{"id":5773,"date":"2014-02-03T00:01:02","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T07:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5773"},"modified":"2014-02-01T13:43:55","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T20:43:55","slug":"would-you-like-to-play-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=5773","title":{"rendered":"Would You Like to Play a Game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joshua, the computer personality of the WORP mainframe from the film War Games<\/em>, uttered the most famous line in all of computer gaming history. It asked Matthew Broderick’s hacker character, “Would you like to play a game?” How can anyone say no to that?
\n
\nHistorically speaking, rare is the computer that wasn’t used to play games.<\/p>\n

I should correct that: Rare is the programmable<\/em> computers that wasn’t used to play games. I seriously doubt Lady Ida relaxed with a game of Tetris on Babbage’s engine.<\/p>\n

Without peeking, I tried to guess the nature of the first computer game.<\/p>\n

The early computers were what we today call mainframes. These were large, boxy contraptions that required terminals — often teletypes — for operator control. That meant the early games would all be text-based. They would lack instant feedback. So your starship could hang there a few minutes while you read up on its position and the location of the Klingons.<\/p>\n

My guess was that the first computer game was most likely something that had to do with random number generation, such as the basic Guess the Number<\/em> type of game.<\/p>\n

I was wrong.<\/p>\n

Officially, the first documented computer game was OXO<\/em>, written in 1952. OXO<\/em> was a Tic-Tac-Toe simulation. The programmer called it Noughts and Crosses<\/em>, which I assume is British for Tic-Tac-Toe.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, it’s a game of Tic-Tac-Toe<\/em> that convinces Joshua not to blow up the world in War Games<\/em>. I’m not certain whether the movie’s screenwriter had that in mind, but it’s an interesting bit of trivia.<\/p>\n

Most of the games back in the early days were all text, including text adventure games. I remember avidly playing Zork<\/em> on my TRS-80. I never did finish it — until I purchased the cheats guide.<\/p>\n

I doubt that OXO<\/em> had a cheats guide in 1952.<\/p>\n

The first computer game I remember playing on a real computer (as opposed to an arcade game) was a quiz on my university’s mainframe. I had a computer account, mostly so I could use the system’s word processor. Someone I met in the computer lab wanted me to try out the game he wrote for his Fortran class final. So I did! It was fun, but after a while I exhausted all the questions in the quiz.<\/p>\n

The first graphical computer game debuted far earlier than I would have imagined. Spacewar!<\/em> was designed in 1961. It’s often credited as the second computer game ever, after OXO<\/em>, although I’d be surprised if no other games were developed on those early systems between 1952 and 1961.<\/p>\n

Spacewar!<\/em> involved flying two ships around a star — with gravity — trying to shoot at each other. A video arcade game in the late 1970s, called Space Wars<\/em>, borrowed the same concept. I remember playing that, and preferring it to Asteroids<\/em>, but it required two players.<\/p>\n

Today, of course, computer games are all over. Windows comes with games pre-installed, including my personal enemy, Minesweeper<\/a>. The Mac may no longer come with games pre-installed, yet free games are available at the App Store. Ditto for Android devices, where lots of free games are to be had, including my new annoying favorite, Flappy Bird<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Still, back in the day, computer games were rare and special. It’s amazing how far we’ve come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before video games, and long before the notion of a gaming console, computers were used to play games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5783,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5773\/revisions\/5783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}