[game_preservation] The Videogame Archivist

[Rowan Kaiser]

One of the interesting linguistic shifts in recent years has been the use of
"video games" to mean all kinds of games, instead of merely console games.
It used to be that computer games and video games were held up as examples
of different styles, but I think there's been a deliberate attempt to bring
all of them under the same umbrella of video games or videogames. This has
also gone along with the trend towards console and computer games becoming
much more similar, thanks mostly to western-style RPGs and first-person
shooters crossing over to the consoles.


Rowan

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:


> Devin,

>

> another problem for linguistic analysis: Atari included the word "computer"

> in some of their advertising for Pong.  You can see this clearly in one of

> the illustrations for my article on Computer Space/Pong in the IEEE Annals

> for the History of Computing.  I recall (correctly, I hope) that the game

> sheets even used the term "computer brain" for Computer Space, implying

> there was a CPU, when of course there was not.

>

> It might be worth a shot with the new google analytics, comparing "video

> game" v. "videogame."

>

> Henry

>

>

> On 1/10/2011 11:19 AM, Martin Goldberg wrote:

>

>> 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

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>

> --

> Henry Lowood

> Curator, History of Science&  Technology Collections;

>   Film&  Media Collections

> HRG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall

> 650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu

> http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood <http://www.stanford.edu/%7Elowood>

>

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