The History of Video Games and the Impact on Our Society from 1950-2000
Video games have had a large impact on our society over the decades. It has become one of the most popular interactive mediums in recent human history. Many people either have a home console or computer that they play video games on in their leisure time. The global video game industry today is now worth $99.6 billion, and is projected to be worth $118.6 billion by 2019 . How have video games become this popular? What allowed this industry to become the economic juggernaut that it is today? The beginning of video game history can be traced back to as early as the early 1940’s. In the 1940’s computers were in the process of being commercialized by companies such as IBM. …show more content…
Video game icons such as Mario or Sonic, as well as the companies they were created by, Nintendo and Sega. They have also affected a whole generation of kids, noticeably boys. This wasn’t always the case however, since video games were initially marketed as something that the whole family could play. This changed though because of “the 1983 video game crash”5. Many factors played into this crash of the gaming market, one of them was because there was a flood of low quality games that made an effort to cash in on the previously booming video game industry . This forced video game companies to rebrand their products. So instead of being in the video game section of stores, they would be put under the toys section instead. Because the toys section were divided between boys and girls, companies had to choose one to market to, and they ended up with boys. This is why the majority of console video game players are male, making up 60% of the user base . Under new branding companies were able to recover from the video game crash, but at the sacrifice of narrowing down their target demographic in the process.
Video games have only been introduced to our society only less than a century ago, but has made an enormous impact on our society today. With the technological advancement of computers, the very first video games could be developed, although not intended for public use. Video games came into their own after they were able to place themselves in arcades and especially household around the world. This triggered the exponential growth of video games and popularized them in our society, and has let them become the medium that it is today that almost everyone can
Video games have had a large impact on our society over the decades. It has become one of the most popular interactive mediums in recent human history. Many people either have a home console or computer that they play video games on in their leisure time. The global video game industry today is now worth $99.6 billion, and is projected to be worth $118.6 billion by 2019 . How have video games become this popular? What allowed this industry to become the economic juggernaut that it is today? The beginning of video game history can be traced back to as early as the early 1940’s. In the 1940’s computers were in the process of being commercialized by companies such as IBM. …show more content…
Video game icons such as Mario or Sonic, as well as the companies they were created by, Nintendo and Sega. They have also affected a whole generation of kids, noticeably boys. This wasn’t always the case however, since video games were initially marketed as something that the whole family could play. This changed though because of “the 1983 video game crash”5. Many factors played into this crash of the gaming market, one of them was because there was a flood of low quality games that made an effort to cash in on the previously booming video game industry . This forced video game companies to rebrand their products. So instead of being in the video game section of stores, they would be put under the toys section instead. Because the toys section were divided between boys and girls, companies had to choose one to market to, and they ended up with boys. This is why the majority of console video game players are male, making up 60% of the user base . Under new branding companies were able to recover from the video game crash, but at the sacrifice of narrowing down their target demographic in the process.
Video games have only been introduced to our society only less than a century ago, but has made an enormous impact on our society today. With the technological advancement of computers, the very first video games could be developed, although not intended for public use. Video games came into their own after they were able to place themselves in arcades and especially household around the world. This triggered the exponential growth of video games and popularized them in our society, and has let them become the medium that it is today that almost everyone can