A video game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device. However, with the popular use of the term “video game”, it now implies any type of display device. The electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms; examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld devices. Specialized video games such as arcade games, while previously common, have gradually declined in use.
The input device used to manipulate video games is called a game controller, and varies across platforms. For example, a dedicated console controller might consist of only a button and a joystick. Another may feature a dozen buttons and one or more joysticks. Early personal computer games often needed a keyboard for gameplay, or more commonly, required the user to buy a separate joystick with at least one button. Many modern computer games allow, or even require, the player to use a keyboard and mouse simultaneously.
Video games typically also use other ways of providing interaction and information to the player. Audio is almost universal, using sound reproduction devices, such as speakers and headphones. Other feedback may come via haptic peripherals, such as vibration or force feedback, with vibration sometimes used to simulate force feedback.
Early games used interactive electronic devices with various display formats. The earliest example is from 1947—a “Cathode ray tube Amusement Device” was filed for a patent on January 25, 1947, by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann, and issued on December 14, 1948, as U.S. Patent 2455992.
Inspired by radar display tech, it consisted of an analog device that allowed a user to control a vector-drawn dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets, which were drawings fixed to the screen.
Other early examples include:
* The NIMROD computer at the 1951 Festival of Britain
* OXO a tic-tac-toe Computer game by Alexander S. Douglas for the EDSAC in 1952
* Tennis for Two, an interactive game engineered by William Higinbotham in 1958
* Spacewar!, written by MIT students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen’s on a DEC PDP-1 computer in 1961.
Each game used different means of display: NIMROD used a panel of lights to play the game of Nim,
In 1971, Computer Space, created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, was the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. It used a black-and-white television for its display, and the computer system was made of 74 series TTL chips.
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