The world’s first “computer game” could be played as early as 1912 on an automaton called “El Ajedrecista. In fact, it was the first electromagnetic-based chess game in which a human could play against a machine, and inevitably lose.
And yet the first computer game, even remotely similar to the modern, should be considered Space Wars, created in 1961. It was developed by a student Steve Russell.
The first version of the game known today as GTA had another name – Race’n’Chase. And it was not a great success among testers-gamers. It was all very civil and elegant: the player chose which side he would be on – the criminal or the policeman – and played by the prescribed rules. The excitement began after the developers added a bug that allows the police to act on the roads during the chase as reckless as the criminals, and ignore the traffic.
The gamers wanted to compete with the police officers, and the game became very popular. Then the developers changed its name to “Grand Theft Auto”. The gamers want the games to be as close to reality as possible, and if something doesn’t suit them, they are displeased. Such was the case with the Tiger Woods PGA game, in which a gamer could hit a ball floating on the surface of a body of water.
The company-developer came up with an original move: released an advertisement with Tiger Woods, in which he, walking on the water, made an accurate shot at the ball. Sometimes a computer game can confirm a scientific hypothesis if it can’t be done any other way. To prove that a hare uses its bright white tail to deceive a stalker, German professor Dirk Semmann suggested that test subjects play a simulation game.
The player had to “perform the duties” of a wolf chasing a hare. Gamers were offered two types of hares – one-color and white-tailed. In the second case, many more mistakes were made during the chase. Zemann’s hypothesis that the hare produces tail distractions was confirmed. Lara Croft would not have been so lush-breasted if not for the designer, who, while changing the character settings, accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally) clicked on the girl’s bust. Her breasts began to protrude three times as much, and that pleased all the male developers. It happens that a game and the skills learned in it can save someone’s life.
When a Norwegian boy, Hans Olsen, was walking in the woods with his sister, they were suddenly attacked by an enraged moose. To get the animal to fully turn on him, Hans teased him and then fell to the ground “dead.” The moose was tricked and the children were unharmed. Not only could you play the game FIFA 2001, but you could also enjoy smelling it: the discs smelled like fresh grass. The typical gamer is not a student or a child, as you might think, but quite an adult. He is 33 years old. In the U.S., for example, more than 24% of avid gamers have already passed the half-century mark. The first The Sims didn’t leave the top ten best-selling games in the UK for almost two years after its release.
But the most popular game in history is Tetris. This simple pastime has sold forty million copies worldwide. The game Doom, based on which at one time was even a movie, could be banned because of the excessive bloodiness. The clouds over the project gathered in 1994, but fortunately for the developers and fans, it was not banned.
Developers often make themselves known in games in a variety of ways. On one of the tombstones of Fable the Lost Chapters, you can read the name of the company’s director. The fathers of Half Life 2 wrote their names on the lockers standing in the locker room. The creators of Serious Sam: The Second Coming first encounter the character’s spaceship and crash. And then, much later, crawl out of their graves and run after the player with the words “come to daddy!”