
Digital Video Game Firsts – Michigan Pool (1954) - masswerk
https://www.masswerk.at/nowgobang/2019/michigan-pool
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jccalhoun
Very interesting. The question of "first" is often tricky because definitions
are often only made after something has become established and then
retroactively applied to earlier creations.

This predates 1958's Tennis for Two which is often said to be the fist
videogame.

Earlier candidates are 1951's Nimrod and 1950's Bertie the Brain which are
both often excluded because their display consisted of lights rather than
generating graphics.

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masswerk
As pointed out in the article, I'd opt for a definition about a visual,
interactive feedback loop running in real-time and wouldn't care about the
method used to display the visuals. E.g., if you were displaying Space
Invaders on a neon matrix on your mainframe's control console, I'm fine with
that. (This is also, why I didn't dig into the claims or the verdict of the
court case.)

However, things worked out a bit different in the Magnavox lawsuits. Notably,
Ralph Baer didn't understand, why lawyers would concentrate on the analog vs
video side of things. To him, it was all about a principal claim about
detecting object collisions between a human controlled screen object and one
controlled by the machine. (Compare his view on these legal matters as in
"VIDEOGAME HISTORY: A little matter of record keeping" [1].)

From this angle, there is no intersection with Michigan Pool, since the
positioning of the cue stick isn't of any relevance to the program, only the
angle as chosen by the knob, regardless of the on-screen position of the cue
stick. So there's no collision detection involved for cuing, and when
collisions are subsequently detected, these are all between machine controlled
objects.

[1]
[http://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/...](http://www.ipmall.info/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/Activision_Readings/VIDEOGAME_HISTORY_Aittlematter_record_keeping.pdf)

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jccalhoun
Definitions are always tough. Are text adventure games "video games?" How
about games with no visuals at all like A Blind Lengend
[http://www.ablindlegend.com/en/home-2/](http://www.ablindlegend.com/en/home-2/)
What about things like Mattel Football? When I've taught videogame courses I
ask my students these questions and they often fall back on the old "I know it
when I see it" rational.

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masswerk
Are text adventures video games? With a focus on the kind of interaction,
probably not. However, it may be interesting to observe, how computer games
tend to reflect the mode of HCI in general. In the days of X-Y displays and
console switches (and light pens as well) – wherever those had been available
–, video games may have been a more obvious option. On the other hand,
exploring the parsers of text adventures and the world hidden behind them
reflects perfectly the principal mode of interaction in the age of terminals
and time sharing (or text consoles in general).

P.S.: Compare [https://www.masswerk.at/pmd/](https://www.masswerk.at/pmd/) –
ist this a video game? If so, close the map window (enter "hide map"), is it
still a video game?

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muterad_murilax
So, is it correct to say that Bertie the Brain (1950) was the very first video
game?

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masswerk
Apparently, it depends on the definition. Personally (as pointed out at the
beginning of this write-up), it's more about a visual feedback loop and fluid
user interaction, which would exclude turn-based games or any presentation
that runs autonomously while triggered on some user input, which is evaluated
at the start of the program (compare Bouncing Ball or Mouse in a Maze). I
guess, what makes a video game a video game is the kind of interaction – and
typically a user may choose to interact or to not interact at any given
iteration of the principal main loop – and this required real-time computing.
There's a distinction of a "mere" computer game (whatever the output medium)
and a video game. We may even add some cultural notion, like that a true video
game had to introduce some "magical" world of its own (by invention or
abstraction) as opposed to just recreating an existing game in faithful on-
screen simulation. But, again, this is subject to debate.

For me, when it comes to _digital video games_ (i.e. a visual real-time game
running on a digital computer), the first one we do know of is still
"Spacewar!" (1962).

\--

Edit: The cultural argument is rather similar to the question of rejecting
"doing things on a computer" in tech patents.

