Why the first game is disputed
Whether something counts as the first video game depends on the definition. Does it need a video screen, or is any electronic display enough? Must it run on a computer, or can it use dedicated circuits? Must it be playable by the public, or is a lab demonstration enough? Because the answers vary, several early projects have been called the first. This article describes them in rough order and gives their dates as approximate where records are disputed.
Early experiments on computers
In the early 1950s, some computing researchers built programs to play simple games against humans. Examples include a machine built to play the game of Nim, shown at an exhibition in Britain around 1951, and a version of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) written for a university computer around 1952. These are often called early computer games rather than video games, since they used lights or simple displays and had no action-based graphics. They were also demonstrations of what computers could do, not entertainment products.
Checkers and chess programs from the 1950s were studied for another reason: researchers thought that games offered a clear test of machine problem solving. That line of work connects to the history of AI, where games have long served as benchmarks.
Tennis for Two
In 1958, physicist William Higinbotham at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York made a simple tennis game for visitors to a public open house. It ran on an analog computer and displayed the side view of a ball and net on an oscilloscope screen, with hand controllers to hit the ball. It was not a commercial product, and the equipment was later reused, but it is frequently cited in discussions of the earliest video games.
Spacewar!
In 1962, students and staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote Spacewar!, in which two players controlled spaceships that fired at each other while a star’s gravity pulled on them. It ran on the PDP-1, a relatively small and costly computer that could display graphics. The program was shared with other PDP-1 owners and inspired imitators, making it one of the first games to spread beyond its creators. It shows how early games relied on academic access to expensive machines, because very few people could use a computer at all.
From labs to arcades
In the early 1970s, the falling cost of electronics let entrepreneurs consider coin-operated games. Computer Space, released in 1971, was an arcade game inspired by Spacewar!, and it had limited success. In 1972, the company Atari released Pong, a simple table-tennis game. Pong was far easier to understand, and it became a commercial success, helping to start the arcade industry. Many imitators followed, and arcade games added features like color displays, scoring and more complex play over the next decade.
The late 1970s and early 1980s are often called a golden age of arcades. Space Invaders in 1978 was a major hit in Japan and elsewhere, and later arcade titles introduced characters, mazes and scrolling worlds. Designers worked within strict limits: little memory, small processors and screens that could show only a few colors. Those constraints pushed them toward bold, simple designs that are still admired. The progress followed improvements in semiconductor chips that made game hardware affordable.
Bringing games home
Ralph Baer, an engineer, had proposed using television sets for games in the 1960s, and his work led to the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972, widely considered the first home video game console. It used circuits rather than a microprocessor and came with overlays that you placed on the TV screen. Home versions of Pong appeared a few years later.
In the late 1970s, consoles began to use cartridges so that players could swap games, and the Atari 2600, introduced in 1977, became popular. Home computers added another path, and hobbyists wrote and shared simple games, often typing in programs from magazines. In 1983, the North American market suffered a sharp downturn, often attributed to oversupply and uneven quality, though the exact causes are still discussed. The Japanese company Nintendo released its Family Computer in 1983, followed by the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in 1985, helping the industry recover.
Games and technology
Early games pushed engineers in useful directions. Real-time graphics, fast input and sound design all demanded efficient programming. Over time, the demand for better graphics drove processors made specifically for drawing images, which now also help train systems based on neural networks. Handheld devices and later mobile phones brought games to new audiences.
What to remember
Early video games began as lab demonstrations and curiosities, then became a business when electronics became cheap and designers found games that anyone could grasp in seconds. There is no need to settle on a single first, because each project built on the last, and many contributions were made independently. Looking back also shows how a pastime became part of the wider story of computing and society.