The Video Game Bomb

One of the many things that stood out to me while reading Andrew Ervin's extremely fascinating and entertaining book Bit By Bit about the history of video games and how they have impacted society and the world around us, was the connection that video games had to WWII and particular an infamous secret military project.

The Manhattan Project was not only the name of a little known 80's movie featuring John Lithgow and Christopher Collet about a teenager who builds an atomic bomb but a real-life military project that occurred in WWII. It was the very research and tests that produced the very first working nuclear weapons. And one of the numerous scientists and physicists that lent a hand on this project was the man who would ultimately go on to create what is considered by many to be the first ever video game. Tennis for Two.

The man who eventually built such a momentous invention was Willy Higginbotham. Higginbotham essentially dropped the video game bomb on all of us without us knowing it. His expertise in electronics that was put to use in building the circuitry that would power the first nuke, was invaluable to the birth of one of the fastest growing and financially profitable forms of entertainment today in video games. Tennis for Two was a pretty rudimentary contraption let alone a video game. In essence, it was the precursor to Pong. But the connection it has to one of the most impactful creations in the world is amazing.

Willy Higginbotham was one of the many fathers of nuclear weapons and the devastation and fear that came with them. But he is also the father of one of the most joyous inventions known to man. Video Games. How often does someone help bring to life one invention that has such a lasting impact on our world, let alone two?

Thanks to my reading for this week, I have discovered this man and his accomplishments. And I am richer for it. As is every single person who has ever put in a quarter in the machine at the arcade, or picked up a controller and played till their fingers hurt.

ALL HAIL LORD HIGGINBOTHAM

Comments

The Fun Factor | What Makes Video Games Fun (Part One)

Video Games are usually synonymous with fun , much like any other form of play, video games can be a thrill to the senses and be some of the most rewarding activities out there. But what is it exactly that makes games fun? And are there particular elements in any game that determine how fun a game is and is there a way to take those elements and use them to make the experience of playing a game that is not considered fun enjoyable? Now in order to really find out the answers to those questions, it is necessary to dig deep and discover what fun is and means, what its correlation is to video games , and how all of this creates the foundation for fun to be tied to video games. The Miriam Webster dictionary describes fun as “what provides amusement or enjoyment”. And also according to Miriam Webster, fun first appeared in the English language in the 1600s in France and the term made its way to the United States when petty criminals from London were carried over to the shores of the...

The Art Of Cheating | Power Ups and Cheats In Mobile Gaming

I have recently started to play more mobile games. And what I have noticed as of late is that so many of these games provide multiple cheats for reaching certain point goals, or winning mini games within the game. These cheats are provided deliberately by the game developers and the coders to make the player continue playing as long as possible. Even basic trivia or riddle games have the same formula. Oh and if it is a game that requires lives, even if you run out, you can watch a video or another ad and get more lives or just wait till the next day and your lives are replenished. This takes a lot out of the challenge of gaming in my eyes and makes things a lot easier for the player and easier for the developers and the companies that made the game to make more money, but it cheapens the overall gaming experience. It essentially gives the player a free pass for their mistakes. But I cannot argue against the fact that it can be effective. Thanks to these cheats I was able to continue pl...

Halo Memories

Halo was a watershed game for me when I was a teenager. It was the first time that I was playing a game that was actually a legitimate part of cultural lexicon. Before I had only been playing games that were no longer popular or not as popular as they once were. But when my step dad bought an x-box and introduced me to Halo, that finally changed. I played it religiously with my step dad after school on the Campaign mode and sometimes by myself and I was blown away by the game. I had never seen anything like it before. The graphics were stunning, the controls were varied but not too complicated, and the story was just as well written as the best sci-fi films. Halo was also a landmark for me in the sense that it was the first video game I remembered beating and finishing to completion. So many hours of my teenage years were spent playing Halo and it will always have a special place in my heart and it is one of the few games that made me feel a sense of euphoria and elation up...

Brown's Bit By Bit

Search This Blog