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Computer Game is a game which is played on a computer using computer graphics for display. These Games are also known as PC and are available in the market in the form of DVDs and CDs. Some of these Games are also Internet-downloadable some are freeware while others need to be paid before downloading. Some games can be played online while others like Solitaire etc. are freely provided with Windows Operating System. Today's PC games are very Graphic rich and as such require Graphic Cards and certain amount of RAM in order to be played. These are played generally with Keyboard or Mouse. Other common Gaming peripherals are a headset for faster communication in online games, joysticks for flight simulators, steering wheels for driving games etc. Computer games also rely on third-party software such as an operating system (OS), device drivers, libraries and more to run. Examples of such are Microsoft's DirectX and OpenGL.
History
The invention of the Computer itself, made it possible for it, to be used for Recreational purposes. Steve Russell, a U.S. programmer and computer scientist along with Martin Graetz and Alan Kotok developed the First Computer Game which was known as 'Spacewar!'. It was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962. While working at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, Steve Russell wrote Spacewar on a PDP-1, an early DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) interactive mini computer which used a cathode-ray tube type display and keyboard input. The inspiration to develop a game by Rusell came from the writings of E. E. "Doc" Smith, a science fiction writer. Spacewar was a two-player game involving warring spaceships firing photon torpedoes. Each player could manoeuvre a spaceship and score by firing missiles at his opponent while avoiding the gravitational pull of the sun.
Development in the Invention of the Computer Game
By the mid-sixties, Spacewar was available on nearly every research computer in the country. Steve Russell transferred to Stanford University, where he introduced computer game programming and Spacewar to an engineering student called Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell went on to write the first coin-operated computer arcade game and start Atari Computers.
By the mid-1970s, games were developed and distributed through hobbyist groups and gaming magazines, such as Creative Computing and later Computer Gaming World. These publications provided game code that could be typed into a computer and played, encouraging readers to submit their own software to competitions.
In 1976, Will Crowther created the first text-adventure interactive fiction game 'Adventure' which required entering certain commands through a keyboard to be played. Adventure, was developed for the PDP-11 and expanded by Don Woods in 1977.
Microchess was one of the first games for microcomputers which was sold to the public. First sold in 1977, Microchess eventually sold over 50,000 copies on cassette tape.
By the 1980s, Personal Computers had become powerful enough to run games like Adventure and graphics were beginning to become an important factor in games. Later games combined textual commands with basic graphics, as was evident in the SSI Gold Box games such as Pool of Radiance, or Bard's Tale. Introduction of high resolution bitmap displays allowed the PC Game industry to include increasingly high-quality graphical interfaces in new releases.
In 1984, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was designed by Douglas Adams and Infocom's Steve Meretzky. It was for the Apple II, Macintosh, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST and the IBM PC. It included extras such as the peril-sensitive sunglasses which were actually a pair of opaque black cardboard sunglasses.
In 1987, Computer Gaming experience became more enthralling with the introduction of the first sound cards, such as AdLib's Music Synthesizer Card. These cards allowed IBM PC compatible computers to produce complex sounds using FM synthesis, where they had previously been limited to simple tones and beeps.
In 1989, Day of the Viper a first-person adventure video game was published by Accolade. In the game the player must explore five abandoned hi-tech and heavily guarded buildings in order to find and install floppy disks.
In 1991, Id Software produced one of the first-person shooter games, Hovertank 3D. It was published by Softdisk in April. In 1992, Id Software went on to develop Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. This game popularized the First Person Shooter genre on the PC to a great extent. In the game the protagonist is an American soldier named William "B.J." Blazkowicz whose mission is to escape from the titular Nazi stronghold.
In 1993, a breakthrough in 3D graphics created Doom on the PC. At the same time games such as Myst took advantage of the new CD-ROM delivery format to include many more assets (sound, images, video) for a richer game experience.
By 1996, success of 3D console titles such as Super Mario 64 and the rise of Microsoft Windows generated hardware accelerated 3D graphics on the IBM PC compatible. Soon affordable solutions came up, like the ATI Rage, Matrox Mystique and Silicon Graphics ViRGE. 1996 also saw the release of Tomb Raider, which was one of the first third person shooter games. It raised the bar and accelerated revolutionary graphics developments.
3D graphics libraries such as DirectX and OpenGL matured and these started gaining greater acceptance in the market as compared to Gaming Consoles. Unreal developed by GT Interactive (now owned by Atari) in May 1998 was an example of this trend.
Radeon R300 (Graphic Card) introduced August 2002 brought unthinkable graphical performance.
The GeForce 6 Series (codename NV40) Nvidia's graphic processing units launched on April 14, 2004, showcased strong improvements in 3D graphics.
Role of the Invention of Computer Game in the development of Human Life
