History of Video Gaming

Overview

The history of video gaming has been characterized by innovation, employing a wide range of evolving technologies. Video gaming has been notable for intense competition by industry giants, particularly those in the United States and Japan, the two countries that have dominated the industry for most of its history. Although the industry began by appealing to a wide audience, it became focused on male adolescents, leading to the objectification of women and the persistent stereotype of gamers as young, socially isolated males wasting their time and planning violent acts. In the United States and Europe, game developers continue to be predominately male, White, and heterosexual.

Video gaming as an American industry began in 1958 when physicist William Higinbotham invented the first computerized tennis game for play on an oscilloscope. By the 1970s, video gaming had become an established industry that continued to grow as a medium of both entertainment and education. Pong, a coin-operated table tennis game, was released in 1972 by Atari. In the early days of the industry, gaming was considered a family activity, and developers made an effort to provide games with wide appeal, such as Donkey Kongand the perennially popular Pac-Manand his bow-decorated counterpart Ms. Pac-Man. It was only as technologies advanced and as males began to take over at arcades that video gaming began to be seen as male prerogative, leading to the development of what Kocurek (2015) identifies as “techno masculinity.” The popular stereotype of the typical gamer became that of an unattractive, socially awkward young male with poor hygiene. As home computers became more common in the 1980s and 1990s, the importance of public arcades declined. With that shift, the video gaming industry became more focused.

It was not until the final years of the twentieth century that adults assumed an active role in video gaming. By 2018, the video gaming industry was generating $100 billion a year. Four out of every five households in the United States owned at least one device on which video games are played. Studies revealed that 63 percent of parents viewed video games as having a positive influence; however, three-fourths limited playing time for their children.

What became the video gaming industry evolved from the popularity of novelty games, jukeboxes, and pinball machines. In 1951, both Nintendo and Sega were established in Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi and American Marty Bromley, respectively. The first coin-operated electromechanical games were introduced in 1957 by David Rosen, and a year later Higinbotham developed his table tennis game. Steve Russell, a student at MIT developed Space War, the first interactive computer game that allowed two players to target space ships. In 1966, Japan exported Periscope. The 1970s and early 1980s have been identified as the Golden Age of video gaming. It was a time when the industry rapidly expanded, and newer and more advanced techniques were constantly being introduced. In American arcades, games such as Donkey Kong, Frogger, Tron, and Centipedetook in an average of $400 a week at 13,000 arcades.

The American video gaming industry began in earnest when Magnavox introduced the first video game that could be played on a television in 1970. Odysseywas based on early games created by Ralph Baer, who had imagined the games selling for around $20. Instead, Magnavox sold them for $100 each. Early consoles sold for $250 to $500, and games averaged from $20 to $80 each. The industry further expanded with the establishment in 1972 of Atari by engineer Nolan Bushnell, who is considered the “father of video gaming.” With Ted Dabney, Bushnell created the coin-operated Computer Space. Atari hired engineer Allan Acorn who developed Pong. Stanford became the first university to make video games available in its student union in 1971. In 1979, the Atari 2600 Video Computer System was released. Nintendo had released its arcade game Othellothe previous year. In 1981, Atari began producing home versions of the popular arcade game Space Invaders. That same year, Pac-Mansold 300,000 units.

In 1981, American video game enthusiasts spent $5 billion at video arcades. The following year, Ms. Pac-Manbecame the most popular arcade game in history. Sega introduced its first home console system, the SGT000 in Japan. Two years later, Nintendo’s NES, Sega’s Master System, and Atari’s 7800 console were introduced to American homes. Nintendo launched the first entry in its Legend of Zeldafranchise, and Square Soft (Square Enix) debuted its first Final Fantasy game. In 1989, the Sega Genesis, the first 16-bit console, debuted. The system was generally considered to go way beyond where other systems had traveled. Some people thought that Sega went too far in introducing games that promoted violence, such as Grand Theft Auto and Mortal Kombat.

Nintendo released Super Mario Brothers 3, which became the most successful nonbundled game cartridge in history, in 1990. The following year, Sega introduced its popular series Sonic the Hedgehog. Video gaming became more integrated into popular culture, with film and television shows based on games, and video games based on film and television shows. Nintendo was ultimately considered the winner of the console wars, but it was a tight race.

Applications

The debut of the first Nintendo system in 1985 and the popularity of its Super Mario Brothers provided the industry with new life that became increasingly geared toward young male players. Even the name of Nintendo’s handheld Game Boy (1989) system suggested the industry’s target audience. Popular games of the period that focused on fighting, competitiveness, and violence, like Street Fighterand Legend of Zelda, appealed to males, and most females lost interest. Games became increasingly graphic.

As Atari faded and Sega and Nintendo continued to fight for dominance, Sony developed its first PlayStation in 1994, setting the stage for the new video gaming competition that would dominate the early years of the twenty-first century. The debut of the PlayStation 2 in 2000 signaled Sony’s rise toward the top, continuing with the release of the PlayStation 3 in 2006 and PlayStation 4 in 2013. Microsoft introduced its first Xbox in 2001, further improving its system with the Xbox 360 (released in 2005) and the Xbox One (released in 2013). Nintendo, which had released its first game in the perennially popular Pokêmon series in 1998, refused to retire from competition, settling into third place. Part of Nintendo’s popularity was due to its appeal to a family audience with games made for its handheld DS system. Nintendo continued to be a leader in innovative technology, introducing the Wii in 2006 and the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

In 2023, 65 percent of Americans acknowledged that they play video games, according to an Entertainment Software Association (ESA) survey. By that time, video games were being played on video consoles, portable game systems, computers, smartphones, and televisions. Popular games included puzzle games like Tetris Effect, role-playing games (RPGs) like the Final Fantasy and Persona series, first-person shooter games like the Call of Duty series, casual games like Candy Crush, and a range of others. Players were able to play by themselves or play online with a few friends or a large group of strangers.

Despite an earlier rejection of the industry, many educators have begun to acknowledge that video gaming teaches students to engage in problem solving and spatial reasoning. Others suggest that video games may make students more tolerant and empathetic. A movement has emerged to have esports (video gaming competitions) classified as an official high school sport, and many school districts, including Georgia, Rhode Island, Illinois, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and New Mexico, have already done so. However, some scholars and educators continue to insist that video gaming encourages violence and social isolation and may negatively impact mental health. Other scholars have identified links between video gaming and racist, misogynistic, and homophobic tendencies.

Discourse

In a 2016 study, Teresa Lynch, Jessica E. Tompkins, Irene van Driel and Niki Fritz analyzed 571 playable female characters that were featured in video games released between 1983 and 2014. According to their findings, up until the 1990s, almost all playable female characters were defined by such sexual characteristics as prominent breasts and buttocks. Little difference was found in this depiction whether the games were rated Teen, Mature, or Everyone. Some research has indicated that the hypersexualization of playable female characters in video gaming is due in part to the shortage of women in game development and in senior corporate positions. It also reflected the fact that, despite changing game demographics, the industry still viewed gamers as young males who buy video games partly because of their stereotypical depictions of females.

The video gaming industry developed in conjunction with computer technologies of the 1950s and 1960s, when the only females in the industry worked in clerical-type positions. In the 1980s, females made up only 3 percent of industry employees but 30 percent of the American workforce. One of the most popular video games of the 1990s featuring a female protagonist was Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, which was later made into a feature film. The fact that Lara Croft’s most prominent feature was her breast size had begun as an office joke at Core Design in Britain. That feature was believed to be much more of a selling point for young male gamers than her intelligence or her skill as an archaeologist. Throughout the decade, 30 percent of female characters were depicted either as damsels in distress or as sex objects. Lynch and her colleagues (2016) noted that in the 2010s the Penny Arcade Expo highlighted a video game webcomic featuring violent and sexualized content; the existence of a popular Twitter hashtag, #1reasonwhy, elicited accounts of sexism in the industry; and it was widely acknowledged within the industry that female voices are considered less valuable than those of males. Female gamers continued to be harassed by some males when participating in multiple-player online games. In later years, as technologies have developed with characters becoming more life-like, the tendency toward such objectification of females has declined.

Attitudes toward female gamers and developers have been shaped in part by the shortage of females in science, technology, engineering, and math majors and professions; the notion has persisted that women are less capable than males in video game development and other technical fields. In 2021, the number of women in the profession had risen to about 30 percent. The video gaming website Women In Games further reported in a 2024 report that women represented only 23 percent of game developers, while 5 percent were non-binary. About 21 percent of developers were from the LGBTQ+ community. By 2016, females made up only 42 percent of primary game characters. Demographically, females accounted for 46 percent of all video game players in 2023, according to ESA. Studies have shown that females and males make different choices about what they play. Females generally do not choose to play as sexualized or marginalized female characters. They prefer playing as females when given a choice, and they prefer RPGs over first-person shooters. These choices reflect what social scientists identify as social identity theory. Studies have consistently indicated that women spend significantly less time than males playing video games. As might be expected, in male-oriented fighting games, females are more likely to be sexualized than in any other genre.

Links between video gaming and violent behavior have been well established over a lengthy period, and some school shooters have been known to be ardent gamers and fans of particularly violent games. However, studies have revealed that 97 percent of all Americans between the ages of twelve and seventeen play video games, and the vast majority of these adolescents do not commit violent acts against others. In 2014, Tilo Hartmann, K. Maja Krakowiak, and Mina Tsay-Vogel (2014) examined the ways that most game players are able to engage in violent acts in game play without violating the controls they exercise in real life. By examining seventeen popular first-person shooter titles, they found that the majority of developers justified violent actions by dehumanizing opponents. Players have been shown to experience less guilt when they feel justified in taking violent action, such as when opponents are monsters rather than human, when violent actions are characterized by such terms as collateral damage, when actions are portrayed as more just than opponents’ actions, when the player is taking orders as with a soldier, when responsibility for actions is shared among a group, when consequences are ignored, and when victims are assigned responsibility for attacks.

Platforms such as Twitch, which allowed users to stream live video game gameplay to large audiences, became incredibly popular in the twenty-first century, with Twitch averaging millions of viewers per day. Microtransactions, supplemental purchases within video games that include new characters, outfits, camouflages, and other cosmetic items, had also become incredibly popular by this time, as had the "games as a service" monetization model, which was characterized by the continued addition of paid content to existing video games to promote and retain user engagement and spending. Games such as Fortnite, a free-to-play game that was released in 2017, leveraged these models to wild success, and in 2022, made an estimated $4.4 billion in annual revenues.

Terms & Concepts

Benevolent Sexism: A form of sexism that is based on the patriarchal notion that women are the weaker sex and need to be protected, rescued, or placed on a pedestal.

First-Person Shooter Games: First-person shooter games are those in which actions takes place from the perspective of the player, allowing players to see only what a person would actually see when viewing a scene. Examples are the Call of Duty, Battlefield, Far Cry, and Halo series.

Hostile Sexism: A type of sexism that builds on stereotypes of females, often objectifying and hypersexualizing them, and perpetuating the notion that males are superior beings.

Oscilloscope: An instrument that allowed fluctuating electrical quantity to appear as a wave on a display screen for a temporary period of time. It was used to play William Higinbotham’s 1958 tennis game.

Role-Playing Games: Games in which a player takes on the role of a game’s protagonist. An early example of an RPG was Dungeons and Dragons, in which developers Gary Gygax and Dave Ameson provided players with the opportunity to engage in battles by taking on the roles of individual heroes. Japanese RPGs include the Persona series, in which the gamer plays as a high school student involved in various crises during an entire high school year. Massively multiple online RPGs, like World of Warcraft, allow large numbers of individuals play with and against other online players.

Social Identity Theory: The term refers to the tendency of individuals to identify with like-minded individuals who possess similar characteristics in order to satisfy their need to see themselves as insiders rather than outsiders. In video gaming, it is used to explain gamers’ choosing characters that are like themselves or like others whom they admire.

Bibliography

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