Video Games: The Birth of an Industry

Fifty years ago in 1966, Ralph Baer, who worked for a defence contractor and liked to tinker and invent things, was waiting for a colleague at a bus terminal. He had a littletime and so picked up a pad and pencil and sketched an idea for a special box so people couldplay games on a TV. A few years later, the video game industrywas born.

"Nobody realized, even at that time, that we were on this geometric curve ... that would go straight up to heaven."-

By 1976,popularvideo games wereon-screen versions of tennis, handballand hockey- complete with both a forward and defence! The split-screen technology was considered high-tech, afar cry from the Dooms, XCOMs and Final Fantasy games of today.Centipede andPong and PacMan were also enormously popular, although critics worriedthat thelatterwas tooaggressive andviolent. Nevertheless,itremains one of the highest grossing video games of all time.

The birth of video games was closely entwined with the birth of the personal computer. In 1977 on the CBC program Money Makers, industry leaders saw their goal as enablingeveryonein the world with a computer. Computer components wereminiaturized so they no longer filled an entire room. The cost had come way down too.The revolution had begun and before long people werepaying bills, makingreservations andtakingeducational courses on them.

By 1981, video games were so popular they had their own awards. At thefirst World Video Games Championshipsin Chicago, the cash prize was $50,000. By201522-year-oldKurtis Ling of Vancouver won $6.6 million after winning a video game championship. He's a professional gamer. At a time whennew video games are released every week with countless websites reviewing and rating them, nostalgia for the classic retro videogamesis still alive and well.The Strong Museum in Rochester N.Y. is home to the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and 2000 videogames along with 100 vintage gaming consoles make up thethe University of Calgary's Video Games Archive.

Along with video games came worries: dothey lead toaddiction? Arethey bad for children? Who knows for sure, but every year,more games arecreated, not only for children but for adults. The video game industry's revenues topped$23.5 billion last year in the U.S. alone.

Finally- are you as good as you once were? Take your own shot at these links for some classics: Asteroids, Space Invaders and Tetris.As for RalphBaer, who started thingin 1966, he admitted the video games kids play now were too complicated for him to enjoy. RalphBaerdied in 2011.