[game_preservation] National Game Registry Blog

[Martin Goldberg]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 7:25 PM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

> That's actually a good question. I can't say, but I think it would have been

> sometime when CDROMs were first starting to become popular as an industry

> buzzword.



Actually, it started back around the time of the Odyssey.  It was
described as an interactive electronic gaming experience with the
television.  I have one review here in fact from Sept. of '72 that
describes it in that manner.


> I tracked down the use of terms such as 'videogame'. It's fun to read

> through Ralph Baer's old documents - he describes the names he was going to

> give the system, and eventually settled on 'TV Games'. The term was used

> through the late 70s, but what is really interesting is he has a few

> documents from coin op conventions where he describes 'coin-op tv games' and

> still other memos where he uses 'video games', which sounds like a term

> coined by Atari (pun?).


Well, the idea is that the term arrived from a descriptive of the
technology.  The technology was based on "How do you interface with a
video signal to produce interaction on a television set?", which was a
big deal that time.  That's why spot generation and manipulation is
usually the first step (and what Ralph did with the Odyssey and what
Ted designed for Computer Space).  The word Video is synonymous with
TV, and the two were used interchangeably by media/press, the
companies, and even the engineers at the time.  Publicly Atari first
started using it around the time of Pong, though Al Alcorn told me it
was an un-named member of the press at one of the early showings that
he first heard the term used to describe it.

That's one of the key reasons though why both Spacewar! and Tennis For
Two were thrown out of court as previous examples of technology to try
and invalidate Ralph's patents.  None of those had to do with video
technology.  Unfortunately for Bally/Midway, Chicago Dynamic, Allied
Leisure, and a host of other companies all the way up to Nintendo,
that's also why they all lost their suits - because theirs were based
around video technology.

The issue now is that beginning in the very early 80's, the press and
even a lot of the company marketing that was appearing, started using
the term very broadly.  Things from handheld LED games (i.e. Mattel
Football) to anything that was electronic, visual, and a game, were
referred to under "video games" as a generic catch phrase.  It became
more of a pop culture term, and consequently started being applied in
complete hindsite to anything related over the years.  Hence you have
arguments now as to "the first video game" when years ago there was no
such supported argument.


Marty