The first video game?

[Leon]

This was what I've known to be one of the first if not the very first "Video Game" for the longest time.

As i said in my post, it depends on your definitions for the game, i put space war as it was if i remember right, the first one designed behind the idea of being a "game", tennis for two was a test to see if something like that could be done and pong was probably the first commercially available video game hence why what's defined as first depends on how you define it.

I should point out that there is a good amount of the industry that considers pinball with digital scoring as the first video game, and it's much older than all these options.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

And then I start asking:

Is this a video game?

It is a man, interacting with a video component. If you say “it’s pre determined” I would raise you later efforts of QTEs and FMV games.

I know that is the furthest boarder of the definition, but it’s still a fun thought experiment.

It doesnt have any rules, to me if the Odissey was Just moving the little nub on the screen it wouldnt count as a videogame but something more akin to one of those interactive museum attraction; but the manual and rules make it a game

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

It doesnt have any rules, to me if the Odissey was Just moving the little nub on the screen it wouldnt count as a videogame but something more akin to one of those interactive museum attraction; but the manual and rules make it a game

Which is a very good point. For me, while I proposed Gertie, I have come back around and decided that it is not a game because of there being no “fail” state. Nothing to lose.

That said, this definition in itself still breaks. For example, it’s impossible to LOSE necessarily in some games. That just shows how liquid the definition of video game actually is.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Which is a very good point. For me, while I proposed Gertie, I have come back around and decided that it is not a game because of there being no “fail” state. Nothing to lose.

That said, this definition in itself still breaks. For example, it’s impossible to LOSE necessarily in some games. That just shows how liquid the definition of video game actually is.

I was gonna say that
You can't really "lose" in noby noby boy or city builders, you can only make no progress

I think rules is more reliable because you can't have a game if there are no limitations on what you can do, at first I thoughtb that having a game engine was where I draw the line but the odissey is just a little rectangle; but the fact it has rules like aboard game makes it a videogame

And with rules I dont meant "do this to win" I mean "this is what you can do in this game, this is how you move and how you interact wuith the enviroment etc£

 

[Ikagura]

This is the kind of question like asking what's the very first song, first music, first dance, first painting or even first dish in history.

We cannot have a proper definition of what determinate a real first video game. Are non dot matrixes counting as games?

 

[thanonyx]

I just want to state for the record that Pong IS NOT the first video game. It's just the first video game to be commercially successful.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's iconTamagotchiTamaHero24]

I just want to state for the record that Pong IS NOT the first video game. It's just the first video game to be commercially successful.

But, in that way, it WAS the first video game.

That’s another permutation to this question: what legacy have many of the first games themselves had? Long is not the first, true, but it showed that the idea had legs beyond computer labs. Space War! came first, yes, but it was a failure financially in comparison to Pong. A novelty. A footnote.

Pong wasn’t the first made. It was the first to prove the validity of the concept for a wider market. And in that way, it deserves the title of “first video game” just as much as any other option.

 

[Ikagura]

I just want to state for the record that Pong IS NOT the first video game. It's just the first video game to be commercially successful.

In the same vein that Super Mario Bros is the first platformer to set up the basis of what a platformer should be about. Same with Doom, Street Fighter II and even Resident Evil 4 for the TPS point of view.

 

[Bomberman]

Cathode Ray Tube amusement device. Sure there are no objectives but you control and object visually around a screen.

Cathode-ray tube amusement device - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org