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Video Games

Video games (alternatively referred to as computer games, digital games, electronic games, and video games, among other terms) are a broad range of interactive electronic entertainment technologies that allow a user to input commands and receive feedback via a visual display. Video games are played on a range of hardware devices including personal computers, dedicated video game consoles connected to television monitors, custom-designed arcade cabinets, mobile phones, and tablet devices, typically using control interfaces such as keyboards, handheld controllers, and cameras. The software for individual games is distributed and accessed by similarly varied means, including optical media, online downloads, and proprietary memory storage cartridges. Even more diverse than the hardware and software formats used by video games are their content and themes; video games provide leisure and entertainment for their users in the form of puzzles, simulations of sport and combat, fantasy narratives, educational exercises, satirical works, and more. Some video games are played by one user, whereas others can be played by two or more users in the same location or by dozens or thousands online.

Since the arrival of the first video game prototypes in the mid-20th century, video games have become a substantial element of the entertainment media environment. While video game sales figures fluctuate from year to year (and can also be difficult to calculate depending on what software, hardware, subscription and access costs, and other goods and services are considered relevant), varied estimates have placed total industry sales figures per year by 2015 at more than US$10 billion in the United States and from US$50 billion to more than US$100 billion worldwide. Similarly loose estimates have reckoned the video game audience to number more than 1 billion souls worldwide by 2015, with more than half of the people in the United States playing video games. This entry reviews the history of video games and the history of communication research on video games.

History of Video Games

Because the term video game encompasses a broad range of hardware, software, and media content, and because the medium has evolved very rapidly technologically and aesthetically, it is difficult to identify unequivocally what milestone can be described as the advent of video games. One prototype that is often credited as a likely first video game was Tennis for Two, a tennis simulation created in 1958 using oscilloscope screens and computer equipment used for missile tracking by U.S. physicist William “Willy” Higinbotham. Higinbotham, who had worked on the research team that developed the first atomic bomb and subsequently became a prominent advocate of nuclear nonproliferation as a founder and chair of the Federation of American Scientists, created the device to entertain visitors to Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he worked at the time. While Tennis for Two was never commercialized and had a relatively small audience (appearances at two annual “visitor’s day” events), it is recognized retrospectively by many as the first video game because of its use of computer technology, user input controls, and dynamic moving feedback on video displays.

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