Computer Space Launched the Video Game Industry 50 Years Ago (theconversation.com) 44
In an article for The Conversation, Noah Wardrip-Fruin writes about how Computer Space marked the start of the $175 billion video game industry we have today when it debuted on Oct. 15, 1971 -- and why you probably haven't heard of it. From the report: Computer Space, made by the small company Nutting Associates, seemed to have everything going for it. Its scenario -- flying a rocket ship through space locked in a dogfight with two flying saucers -- seemed perfect for the times. The Apollo Moon missions were in full swing. The game was a good match for people who enjoyed science-fiction movies like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Planet of the Apes" and television shows like "Star Trek" and "Lost in Space," or those who had thrilled to the aerial combat of the movies "The Battle of Britain" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!" There was even prominent placement of a Computer Space cabinet in Charlton Heston's film "The Omega Man." But when Computer Space was unveiled, it didn't generate a flood of orders, and no flood ever arrived. It wasn't until Computer Space's makers left the company, founded Atari and released Pong the next year that the commercial potential of video games became apparent. The company sold 8,000 Pong units by 1974.
Nolan Bushnell, who led the development of both Computer Space and Pong, has recounted Computer Space's inauspicious start many times. He claimed that Computer Space failed to take off because it overestimated the public. Bushnell is widely quoted as saying the game was too complicated for typical bar-goers, and that no one would want to read instructions to play a video game. [...] At about the same time Computer Space debuted, Stanford University students were waiting in line for hours in the student union to play another version of Spacewar!, The Galaxy Game, which was a hit as a one-off coin-operated installation just down the street from where Bushnell and his collaborators worked. [...] Key evidence that complexity was not the issue comes in the form of Space Wars, another take on Spacewar! that was a successful arcade video game released in 1977.
Why were The Galaxy Game and Space Wars successful at finding an enthusiastic audience while Computer Space was not? The answer is that Computer Space lacked a critical ingredient that the other two possessed: gravity. The star in Spacewar! produced a gravity well that gave shape to the field of play by pulling the ships toward the star with intensity that varied by distance. This made it possible for players to use strategy -- for example, allowing players to whip their ships around the star. Why didn't Computer Space have gravity? Because the first commercial video games were made using television technology rather than general-purpose computers. This technology couldn't do the gravity calculations. The Galaxy Game was able to include gravity because it was based on a general-purpose computer, but this made it too expensive to put into production as an arcade game. The makers of Space Wars eventually got around this problem by adding a custom computer processor to its cabinets. Without gravity, Computer Space was using a design that the creators of Spacewar! already knew didn't work. Bushnell's story of the game play being too complicated for the public is still the one most often repeated, but as former Atari employee Jerry Jessop told The New York Times about Computer Space, "The game play was horrible."
Nolan Bushnell, who led the development of both Computer Space and Pong, has recounted Computer Space's inauspicious start many times. He claimed that Computer Space failed to take off because it overestimated the public. Bushnell is widely quoted as saying the game was too complicated for typical bar-goers, and that no one would want to read instructions to play a video game. [...] At about the same time Computer Space debuted, Stanford University students were waiting in line for hours in the student union to play another version of Spacewar!, The Galaxy Game, which was a hit as a one-off coin-operated installation just down the street from where Bushnell and his collaborators worked. [...] Key evidence that complexity was not the issue comes in the form of Space Wars, another take on Spacewar! that was a successful arcade video game released in 1977.
Why were The Galaxy Game and Space Wars successful at finding an enthusiastic audience while Computer Space was not? The answer is that Computer Space lacked a critical ingredient that the other two possessed: gravity. The star in Spacewar! produced a gravity well that gave shape to the field of play by pulling the ships toward the star with intensity that varied by distance. This made it possible for players to use strategy -- for example, allowing players to whip their ships around the star. Why didn't Computer Space have gravity? Because the first commercial video games were made using television technology rather than general-purpose computers. This technology couldn't do the gravity calculations. The Galaxy Game was able to include gravity because it was based on a general-purpose computer, but this made it too expensive to put into production as an arcade game. The makers of Space Wars eventually got around this problem by adding a custom computer processor to its cabinets. Without gravity, Computer Space was using a design that the creators of Spacewar! already knew didn't work. Bushnell's story of the game play being too complicated for the public is still the one most often repeated, but as former Atari employee Jerry Jessop told The New York Times about Computer Space, "The game play was horrible."
I think we've all heard of it (Score:2)
Some of us have played it. Certainly many of us have played Space Wars, which was a very unusual two-players-only arcade machine.
The force is strong (Score:2)
So Pong would have been successful, if only it had gravity?
No, it didn't need it, nor did other very successful games.
(Also, where does any meaningful gravity come from, deep in space?)
It completely failed to "launch" anything. (Score:3)
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Mr Pants, you are incorrect.
The first entry in a field that is unsuccessful in that field can still be called the thing that started that field.
Otherwise one could say that the "flying car industry", for example, has not started yet.
Re: It completely failed to "launch" anything. (Score:2)
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You can argue that if you like, but it is not true.
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I think it's fair enough to say the flying car *INDUSTRY* has not started yet.
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Sjames, you are incorrect:
"Industry groups
In April 2012, the International Flying Car Association was established to be the "central resource center for information and communication between the flying car industry, news networks, governments, and those seeking further information worldwide".[58] Because flying cars need practical regulations that are mostly dealt with on a regional level, several regional associations were established as well, with the European Flying Car Association (EFCA) representing th
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There is also a Flat Earth Society, but the Earth remains round.
A bunch of people talking about something don't make it real. For example, any of dozens of detailed discussions you might find about how to make the antimatter injectors faster on a starship and other topics that you might encounter at a con. All good fun but nobody's getting beamed up any time soon.
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This was your statement: "I think it's fair enough to say the flying car *INDUSTRY* has not started yet."
So this is not about whether flying cars are real, or whether they work, this is about whether there is an industry making them. AND THERE IS.
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No, there is a group thinking about talking about making them one day.
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Oh, FFS !
Like it or not, there IS an enormous Homeopathy industry.
The fact that it they are not making real, useful medicines or real, useful flying cars does not change the fact that those industries exist.
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I can walk into any of several stores in the area and find many various homeopathic remedies. Hundreds of bottles with liquids and pills with price tags on them and everything. The product may or may not work, but there *IS* an industry cranking it out.
I am not aware of a flying car showroom with price stickers on them (with or without over-eager fast talking salesmen who have to ask their manager). That's because there is no industry.
Nobody has even produced a practical one-off (there have been a few craft
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"I am not aware of a flying car showroom with price stickers on them (with or without over-eager fast talking salesmen who have to ask their manager). That's because there is no industry."
So your definition of an industry is "showrooms with price stickers" ?
"Nobody has even produced a practical one-off (there have been a few craft I would categorize as novelty, registered as experimental aircraft)"
So now your definition of an industry is "practical craft" ?
You are making up definitions for industry and when
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I am using
1. economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.
Right out of the dictionary. I'm fine with broadening that to include service industries but that doesn't help your case.
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Fine.
At last.
So here is a description of a visit to a flying car factory: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum... [team-bhp.com]
FFS
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It will meet the bare minimum criteria for being an industry when they start filling those orders. I'm not disparaging PAL-V, just noting that while their accomplishments to date are impressive, they're not an industry yet.
The first computer game (Score:3)
ever made was Tic Tac Toe on a 1939 EDSAC machine. You still can play the game today on a MiSTer setup in its original form (more or less)
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But it was not commercialized. Lots of video games were out there, but they were on big computers, free for students to play. Computer Space was the first that really tried to be commercial and derive revenue. Ie, launching the "video game industry", not just "video game". And as the article says there was a one-off coin operated space game at Stanford, and possibly elsewhere, but was at intended to be commercial success or just offset the operating costs? I'd say there is at least debate that a first
Dropped many quarters into this game (Score:1)
I loved this game, but mostly because I could decompile it in my head. I wasn't a programmer yet, but it was clear to me that the algorithm for the enemy saucers was pretty simple. The cheesiest part was when I finally achieved "extended play in hyperspace."
I was finally winning at the end of the game, and discovered that hyperspace was simply a reverse-video shift. Ingeniously stupid, I thought at the time.
is this an Emulator of it ? (Score:1)
"Ironic Computer Space Simulator":
https://www.masswerk.at/icss/ [masswerk.at]
FYI Pong (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, hard to see how that was "TV" technology
It was more TV-related than computer-related because the hardware worked directly with raster lines, flipping the beam intensity on and off based on a combination of gate logic, counters and a handful of flip flops. There were no pixels involved or arithmetic calculations going on.
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it was all hardwired 7400-series TTL ICs.
That's really interesting. I always assumed there was an old 4004 or something in there.
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Cool Computer Case (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's apples and oranges, comparing "Computer Space" to "Space Wars". SW was two-player; imagine the difference between playing a modern first-person shooter alone versus in a deathmatch scenario. Further, computer science college kids are going to be more excited about the beginnings of spacey video games than the average patron of a tavern in the 1970s.
Space War was great (Score:2)
Always liked that game way more than the vastly more common (and slightly later) Asteroids.
Lunar lander also had gravity but that game was a merciless SOB in my maybe 6(?) year old eyes.
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Lunar lander also had gravity but that game was a merciless SOB in my maybe 6(?) year old eyes.
We must be about the same age. I remember that game as '101 ways to crash on the Moon,'
I played a MAME emulation of it a while back for nostalgia. Good times!
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"too complicated" is marketing speak ... (Score:2)
for "it was crap" I believe. So everyone was really saying the same thing.
Television tech vs. general-purpose computers (Score:3)
Not true, even before television became pervasive just about any set mathematical equations can be reduced to some sort of analog electrical circuit. This approach was actually getting quite sophisticated in the domain of flight controls and missile guidance, and hybrids existed for a long while as microchip technology matured. There are some environments where analog computing still is needed, notably high radiation areas.
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I initially quivered in fear at the thought of turning a second order multinomial into linear . . . but then realized it shouldn't be *too* bad.
You don't actually have to be faithful quadratic in the force of gravity for this; even vaguely linear should be playable--it just has to increase.
Just a roughly linear nudge from X position in the X direction, and Y for Y, to a 0,0 center, would give some. And then maybe damper slightly by the "sum" of the distances.
Not the lack of gravity (Score:2)
More like the lack of fun. The two other games mentioned are for two players, so you can compete against a friend instead of just struggling with the clunky controls.