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Computer Games

Computer Games
Kelly Hanlon, Tim Lopes,
Jeff Peterson, Daniel Gallant
University of Phoenix
CIS 319
Clay Fielding
December 1 2004



Introduction
Computer games in the information systems industry account for over seven billion dollars in sales in 2003 and are a pivotal component in driving both the software and hardware portions of the industry. (Entertainment Software Association, 2003). Computer games are quickly taking a chuck of total dollars in the entertainment industry and some say will emerge with Hollywood to create a more interactive entertaining experience for the consumer. In this paper we will be discussion some brief history of games, how they are currently being developed in regards to software, where games are heading in the future, and how they currently are being used today in other aspects of life.
A History of Games
The beginning
According to many sources, the idea of the video game came about between 1949 and 1951, from a man named Ralph Baer. Baer was television engineer at Loral. His chief engineer asked him to "build the best television set in the world." A simple task for Baer, he decided to make it a challenge and add the ability to play games to the television set. Unfortunately, his chief engineer did not like this idea, and the project was scrapped. The earliest known completed video game was created by A. S. Douglas, a PhD student at Cambridge, in 1952. It was a Tic-Tac-Toe game titled "Naughts and Crosses" written for the EDSAC computer. Six years later, William Higinbotham and Robert Dvorak from Brookhaven National Laboratories created "Tennis For Two." Unlike Pong, this game was viewed from the side. The ball physics were very good for its time, accurately simulating the effects of gravity. In 1962, MIT student Steve Russel created Spacewar! for PDP-1 mainframes, and was the first game distributed over ARPAnet. Baer resumed his project in 1966, and created a game system that had several games in it,...