[game_preservation] The Videogame Archivist

[Martin Goldberg]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Devin Monnens <dmonnens at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, it might help if there was a little bit of taxonomical history. I

> attempted this several times, and the best I was able to discover was that

> the term "video games" became very widely used, though primarily in

> reference to arcade machines, somewhere around 1974 or 1975 (don't quote me

> on this, this is coming from rote memory!).


I know we had discussed it when you were doing the research.  PONG was
advertised as a "video skill game" which was the closest to the
primordial sense of the word.  There are several games in 1973 that
use the term:  Gotcha (1973) is one of the first ones I'm aware of to
use the term (the full term in the flyer being "video game
technology").  Micro Games' Champion Ping Pong (1973) were also using
the term video game to describe their machine.  Ramtek also used it
for their game Hockey (1973).

Nolan of course claims credit for coining it, but when I talked to Al
Alcorn he said they got the term from a member of the press who called
PONG that while on display at the AMOA when they were there.

By 1973, others in the game industry were calling these TV Games, TV
Tennis, Space Age Game, video action game, electronic game, and
television skill game.  But the context is obvious for these and the
term "video game" itself arising to describe the TV technology encased
in all of them - they all literally had television sets sitting inside
of them.  For some reason, the industry and the press gradually
gravitated to the term "video game" over all the others.


Marty