result of social media websites. By integrating these games with the social
media sites, the games can almost instantly become popular due to the social
nature of the games. People love being able to compare their scores with scores
of their friends because of how relevant it is to them and the competitive
nature of most people. On top of that, these games can be offered for free to
the public, while making money purely off advertisements. The video gaming spectrum
on the World Wide Web continues to expand.
The video game industry has a bright future. In the future
these games will move from 3D screen based games, to household virtual reality
games. This leaves a lot of room for innovation and technological advances in
the field of gaming. However, how long it will continue to advance is
impossible to speculate.
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