What fascinates me about electronics as a medium for art is how the possibilities appear to be endless in terms of how stories can be told. Similar to most other written literature, modern video games take advantage of literary devices like metaphors and symbolism to create depth to their already compelling story lines. What’s more, video games marry elements of characterization, musical composition and script writing to build vast, expansive, and most importantly interactive worlds ripe for exploration.
This hasn’t always been the case, however. In the 1940s, the limited capabilities of such behemoth and underdeveloped computer systems meant that developing video games was a near-impossible and inaccessible feat. Luckily, a group of MIT students set out to design a simple yet interactive digital game that challenged the limitations of the PDP-1 computer and created what is known as the first digital video game, Spacewar!
Spacewar! had massive and rippling effects on the video game industry. The game’s use of simplistic yet abstract geometrical shapes inspired Utah resident and then-college student Nolan Bushnell to found video game company Atari and create its instantly recognizable and classic video game titled Pong. The overnight success of Pong set off a chain reaction as digital gaming companies began flocking to develop the next big hit. However, with a now-oversaturated market full of competitors trying to bring innovative entertainment systems to the masses’ homes, supply massively outweighed demand. It was not until Japanese company Nintendo came onto the scene with their Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) did video games become a staple in American at-home entertainment.
For more on Spacewar! and its impact on video games, read the article below.
https://www.analogue.co/developer/spacewar
Though these video games do not tell much of a great story beyond telling the player bragging about their high score to their friends, innovations in gaming such as these undoubtedly paved the way for arguably some of the industry’s most memorable story-based video games. Without these pioneers of gaming to open the door for those to follow, we may have lived still today in a world where these “pew pew” video games were all we had.
Video Games as Literature 