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The history of the computer game is, in parts, a history of technology. The computer game requires technology capable of handling large amounts of data and of representing this data. The relationship between a technological phenomenon such as the computer and the less formally based culture is not a simple one: some theories will claim that technology determines culture, some will claim that culture determines technology. It may be most reasonable to see this as a history of mutual influences, where technology can inspire (or enable) cultural developments, and cultural developments can inspire new technology. To quote an obvious example, the computer game was originally developed on equipment designed for military and academic purposes. But today the computer game is the driving force in the development of much hardware such as 3d graphics accelerators.

Spacewar!, the first computer game. (1962)

The first computer game is generally assumed to be the game Spacewar!, developed in 1962 at MIT (Stephen Russell a.o.). Spacewar originally ran on a PDP-1 computer the size of a large car. By today's standards, the graphics are rather primitive, although less primitive than many games form the 1980's. The game as such is not bad: Two players each control a spaceship circling a planet. The players can shoot each other, turn their ships, and accelerate. The goal is - naturally - to hit the other player before being hit yourself.

Pong. (Atari 1973) Advertisement for Pong.

The first commercially available video game, Pong (Atari 1973), was introduced 11 years after Spacewar! Pong is a simple concept that has turned out to be surprisingly durable even though the graphics are simply white rectangles on a black background. In the beginning, Pong was placed at entertainment venues, markets, and fun fairs, next to mechanical pastimes and as a supplement to these. This is the same kind of place where the game Space Invaders (Taito 1977) was also introduced. Space Invaders defines most of the basic parameters of what I call the classical action game: A player controls an object/an actor against some enemies; a score is kept; the game is real-time and requires fast reflexes; the player has a fixed amount of lives (typically three); the game is based on successive levels of increasing difficulty; the game (or just the title) places the player's action as part of a minimal narrative.

As should become clear, there are many types of computer games. In the classical action game you can almost never win, the game just gradually becomes harder, and the highest honour achievable is to enter the high score list. The most general thing to say of the evolution of the computer game is probably that it has become gradually more based on genres. Almost all of the early computer games introduced new gameplay elements; later games tend to be examples of specific genres, borrowing traits from earlier games. (The computer game has become more intertextual, if one so desires.)

About the term computer game: This term is in sharp competition with video games, console games, and arcade games. Video games and console games usually means games connected to a TV, whereas arcade games means games placed in public spaces (and individual cabinets). Computer games are occasionally taken to mean games played on a PC. Since all of these areas have been developed in close parallel (and because all of these games are played on computers), I am using the term computer game to denominate all of these areas as a whole.

But it is an important development in this context, that the computer game has changed from being primarily played at an arcade to be primarily played in the home. This has made it possible to develop games of longer duration, to have games not focused on the simple goal of having as many players insert coins as quickly as possible.

Atari VCS 2600, the first popular home computer game system. (1977)

Many developments in the history of the computer game are not technological but purely conceptual. Whereas Spacewar! and Pong are games for more than one player, the time from approximately 1977 to 1993 is completely dominated by games for single players. The multi player game becomes widely popular when Doom (ID Software 1993) allows for connecting several PCs, for being several people present in the same game world. Doom is on the whole an incredibly influential game. It has been criticised for being violent, but it's one of the most popular computer games ever and it has led to a whole genre of games, the 3d-shooter or first-person-shoot'em'up.

In retrospect, there was no technological reason why the multiplayer game didn't become popular in the mid-1980's. It would have been perfectly possible to network home computers like the Commodore 64, only nobody did. And this must be explained culturally: The first computers (like the aforementioned PDP-1) were giant machines priced at millions of dollars, and were thus shared by many users. In the mid-seventies, the idea of the personal computer emerges; a computer becomes something one person places on a desk. In the beginning of the 1990's the Internet takes off outside academic circles, and the computer starts to be seen as connected to other computers, part of a network. The single-player computer game is dominant during the reigning years of the isolated, personal computer.

In 1949, a young engineer named Ralph Baer was given an assignment to build a television set. He wasn't supposed to build just any television set, but one that would be the absolute best of all televisions. This was not a problem for Baer, but he wanted to go beyond his original assignment and incorporate some kind of game into the set. He didn't know exactly what kind of game he had in mind, but it didn't really matter because his managers nixed the idea. It would take another 18 years for his idea to become a reality, and by that time there would be other people to share in the glory, like Willy Higinbotham, who designed an interactive tennis game played on an oscilloscope, and Steve Russell, who programmed a rudimentary space game on a DEC PDP-1 mainframe computer. And then there was also Nolan Bushnell, who played that space game and dreamed of a time when fairground midways would be filled with games powered by computers.

Today, with interest in classic games gaining steam once again, players of video games are reminded of the rich history of the industry. Crave's Asteroids 64 is a modern version of a game that came out in 1979. And the original Asteroids was merely an updated version of Nolan Bushnell's Computer Space, which was really a jazzed-up copy of Steve Russell's Spacewar. Space Invaders, Centipede, Frogger, and Pong are once again on store shelves, and Pong is but a polished variant of the game Willie Higinbotham displayed on his oscilloscope.

The history of video games is not just about people. It's also about companies and ironies. Atari was an American company with a Japanese name, and the Japanese company Sega was started by an American. Magnavox, the company that started it all, is owned by Phillips, a company that is over a century old, and Nintendo, the company that made video games popular again, is just as old. And who would have ever thought Sony, the company that invented all types of electronics, from transistor radios to video recorders, would release a video game console that would become its top-selling product of all time?

In today's world, where video games are often cited as a source for teenage violence, it's interesting to see that the first home console also had a light rifle as an optional peripheral.

The world of video games continues to evolve. By reading about the past, perhaps you'll also get a glimpse of the future.

Most casual games have similar basic features:

Extremely simple gameplay, like a puzzle game that can be played entirely using a one-button mouse or cellphone keypad
Allowing gameplay in short bursts, during work breaks or, in the case of portable and cell phone games, on public transportation
The ability to quickly reach a final stage, or continuous play with no need to save the game
2D, abstract graphics
Some variant on a "try before you buy" business model or an advertising-based model
The word "casual" indicates that the games are produced for the casual consumer, who comes across the game and can get into gameplay almost immediately. Casual game players do not normally regard themselves as gamers, or fans of video games.

Casual games are usually free on-line or free to download and try (but may provide a revenue by in-game advertising). It is important to understand that these are two distinct markets within casual games. In one market, larger studios create downloadable games, primarily available on the PC. These games are typically addictive and are limited trials to encourage casual gamers to buy a permanent "deluxe" version for a small price (typically $20 or less). They usually have more intensive graphics and sound since they are run on the players computer directly. Recently, 100% free "full licensed versions" of casual games have become available through advertising.

The second market consists of primarily indie game developers who create free games for online play. These games have a wide range of gameplay styles, can be played on almost any computer, and are often based on Flash or Shockwave technologies. They are more limited in the scope of action, graphics and sound than downloadable games since they are played through the browser. However, many of these developers have pushed the technological envelope in what is possible through the browser - often creating full 3D games, 2 player capabilities, save games and other advanced features.

Microsoft's Solitaire, which came free with Microsoft Windows, is widely considered the first successful "casual game" and was particularly played by office workers who were using Windows for their work. Subsequent versions of Windows included Minesweeper, and once Microsoft discovered the popularity of their pack-in solitaire, they expanded on it with FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.

In 1989, Nintendo's Game Boy was released with the free pack-in casual game Tetris. Tetris on the Game Boy was immensely popular partially because, as a casual game, it was quick and simple, which was ideal to the portable gaming model.

The advent of Flash created a boom in web-based games, while also limiting them to using a single-button mouse, and having no built-in functionality for save states, encouraging designers to create simple games that could be played to completion in one short sitting. The most prominent game from this period was Diamond Mine, released in 2000 by PopCap Games and licensed by Microsoft, as Bejeweled for their Microsoft Zone.

Casual games received another boost when cell phones with large color displays became the norm because, like Adobe Flash before them, the cell phones had limited capabilities ideally suited to short, simple games.

Casual games are often computer simulations of common games (such as chess, checkers, pinball, sudoku, solitaire, and mahjong) but also versions of retro games - including the well-known Tetris.

There is no precise classification of casual genres in the modern gaming industry. That can be explained by the easy ideas that form the basis for each game as well as a great amount of genre mixes existing in this field. The most popular casual genres for 2006 were: puzzle, word, casual action, card and board games.[2] Below is the listing of the most popular genres along with the game play description.

Puzzle games
The type of casual games, where a player's main task is to solve a puzzle, e.g. match the identical pieces on the playing field or place the falling blocks in a line (Tetris). Puzzle games are aimed at training player's logical thinking and reaction if the game is played at a time limit. The most popular examples of the puzzle games are matching games (Match-3), Tetris, Sudoku games.
Matching games present the biggest percentage of casual games produced nowadays. The player's task is to match two, three, or even four identical pieces on the playing field. In order to indicate the identical pieces, the player usually has to swap them with the neighboring ones, shoot, or place them together by mere clicking. Once a player clicks the identical pieces, they are removed from the playing field. The final mission of the matching game is to clear the playing field.
According to the IGDA Casual Games Developer Whitepaper for 2005[3], the most popular puzzle game is Big Kahuna Reef, which is an example of a match 3 game. The playing field is formed out of many charts and boxes with different pictures of undersea animals and plants inside. The background for the game is a 2D picture of the undersea.

Word games
These present the second largest category of casual games. In general, the point of every word game is forming a word (or a phrase) out of the letters (or words) on the playing field. The word games are aimed at training writing skills as well as improving the knowledge of spelling or studying a foreign language or learning alphabet for kids. The classic example for a word game is Bookworm Deluxe or Word Whomp. The playing field consists of the set of letters of the English alphabet. A player is required to form a word out of the neighboring letters on the playing field by clicking on them.

Party video games
Party video games are social based games which are filled with easy-to-play minigames.

Hidden Object games
Hidden object games are games in which typically the player is shown a complex scene or a piece of artwork that has been modified to include numerous items. The player attempts to find some of these items based on a text list on the screen or based on silhouettes of the objects. Mystery Case Files games are an example of hidden object games. Some casual games publishers classify hidden object games under puzzle games.

Card games
Computer clones of the real-world card games. The plot of many casual card games is inherited from the usual games like solitaire, Russian card game Durak etc. The player's task is to find two matching cards with identical value and place them together.

Board games
Another category of real-world games (checkers, chess, billiards, Mahjong). The game takes place on a board similarly to checkers, billiards, mahjong games. General Rules and game play features are preserved.

Strategy games
One of the emerging genres in the casual game industry, strategy games are a a broad grouping which include simulation, role playing and tycoon games. Common themes involve character building, adventure simulations and business scenarios. Casual strategy games are generally less complex than many of their hardcore PC counterparts, but they succeed by utilizing engaging scenarios and characters to satisfy the casual audience.

Action games
These games require a player to participate in an action in order to win. Its main attribute is a character or a set of characters that need to be controlled by a player via keyboard or a mouse. In many cases these games are based on the traditional arcade-style game play with the player having to make rapid, reactive decisions to survive. Such games are usually short-play games, only lasting a few minutes as the difficulty level increases exponentially. Some classic examples of action games are Space Invaders and Mario Bros. Some more recent examples are Doom, Quake, Dance Dance Revolution and Need for Speed.

Sports games
These games simulate the playing of traditional sports, such as golf, skiing, or football. They may focus on either actually playing the sport via simulation, or on the strategy behind the sport.