Computer games also known as video games are a type of computer program They are made up of lines of code which are instructions to the computer arcade machine or game console Games were once played only in black and white on large silent computers in businesses and colleges Today they blaze with color and action roar with sound and are played everywhere Fun screen on the Big business Computer gaming is now a major industry There are more than 3,000 computer-game companies just in North America New games are launched with a splash of publicity just like major movies It is big business computer game sales worldwide were 91 billion US in 2015 COMPUTER H e ro Most computer games today are the work of a large team of people In 2009 the first version of Minecraft was created and coded by just one person Markus Persson also known as Notch from Sweden Persson wrote his first simple computer game at the age of eight Markus Persson 4
Games everywhere Games can be played on personal computers laptops and tablets They can also be played on smartphones or handheld game consoles for users on the move When a game is created it is often converted to different formats so it can work on many different machines This is called porting Tetris was invented in 1984 TRUE STORY Out of this World The first video game played in space was Tetris Invented in 1984 the goal of the game is to fit falling blocks together like a puzzle In 1993 it was played by Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Serebrov on a Nintendo Game Boy a handheld game machine on the MIR space station Meet and Greet Many game players or gamers compete against one another in game competitions Gamers and game makers meet at events called conventions The world’s biggest gaming convention is Gamescom which is held in Cologne Germany each year In 2016 345,000 people attended 5
early computer Games Electronic computers were first built and used in the 1940s during World War II These early machines were used for work that was deadly serious such as doing math to predict where a shot from a cannon would fly But it wasn’t long before some programmers started having a little fun The first game In 1950 Bertie the Brain was demonstrated in Canada This computer was 13 feet 4 meters tall and could play against a human at Tic-Tac-Toe Early games included checkers and simple chess programs Usually only scientists or students got to play them because computers were rare and expensive at that time Most were used by the military government departments or universities Spacewar Spacewar was the first computer action game The code was developed by an American college student named Steve Russell and his friends It was first played in 1962 and featured two spaceships battling each other on a PDP-1 computer’s small round screen This type of game later became known as an arcade game 6 Gaming boom Computer games boomed in the late 1970s and 1980s More and more people had gained access to computers Handheld game machines were also becoming popular As computers became more powerful creators were able to make games that were more colorful and detailed
COMPUTER Hero At college Nolan Bushnell enjoyed playing Spacewar He and his friend Ted Dabney designed their own version of Spacewar called Computer Space It was the first commercially sold coin-operated video game to appear in arcades In 1977 Bushnell’s company Atari released the bestselling Atari 2600 console or game machine The console plugged into a home TV screen and introduced computer games such as Space Invaders and PAC-MAN to millions Computer Space The first video arcade game STRETCH YOURSELF Make History Can you match the game invention to the correct date You can find the answers on page 31 1972 1982 1983 1989 1994 2005 2006 2009 a Angry Birds is released and helps create a boom in game played on smartphones and tablets b The first Sony PlayStation is launched It uses compact discs to store game programs c The first 3-D game called 3-D Monster Maze is released d Pong becomes one of the first coin-operated computer games in arcades e T he first Nintendo Wii consoles go on sale f Snipes becomes the first game played by players in different places connected together by the Internet g The first Guitar Hero game is released with a guitar-shaped game controller h The Game Boy is released and becomes the world’s most popular handheld game machine 7
