Computer Space is from 1971, and can hardly be considered the first computer or computer arcade game.... The first one is probably the aptly named Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device (1947), or the first computerised chess game (from same year). But you also have games like Bertie the Brain (1950), NIM (1951), Strachey's Draughts Program (1951), OXO (1952). And indeed Tennis for Two (1958), which arguably Pong is a clone of.

Those games were mostly confined to university computers, not something that was deliberately made to be a profitable business. Computer space was intended to take the space simulation from campus to the real world an make money, where it bombed, despite, or rather because of, how successful it was on campuses.

but even then, you had people like Ralph Baer trying to break into home markets before Bushnell. Don't get me wrong, Bushnell is a very important figure, yet he was "standing on the shoulders of giants". You want to tell the complexities of gaming history, but you started out from the very much simplified version.

I don't think he wants to "tell the complexities of gaming history". His point was that mass market, particularly including female demographic is addressed by different products than hardcore market. You see this in several media in fact... further he implied that any market failures in supplying demand are cyclical and usually self correct.

That said, please do carry on with the gaming history, it's quite interesting to me at least, particularly since anything from before the late seventies I'm very unaware of.

Actually, since we are on a slight history detour, it's interesting to consider why sci-fi, fantasy and war dominate(d?) gaming as themes.
First observation I think of is that sci-first and fantasy mostly reflect broader cultural themes (escapist zeitgeist imo).
Secondly I would add that war is probably among the oldest playing/gaming themes (chess anyone?) with the other theme being around dolls toys/social roleplaying - it would probably be interesting to look at these from a competitive vs cooperative mechanics pov and consider gender preferences carefully (these are not black white topics) for potential insights to nature vs nurture importance in humans.
Thirdly on gaming itself, the super traditional genres from the late seventies, early eighties were war games, arcades and rpgs. RPGs in computer form owe a lot to DnD and both owe a lot to wargaming. This is indicative of the strategy/action dichotomy that is still very strong in videogames, though the decline of traditional rpgs and hybridization (rts, tower defense...) is slowly enriching the middleground.

These to me cover most of the why on how things started on the track they did, and at one level the presence of conflict mechanics is inherent in a lot of playing, while at another it's kind of an historic accident - it could have happened that we'd have gotten to visual novels/ sims / sandboxes much, much earlier... in many ways we did, only most people have no clue about those gaming niches.

PS forgot about sport and simulation, but I guess that doesn't affect my points. I guess it's interesting to consider how the strategy/ action hardly applies to boardgames. They consider control/luck more, and how this means gaming as a sport has not progressed boardgames anywhere near as big or as fast as what's happened in videogames. I think this is related to the action element...

maybe so, but saying "Gaming history did not start with the PlayStation era" - and going into crediting Bushnell for starting it....

Oh, are we talking about gaming history now? Cuz I got 50 pages and several hundred sources on it.

Computer Space was the first commercial video game. It's failure was over-exaggerated, just as Pong (the one specifically from Atari) has an over-exaggerated success attached to it. A lot of the success came in the wake of all companies, including Atari, making their own Pong clones. But yes, detour.

Mainly it was because computer scientist = NASA nerd in those days, but also because space was easy to draw. Seriously. Whilst Spacewar! had a very accurate star system and everything, most games of that ilk just used indiscriminate dots (or black void). Space Race from Atari had Asteroid fields full of lines. Sci-fi was as present as a number of themes in the VERY early days (early 70s). Fantasy started cropping up a lot more as the two communities converged on Dungeons and Dragons, then Star Wars blew up and started making waves of its own.

Early 80s was not the "RPG era". That was late 80s, wherein Dragon Quest, Pool of Radiance, and Ultima 4 came out. The only games in town in the early 80s were Temple of Apshai, Ultima, and Wizardry, so I definitely wouldn't say it was a dominate genre. Innovative, perhaps, but not dominant.

Simulation sort of goes with the space thing. Interests in very technical happenings. Goes all the way back to the Whirlwind computer Bouncing Ball program. Something visual and tactile for people to actually see.

But yes, back to the point of this (can't help but get involved in a vidja history tirade), the market doesn't need to shift to bring anybody in. Just do what the Marvel movies have been doing: Make the overtly nerdy traits of the medium appealing to wider audiences. Everyone saw the Avengers for a load of various reasons, none of them having to do with politically guilting people into caring about the movies. They too were standing on the shoulders of successes before them (even the Tim Burton Batman movie had fair success), but they revolutionized the way for people to engage with comics and fantasy/sci-fi elements.

The market is far from perfect. Publishers still try their worst to screw us over in various ways, but altering thematic content at the behest of moral guardians isn't going to change anything. Video games have been respectable for a long damn time, and I'm not going to be told that I'm a terrible person for being an enthusiast about them. A lot more could be done to make actual hardcore games appealing to wider demographics like Nintendo and Square somehow managed with Fire Emblem Awakening and Bravely Default, but I won't defame those games' quality because I feel that "MA MESSAGE" is more important than quality games.

Nolan Bushnell saw Ralph Baer's table tennis game at a public demo event of the Odyssey in May 1972 and soon after instructed Allan Alcorn to create a game based on the same premise. It kinda makes one doubt the version of Pong's history that you presented. But I admit, it sounds a lot nicer than "I played that game, had fun and thought that we should plagiarize and improve it and it just happened to also become popular among random other people".

Pac-Man also isn't the best example btw.. Yes, Toru Iwatani tried to target girls, a group of people not yet very interested in video games up to that point. However, trying to get a specific audience he "accidentally" created a brilliant game that resonated with "everyone" but still predominantly men. :P

Ironically The Sims was not expected by EA itself (nor the game's developers) to become a huge hit nor was the game a result of a manager or game designer targeting a new audience. It was a game with a long and troubled development cycle based on some vague vision in Will Wright's head that couldn't take shape for many years. It was an experiment that EA was reluctant to fund and nobody at the company believed in a big success until its release and it unexpectedly became a bestseller. The estimate was that the game would only sell several hundred thousand copies and be forgotten. So no, The Sims also isn't quite an example of what you're talking about. Nobody was expecting that its ultimate core audience even existed.

So what? My point was that Nintendo, unlike its competitors, did target a new audience that wasn't interested in video games at the time. That point still stands. And it's not my claim that Nintendo "discovered the casual gamer", that's how many analysts, game producers etc. see Nintendo's role in the big picture. Sure, making stuff accessible and attractive to people not yet interested in one's products or games in general is as old as the industry but it's still Nintendo that really put the casual gamer as we know him today on everyone's radar, an actual valid target audience everyone is aware of at all times.

Thanks, just to clarify, I said gaming instead of video gaming, and that matters as both war games and rpgs, especially in the early period, were very connected to table and board media. Hence DnD of course, which I believe is rather late seventies rather than early eighties, which really got that ball going, as you yourself said. Maybe I should add that although it is possible to find the connections between arcades and today's gaming, particularly when one looks at the so called casual market, I find the wargames/rpgs and to a lesser extent sims were the real engines that drove videogames forward. Platformers, fighting, even arcade shooters had a noticeable slump, which I think only rebounded recently. Anyway, I'm not quantifying anything, so probably overextending my point due to my personal awareness bias...

What got you into gaming history? For me (and I'm just starting - Playing at the World is in my kindle) youth playing videogames led to looking at videogames from a design perspective, which led to boardgames and games in broader culture, which eventually led to curiosity on why videogames today are as they are - contrasting vgames with table games with sports and even with play acting I find constantly interesting. And illuminating for these cultural controversies.

There's a lot of factors that goes into "forwarding" anything. As much as we wouldn't have video games as they are today without a commercial audience, there's not ways video games would have "died" without one. It's in our nature to play, and to use the tools at hand. Good observation though. Gygax said himself that many women got into gaming because they were in the science fiction community, which in turn found D&D more engaging than RPGs. That's how I draw a comparison to the Marvel movies of today. It's not about "Hot actors", it's about overall presentation.

The Beatles. Sort of. Long story, but I've been engaged in various communities for the past 5 years or so, and eventually decided that there wasn't a good database for finding out about the history of mechanics and development. I'm doing a project right now (hence the database) which will hopefully be a multi-hour series on Youtube compiling the most important games, and game events, in our short history, hopefully getting a good look at neglected countries (Brazil, South Korea, Germany, others).

Writing the script as I research and I've got 52 pages so far. If anyone's interested in checking out the database (AKA, Google Spreadsheet) then I'll provide a link.

Ill PM you already, so as to not forget, and to not derail too much here.

Yes, that's what I was getting at. It's not that there is some game culture out there that's against girls and women, it's that every developer is sheepishly following the trend because it works. Someone will eventually see the opportunity outside the box and seize it.

So what, we are all standing on shoulders of giants, but it takes a particular person to actually make use of that.

Not very interesting. SOME publishers prioritize making money over everything else. This makes them risk averse. This is why we get Call of Duty 17 and Assassins Creed 21. In other words some publishers are happy making the same games over and over again as long as they get their quarterly bonus.

As for the developer featured in the article, they found a publisher, they are still making their new game and Remember Me was also made.

In a pure commercial way, they're right because most AAA games featuring female-only main character (so that don't include games where you can chosse your gender like Skyrim or Saints Row) haven't been big success: Remember Me, Beyond Good&Evil, Mirror's Edge, etc.

There is of course some exceptions like Tomb Raider but it's an established old IP or Bayonetta (but it's more a male fantasy rather than a well-written heroine). I'm always waiting for a GTA with an heroine (on the online version you can play women but that's the main game which counts).