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Early history of video games

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Early history of video games
12 articles
Cathode-ray tube amusement device
Bertie the Brain
Nimrod
OXO
Tennis for Two
Early mainframe games
Spacewar!
Hamurabi
Space Travel
Computer Space
Galaxy Game‎
Contributor(s): PresN

It's long been annoying to me that the articles on the early history of video games and the foundational games therein were in pretty awful shape, and starting this past November I decided to do something about it. 6 months, several books, countless web searches and 12 articles later, I present to you a completed good topic on the early history of video games, covering the time span from the initial protogames of 1947-51 through to the first spark of commercial video games in 1971, ending just before 1972 when Pong showed that the commercial arcade game was a real thing, and the Magnavox Odyssey showed that playing games on your TV was a possible and profitable idea. Included in this topic is every article we have on a 1971 or earlier video game, with the from-scratch early mainframe games scooping up some of the smaller ones. It's a little-known area of video game history—most books breeze past the whole 25 year period on their way to the better-documented 1972—but an important starting point for a ton of game developers in the 70s and 80s. Special thanks to Indrian, who GA reviewed all but one of these, holding my feet to the fire on being clear and precise in my language when trying to simplify complex development histories and pointing me at great resources when the easy sources contradicted each other. --PresN 03:40, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support - Once again, a topic pulled from total obscurity and shined to beautiful Green plus signs by @PresN:. Strong support for articles all of us video game readers and those interested in history should learn from. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 18:22, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Don't know if my GA reviews preclude me from voting, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to express my admiration for all PresN has done to turn Wikipedia into perhaps the best source for early video game history not just on the Web, but in any media format. Indrian (talk) 22:12, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Nergaal (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
:Really nice topic but I would like to clarify the delimitation of the topic a bit since it seems a bit fuzzy.
  • Why not put Pong and MO in this topic?
  • while 1st gen consoles is a well defined term, "early history" is a bit vague. Would the main article and this topic work better as "pre-console history of VG"? Or "History of first video games"?
  • I think this topic might benefit from a list/table of all game entries before 1972.
  • Early mainframe games seems to suffer from the same name/table issues.
  • Also, should "Turochamp" be italicized?

Nergaal (talk) 04:31, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • The earlier in the history of video games you go, the fuzzier the borders get, but if you were going to put a marker and say "this is the start of the commercial video game industry", you'd say that Pong (landmark title, spawned tons of imitators, clones, home versions, etc., widely regarded as the first video game that the general public knew about) and the Odyssey (the first commercial home video game system, same time period, first time the majority of players had ever seen a video game) would be it (especially as they were released only a couple months apart). This is everything before that, so Pong and MO wouldn't fit.
  • Consoles are great and all, but it does a disservice to the medium to pretend that computer/arcade/mainframe video games don't exist, and that they weren't at times the dominant form of the medium- including the entire time period covered here. There isn't an easy term for "before the explosive start of the commercial video game industry in 1972", but "early history" works pretty well without using a neologism like "protohistory" or something.
  • Are you talking about the actual "early history" article, or the topic? Regardless, pretty much impossible- we're talking about a time period that covers when the global community of <1000 programmers might have one undergrad throw together a game over the course of a few weeks, physically mail off a letter with the plain-text source code to a volunteer-run newsletter that may have one issue still archived anywhere (50 years later), and have it be one of the most-played games of the year solely because only a few dozen text-based games were "released" that year. Such a table would be unsourcable, and either pointless or include hundreds of entries with nothing more than a name to demark them.
  • To reiterate, none of these game were sold. Or really "published". You're asking for a table of hobby projects that were shared with other niche enthusiasts with access to computer systems that often cost more than US$1 million in 1960s money, 50 years after the fact. The data doesn't exist.
  • Context would be helpful when talking about a 12-article topic, but I found what you meant. I don't think so- it's fuzzy, but you don't italicize the titles of software projects; you do italicize games as stand-alone releases, but an academic chess proof-of-concept that happens to be the first such academic project that covered a game isn't the same thing as Halo. --PresN 05:24, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still thing "Early history" is an unnecessarily vague term. Why don't you think the topic and article should be "history of first VGs"? With the latter, Pong should be included as the first well known VG (Odyssey I guess also). Also, the topic is not clearly defined in an obvious way (if somebody sees the template they have no idea what say OXO could possibly be and how is it related to the topic), so try to cover in the intro para how all the entries are linked/ perhaps my mentioning some years too. Nergaal (talk) 01:58, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've tweaked the wording a bit, but I feel that talking about the time period covered as defined by the games produced on either end, and then having a list of games as sub-articles, pretty clearly indicates that it's the games released in the "early history of video games". A topic on an album doesn't list out what each song is in the lead paragraph. I also disagree with "history of first video games" - that doesn't actually mean anything, or cover what you say it does- the first games that could be called "video games"? The first video games that could be said to be the "first" of something? The topic is about the time period in video game history prior to the rise of the commercial video game industry; it doesn't make much sense to me to rename it to something that includes games that were the start of the commercial video game industry, because that's no longer "prior" to. I agree that the term "early history" doesn't explicitly tell you what that means- which is why there's an introductory paragraph. And an article on the subject. Sometimes articles (like, say, "List of nearest exoplanets") have to define what the terms like "nearest" or "early" mean, because titles can only be so long. --PresN 04:54, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with @PresN: on the need for broadness in the articles title because the subject itself is interpretive. What exactly is a video game, and what was considered the "first video game"? It is this kind of thing that is so hard to pin down, and to which there is no right answer. The subject as to the exact time period of games pre-Pong is delineated in the first article, and can't be explained in a an title without unnecessary complication. What constitutes early should be gone over in the article space, not the title. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 20:18, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The quivalent would be "History of the earliest VG", but I am happy to support the topic in the current format. Just reported the entries in the template a bit to be more balanced. Nergaal (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Included the navbox above, which helps break down the contents better than the featured topic box. As acknowledged, this "early history" as a nebulous scope and it's tough to draw scope boundaries, though I echo Indrian that PresN has done a fine job of doing so. As far as I know, we don't have a singular source that delineates the most important individual projects from this era, so I can't speak to "completeness" of the topic—for instance, is our coverage American-centric? Are we missing any major projects from the UK, Russia, or non-Western cultures? Does "early history" really span the pre-American arcade period, or what about primitive electronic games as other regions began to develop an industry? I'm comfortable with the scope as is and congratulate PresN on the accomplishment. I originally had a few of these on my list and am glad to see them finished (and which such alacrity!) I'd be happy to collaborate on cleanup for featured nominations. Support. czar 22:57, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Czar: The sources are a little American-centric, though in the pre-1962 time period there would have been very little outside of America due to where the few computers were (though OXO is British) and from 1962-72 most games would still have been made in America, but primarily the sources are just missing: most video game history books start at 1972, and most of the rest just throw in a brief intro for Tennis for Two and Spacewar. Hamurabi gets an article because there's sources on it, but there's a hundred other piddly little BASIC mainframe games from that decade, from both America and Europe, that just don't have any sources whatsoever. Games that made it into the (American) 101 BASIC Games or were later on (America) BBSs are the ones with sources, sadly. 1972 (roughly) really was a tipping point everywhere, though- arcade video games became a thing in America, Europe, and Japan very quickly after Pong, microcomputers became a thing at the same time and opened up computer programming to an exponentially increasing number of people worldwide, dedicated consoles proliferated, especially in Europe... Anyways, yeah, I'd love to take these to FAC, though there's one source that I'm not sure on, and likely more books that I'd need to hunt down; if I do I'll hit you up, or if one catches your eye just let me know. --PresN 00:25, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I meant more that "early history" shifts between cultures. So countries that received mainframe computers after the United States might have also had an early history of video games (pre-arcade) but possibly during a different span of years, depending on whether we know about it. (This is also the main criticism of the "console generations" model Wikipedia helped to proliferate—it's based around the console war mentality and single-timeframe histories. For example, where does the British home computer timeline intersect with the Americanized console timeline.) Anyway, I think it's safe to say that these articles reflect the most prominent sources on the topic. I can help find/scan sources too—just let me know what you're thinking czar 00:34, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I think the delineation is proper, given what I came to read up on whenI worked on the Ralph Baer article last year after his death, who is credited with the Magnavox Odyssey. Both that and Pong are the first clearly-established home and arcade game, so all titles before that can easily be classified as "early video games". --MASEM (t) 16:41, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Thibbs (talk) 18:30, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
*Comment - Commendable work by PresN. Like Czar I have had some of these articles on my watchlist and have been delighted to witness their much-needed refurbishments in real time. The time-span (pre-1972) is well selected and my only reservations for the topic are definition-related (on both the "video" and the "game" parts of "video game"). Nearly a decade ago (water under the bridge now) I had the great honor of heatedly arguing animatedly discussing the definition of "video" with Wgungfu so I'll leave that part of it alone apart from pinging him as an expert on the topic whose input I'd value (e.g. on boundary-cases like 1971's Star Trek). On the "game" side, however, I also see the potential for trouble when it comes to reviewing the topic for "comprehensiveness". In this early period when computer programs were firmly situated within the realm of mathematics and computer science, things that today might be called "non-game simulations", "diversions", "amusements", "toys", etc., were very often considered "games" by their coders and early players. Some of these include Conway's Game of Life and ELIZA (which, if memory serves me well, are both included in BASIC Computer Games), and the 1969 Lunar Lander (and earlier orbital simulators). I recognize that a lack of available RSes imposes certain practical limitations on which articles can in fact attain GA/FA status, but should those limitations be taken into account in considering the "comprehensive" leg of a Featured Topic? I'm concerned that the inherently fuzzy definition of "video game", together with a historically expansive use of the term "game", impairs our ability to come up with "a well-defined topical scope" that has "no obvious gaps". Without a firm definition for "video game" that goes beyond "I know it when I see it", the gaps are in the eye of the beholder. Closer please note: this ramble should not be regarded as an "Oppose". -Thibbs (talk) 13:30, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I had a rambly response, but let me distill it down a bit.
  • "Video" - the classic definition needs a continuously-updating CRT monitor. That cuts off a lot of things that are protogames or use a different type of visual output device like modern display screens, so as the early history article says, that article and this topic goes with "any game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuits that incorporates an element of interactivity and outputs the results of the player's actions to a display". The common definition of a "video" game no longer matches the 1980s definition, in other words, and frankly that definition was limiting even then.
  • "Game" - Note that the term "game" means something different in academic research settings than in common parlance- see Game theory, etc. ELIZA and Conway's Game of Life were "games" in the sense that they were "academic simulations" of something, not in the sense that they were an activity or program meant for entertainment like football or Spacewar. OXO and 1940's chess programs, of course, straddle the line, (and so are included) but programs like ELIZA are on the far side of it. The Early history article does mention the progress of non-game games during the 50s, but by the late 60s "modern" entertainment-focused video games existed, so the history of computer-mediated research simulations is not in scope as they no longer were forming the historical basis of what would become video games, so those programs are not mentioned. (Do note, though: Lunar Lander is in early mainframe games, as it was entertainment-focused, despite being heavily math/text based). --PresN 14:55, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't call Conway's automaton a research simulation. It's an example of recreational mathematics which is intended to be entertainment-focused and not really academic. And as you suggested above, the reverse side of the coin is that games like OXO were really more of a proof of concept than frankly entertainment-oriented software. The old room-sized vacuum tube computers were expensive to run and (I'm probably generalizing a bit here but) nobody over 5 years old is entertained by noughts and crosses. The reality is that a lot more people in 1970 played Conway's sandboxy Game of Life for the pure recreational pleasure of it than played OXO for those reasons in the 50s, and in the modern day people still "play" Conway's game for fun but only academics and historians play OXO. I'm not really arguing that we must include Conway's game or that we must exclude OXO from the list, but it's fuzzy at best.
Early chatterbots like ELIZA are also hard to categorize. The program was definitely included in either BASIC Computer Games or More BASIC Computer Games (I'd have to unearth my copies to find out which, but both are game- and not academic-oriented), and I seriously doubt it was ever used in a psychologist's office. From personal experience of having typed it up and played through back in the 80s, I would agree that calling it a "game" is a bit of a stretch, but from what I understand it had a definite influence on later games. I notice this is an unsourced section, but see ELIZA#Influence on games.
This is kind of kicking the can down the road I guess, but maybe the best way to cure this problem is to directly address the definition of "video game" in the body of the video game article (which is linked in the description of the topic) and just allow the wikilink to serve as definition for the topic for now. There are some decent sources (e.g. 1) that could be used for such a subsection of the "video game" article. I had researched the concept of a definition for video games all those years ago while talking with Wgungfu, and I think I still have notes on it somewhere, so I'll see what I can dredge back up to add to the "video game" article. -Thibbs (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah I just noticed this subsection which I'd skipped over previously. Perhaps that is good enough for now. And anyway the more I think about it the more I doubt that this that much of a problem. The goal is to avoid any "obvious gaps" and most of the gaps I see are just arguable gaps. In general these kinds of topics shouldn't be subject to much change in coverage (except, e.g., new games in a franchise topic), and perhaps this topic will have a little bit more discussion about inclusion in the future but I don't think it will be seriously disruptive and ultimately whatever gaps may exist are probably not "obvious" ones. I'm interested in this idea of a definition of "video game", though. If I get more time I'll look into it more deeply. -Thibbs (talk) 18:30, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm happy that these articles cover the topic of early video games, and I've been following these for quite a while. Amazing work! JAGUAR  11:45, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 1)

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Star Trek: The Next Generation (season 1)
27 articles
"Encounter at Farpoint"
"The Naked Now"
"Code of Honor"
"The Last Outpost"
"Where No One Has Gone Before"
"Lonely Among Us"
"Justice"
"The Battle"
"Hide and Q"
"Haven"
"The Big Goodbye"
"Datalore"
"Angel One"
"11001001"
"Too Short a Season"
"When the Bough Breaks"
"Home Soil"
"Coming of Age"
"Heart of Glory"
"The Arsenal of Freedom"
"Symbiosis"
"Skin of Evil"
"We'll Always Have Paris"
"Conspiracy"
"The Neutral Zone"
Contributor(s): Miyagawa

All episodes in the season are at GA, as is the season article. Some of the episodes were my earliest GA TV episode work, and were missing the rating information because they were written before I'd tracked down a reliable source for that. But I've just gone through after the season article was promoted and made sure that they were all brought up to speed. Miyagawa (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Rare Replay

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Rare Replay
32 articles
Jetpac
Lunar Jetman
Atic Atac
Sabre Wulf
Underwurlde
Knight Lore
Gunfright
Slalom
R.C. Pro-Am
Cobra Triangle
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
Solar Jetman
Digger T. Rock
Battletoads
R.C. Pro-Am II
Battletoads Arcade
Killer Instinct Gold
Blast Corps
Banjo-Kazooie
Jet Force Gemini
Perfect Dark
2010 remaster
Banjo-Tooie
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Kameo
Perfect Dark Zero
Viva Piñata
Jetpac Refuelled
Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Contributor(s): czar, Jaguar
Also Famous Hobo and pre-2015: Niwi3, MuZemike, CALR

31 articles! It's been a haul. As for the criteria, the topic is discrete: the compilation's thirty component games are each individually notable. I wasn't sure whether to include Perfect Dark (2010 video game), the Xbox remaster of the original Perfect Dark. While several of these games were remastered for the Xbox 360's high-definition output, the PD remaster is the only release with a separate article (and it was technically the version that bundled in the compilation...) Anyway, your call on that. We got through the majority of the entries late last year and I've dragged my feet on the last few until recently. Turns out that the hardest articles are the ones about which you care least. When I see this many GAs, though, I think about that many reviewers who have endured the articles as well: @AdrianGamer, Rhain, J Milburn, Ritchie333, Moisejp, Tintor2, Anarchyte, Crisco 1492, Dank, David Fuchs, Electroguv, Famous Hobo, Gabriel Yuji, Hurricanehink, Indrian, It Is Me Here, New Age Retro Hippie, Swarm, Teancum, and Tezero Thank you. czar 09:27, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]


We finally did it! Echoing on what czar said, the majority of the lesser-known titles in this topic were in fact the most difficult to write. Just like to add that Solar Jetman was by far the most dull, tedious, and agonising thing I've ever done on here. It must have taken me longer to write that article than they did designing the game. JAGUAR  16:50, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. What a monumental task. I've been following this project since day one, and I'm so glad to see it finally completed. Czar and Jaguar (and all others involved), you should be immensely proud of your work. As a reviewer of four of these articles at GAN, I'm happy to endorse this candidacy—every article is clearly within the scope of the topic, and they're all excellently researched and written. Congratulations. – Rhain ☔ 10:07, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I have reviewed quite a lot of them, and I agree that they are all excellent articles. I am sure that the rest of them are equally good and impressive. Well done! AdrianGamer (talk) 10:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. An amazing amount of work has gone into this topic and I can see that the dedication shown by Czar and Jaguar finally paid off. They're all really well written and deserve the title of GA/FA. (Note: I didn't receive any pings, AFAIK, even though I was included in the list of people. Is this a bug?) Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:51, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You were not on the ping list? ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 13:42, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Salvidrim: <small>{{ping|AdrianGamer|Rhain|etc|Anarchyte|Crisco 1492|Dank|etc}}</small>. Anarchyte (work | talk) 13:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Wow. For some unfathomable reason I thought this was posted by Sergecross73.... no idea why. I guess I need more coffee. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 13:59, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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