Atari 2600

Atari is a video game company that was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972 and together with amazing programmers such as Allan Alcorn they would go on to create some of best arcade games of all time (Atari History). Some examples include Pong, Asteroids, Centipede and many others. With all of their Arcade hits Atari quickly grew to be a successful company but their biggest hit wouldn’t come until 1977 with the release of the Atari 2600. The Atari 2600 was a machine that brought home console gaming to the masses and sowed the seeds of the modern video games industry (Langshaw). According to Atari does official history the system would go on to sell 400,000 units, this equaled in one million dollars in sales. Atari would also go on to sell 200 million dollars’ worth of inventory equaling to a net profit of 20 million. There was no doubt Atari was the king of video games in North America. Everything that the company released was a hit nothing could go wrong for them. Sadly this was not the case a lot of things would go wrong for them. ¬Due to several bad decisions made by the company such as not giving credit to its programmers causing them to leave and form their own companies and a saturation of poor and bad games in the market caused the company huge losses(Langshaw). However their biggest failure was yet to come. In the summer of 1982 the movie blockbuster E.T the…

Have you ever wondered which video games had the most significant impact on the growth of the video game industry. If you walked up to a random person on the street and asked them what the first video game made was they would most likely say "Pong" . Pong ,created by Allan Alcorn and published by Atari in 1972, is most famously known for being one of the earliest video games known that significantly impacted the growth of the video game industry. Similar to table tennis your objective is to beat…

The Challenges and Rewards of Modern Composition When one considers the word “musician”, the first image that often comes to mind is a performer on stage playing popular, rock, or classical music. However, what many do not realize is that there is a large range of mediums through which one can present music. Some of these methods include writing music to accompany a visual or interactive component such as television or video games. Despite the number of opportunities for original music, the art…

If I told you to picture what you consider to be a gamer, the first image you would come up with is a young boy holding a controller. If I told you to come up with another image, it would be a struggle to imagine another type of gamer, and there’s a reason for that. The target demographic of the gaming industry includes men from age 18 to 34, and the industry goes to great lengths to make them the sole demographic. The sexualized representation of women in games, the backlash from men that…

The history of gaming dates back all the way to 1940 when the traditional game nim was created and displayed at the Westinghouse display at the World's Fair. it wasn't very popular and they still had a lot of work to do to come up with more appealing features. They finally came up with a big hit in 1972 with the introduction of Pong, Pong was created by atari and was a major hit and probably considered one of the main foundations to current video games of today. But this did not stop them from…

Video Games are on the upward trend all across America. Now more than ever, people are interacting online through many different gaming platforms. According to Mychelle Blake, in the US alone, over 63% of all households have someone who regularly plays video games. That’s nearly 2 in 3 households that have a gamer. Being a gamer does not mean you are good, bad, weird, or cool. Most importantly, it does not mean you are a boy. Back in 2014, there was a serious issue with sexism in the…

he video game industry has always been a topic of controversy over the years. Ever since their first creation there have been a number of opinions surrounding them. The opinions are usually mixed between positive of negative. However, it should be more accurate to state that the opinions of video games range from, strange, absurd, reasonable and downright ridiculous. While video games have gotten popular with mainstream audiences with the rise of esport, video game expos like E3, and the rise of…

Many people think that violent videogames are to blame for most of the crimes committed nowadays. This is not the right way to look at things, since there are actual studies that show that videogames, especially action games, can enhance people’s cognitive abilities, relive stress and depression, and also help the economy. These studies have been done to see if there is any connection between videogame violence and actual violence. Yet lot of other studies have also shown the benefits of…

Information Security in Game Development As can be seen by tuning into any modern news media outlet, information security is an international concern. Unfortunately, one area that is often left out of the security conversation is the video game industry. The general consumer base rarely hears about security standards when it comes to game development, and it is hit or miss from one game to the next as to whether there is security in place to protect the machine and network it is being played on.…

The video game industry is a huge industry, and that is not an understatement. To put it in comparison, the movie Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens grossed in one billion dollars in 12 days in theaters while Grand Theft Auto V achieved that total in just three days. Video games have come a long way from when “just nerds” played them. According to the Entertainment Software Association, over 150 million of Americans play video games, that’s nearly 50% of the U.S. population. But as they…