A couple of years ago now, my sister gave me "The History of Video Games" by Charlie Fish. It's a short but interesting overview of the video game industry - both its roots and its influence on culture. I read through this in just a couple of days - mostly to mix up what I was reading. I did learn some things that I did not know and, as closely as I've followed the industry off-and-on over the years due to being a dedicated consumer of video games, it was nice for the book to shed some more light on an industry that has meant so much to me.
The book is segregated into logical sections and includes many images of game screens, influential individuals, and other cultural game-related pictures. It progresses logically from its early beginnings up until 2019 - right before the publication of this volume. It is missing data on the current generation of consoles and their sales figures, which would be admittedly incomplete at this stage in any event, but the book is remarkably contemporary with some of the games and issues that it discusses.
One of quite a few things I learned from reading this was that Pong was not the first video game. The first marketable one, yes, but not the first one. According to the author, the first was "Pool," from 1954. That was a really long time ago when thinking of how rapidly technology advances. The room-sized computer it was played on made 25,000 calculations a second. By way of comparison, smart phones do well over 3 billion calculations per second. That's off topic, though, but still intriguing.
I was also surprised to learn how early the industry became an economic powerhouse. I know it is now - it's gotten so enormous that it is irrefutably significant. By 1982, for example, approximately 7 billion coins had been inserted into 400,000 ""Pac-Man" machines worldwide. Excluding the sales of the machines themselves, that was more money than "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back" had made in gross box office receipts in the same time period.
Somewhat more recently, in 1993, in the US, computer games made $430 million in revenue (unadjusted for inflation), versus $6 billion for console games. Believe it or not, arcade games made more than both of those put together that year. Compare that to the film industry, which is well-established and a centerpiece for the cultural art scene and generated only $5 billion in revenue in 1993.
I'm an accountant so I tend to try to break things down to numbers where I can. There are still inherent biases against the industry in terms of its cultural value, its capacity to even be considered artistic, and its ability to evoke an emotional response in its audience. I started with the economics, in part, to illustrate that the public doesn't necessarily behave as if those biases are valid - at least in terms of how they spend their time and their money. It's relevant.
Some of the assumptions about gamers - specifically that they are predominantly male (presently, gamers' genders are about evenly proportionate), that they are predominantly youthful (the average age is about 35...but it is worth noting that, though that is young, the average age of a person is about the same), and that it is a form of escapism for those that can't or aren't willing to deal with reality. The latter assertion really irks me as the same could be said of any media equally disingenuously. But it isn't - that particular bias against gaming is a larger problem than I can hope to address here.
For a coffee table book, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through "The History of Video Games." I learned quite a bit and enjoyed remembering some of the events that occurred as the industry developed steadily throughout the course of my life. Also, no history of video game book could be complete without an attempt at ranking all-time bests - see image below for their take on the very best games. My vote goes for "R-Type," probably, which didn't even make the list.
