READING AND USE – PART 6

The History Of Gaming.
A technology boom!

The first recognized example of a game machine was unveiled by Dr. Edward Uhler Condon at the New York World’s Fair in 1940. The game was played by about 50,000 people during the six months it was on display, with the computer, as an opponent, reportedly winning more than 90 percent of the games. (37) . Ralph Baer and his team released his prototype, the “Brown Box,” in 1967.

At the same time, Sega and Taito were the first companies to grab the public’s interest in gaming. (38) . In 1972, Atari (founded by Nolan Bushnell, the godfather of gaming) became the first gaming company to really set the benchmark for a large-scale gaming community.

The nature of the games sparked competition among players. (39) .At this point, multiplayer gaming was limited to players competing on the same screen. The first example of players competing on separate screens came in 1973 with “Empire” — a strategic turn-based game for up to eight players — which was created for the PLATO network system. (40) .

Since the early 2000s, Internet capabilities have exploded and computer processor technology has improved at an incredibly fast rate. (41) . According to the ESA Computer and video games industry report for 2015, at least 1.5 billion people with Internet access play video games. If the changes that have occurred over the last century are anything to go by, it appears that gaming in 2025 will be almost unrecognizable to how it is today.(42) .

A. They did so by releasing the electro-mechanical games Periscope and Crown Special Soccer in 1966 and 1967.
B. Consequently, every new batch of games graphics and consoles seems to blow the previous generation out of the water.
C. However, the first game system designed for commercial home use did not emerge until nearly three decades later.
D. According to usage logs from the system, users spent about 300,000 hours playing Empire between 1978 and 1985.
E. The move to mobile technology has defined the recent chapter of gaming.
F. It provided them with the ability to record their high scores with their initials and mark their space at the top of the list.
G. The next chapter for gaming is still unclear, but whatever happens, it is sure to be entertaining.