The ‘video' in ‘video game' traditionally refers to a raster display device. In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, digital image or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels viewable via a display monitor. However, as the term ‘video game' has come into general use, it now refers to all types of games whether they use raster graphics or not. The electronic systems used to play video games are known as ‘platforms', examples of which include arcade machines, PCs, game consoles, DVDs, hand-held devices and mobile phones. As such, the term ‘video game' is now simply used as a way of differentiating this type of gaming from the more traditional type of board or card games which do not need a visual display unit of any sort. ‘Video games' are increasingly becoming a part of everyday life and items that we now perceive as common within our digital culture are often spliced with them. Flat-screen televisions or digital receivers (set-top boxes) are sometimes shipped out with ‘video games' integrated on their circuit boards, easily accessible via the remote control.

The circulation of mini-games in offices and more importantly through viral advertising is also on the rise. The current generation of game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii offer integrated services from online communities, to shops, downloadable video and audio content as well as the possibility to access games that are not available outside cyberspace. So while the term ‘video game' is not always technically accurate, it is a phrase that we have all come to recognize as part of the landscape of digital culture. This article proposes to look at how these games have evolved, analysing both their historical/cultural development and examining their gradual academic development as a subject of study in their own right.

One of the earliest examples of the ‘video game' was produced in 1947 when the idea for a ‘cathode ray tube amusement device' was conceived by Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. The game consisted of an analog transmitter that allowed a user to control a dot on the screen to simulate a missile being fired at targets. A few years later in 1952, Douglas Alexander created a game of Tic-Tac-Toe (also known as Noughts and Crosses or Three-in-a-Row) which ran on Cambridge University's EDSAC computer. It was a version of the game usually played on paper, involving two players trying to align three of their symbols (Os or Xs) in a 3 × 3 grid. It was a logical choice for the early computer as it involved a finite amount of possibilities. Meanwhile, William Higginbotham's Tennis for Two appeared in 1958 and ran on an oscilloscope (a type of electronic test equipment that allows signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Higginbotham, a nuclear physicist, who had worked on the first nuclear bomb, devised this game in which players would use a button to hit the ball and a knob to determine the angle to hit the ball at. Like much of today's digital technology, video games really came out of the technological race at the heart of the cold war. Governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain decided to rely on the newly emergent power of computers to simulate scenarios of attack and defence. The developing space race between the Americans and the Russians (as well as science fiction in the form of Doc Smith's Lensmen series) was clearly the inspiration behind Martin Graetz, Steve Russell and Wayne Wiitanen's Spacewar in 1962. In it, two players control two spaceships through a makeshift control board that enabled them to shoot ‘torpedoes' at each other while trying not to hit a planet or a star located on the screen. The fact that Spacewar was programmed for a ‘microcomputer' (still the size as a large fridge) that was popular with institutions also meant that its makers were able to pass on the code for the program to others, resulting in this being the first game that was actually distributed.

Many of its basic ideas would also lay down the blueprint for the action simulation genre that, through the likes of Asteroids and Space Invaders, would remain popular to this day. 1967 saw the launch of ADVENT (which had its name truncheoned because the computer could only handle six letters), which was the first text-based game in which the player controlled the fate of a character whose surroundings were explained purely through text. Meanwhile, 1971 saw the arrival of Computer Space, the first commercially sold, coin-operated video game. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, it used a standard television- and game-generated video signal for display. Though not commercially sold, the coin-operated minicomputer-driven Galaxy Game preceded it by two months, located solely at Stanford University. It was the launch of the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972 which finally put Video Gaming on the map. For the first time, the Odyssey put the control over television content into the consumers' hands and sparked a whole new industry. Invented by Ralph Baer, the console sold about 100,000 units in one year and could play seven games. In the same year the makers of Computer Space founded Atari, a name that is still associated with digital games all over the world. The first offering from Atari would be the Pong arcade game. Surprisingly similar to a game on the Odyssey (it actually resulted in a successful patent infringement lawsuit against the company), Pong was based on table tennis or ‘ping pong'. Although the game merely involved hitting a dot between two players from either side of the screen, it was enormously popular.

In the wake of the Odyssey many electronics companies decided to launch their own game consoles into the newly emerging video game market. Over the period between 1972 and 1984 hundreds of models appeared that imitated the Odyssey's controls and games. In 1977 Atari launched its own Video Computing System (VCS) 2600 which would be one of the keystones to modern console gaming. It featured a wealth of game cartridges that were sold separately and made Atari money through loyalties and licensing fees, allowing them to sell the main console at a loss. In particular, the 2600 is credited with being the console that popularized the use of programmable cartridges. The VCS was updated with the 5200 in 1982 and the 7800 in 1986.