My favorite video game as a child, that I can remember, was Goofy's Fun House on PlayStation 1. I also remember playing games on the Nintendo. I don't remember those games as well as I remember Goofy's Fun House however. As I played Goofy's Fun House I remember wondering how a disk does so much in a little box sitting on the floor. Why can I interact with this disk in a different way than that of DVD? I won't be answering this question right now though. Nevertheless, this memory has given me the inspiration to wonder where did the term "video game" come from.
As I searched the term "video game" on the Newspaper ProQuest Archive, the first article that came up mentioning it was from the Chicago Daily Tribute on December 9, 1949. The article is titled "Cartune-O, New Video Game, on WGN-TV Tonight." The article talks about a television game that the viewing audience can participate in. It mentions how everyone is in anticipation for the game to be introduced from 7-8 o'clock that night. The game consisted of Nancy and the Temptones singing a song and leaving out the titles. The audience then had to call in with guesses to the title of that song. During this time in the late 1940's, they were calling a television game a "video game". This is defiantly not the "video game" from my childhood that I was expecting to find more about. It is actually a reality TV show game over a video screen.
In addition to that articled, I found another article that mentioned "video game" in the Chicago Daily Tribute from October `6, 1953. It is titled "Texas Faces Oklahoma in Video Game". It talks about how The Oklahoma Sooners will be seeking their first victory at play between the Texas Longhorns in the Cotton bowl at the 48th football meeting between the two schools. At this time they called a football game, being produced over TV, a "video game". Still, not the "video game" from my childhood I remember.
As I continued this way through the articles, I did not find the meaning of "video game" that I remembered from my childhood untill articles began to mention gameplay in the early 60's. Before then, articles mentioned "video game" as a television game or a sports game on TV. As I searched through other databases, like JStor, I received a similar result, but with more recent references. The fact that before the 60's people were calling games that were on TV a video games is very interesting to me. I completely understand why they would call those games a "video game".To me though, the term "video game" seems both a smart and ignorant thing for them to call those games back then. This is because of how today, it means much more .
The modern video game today consists of multiple interactions, and game progressions, through a digitized interface between one or multiple people. This was definitely not what society had in mind when they first coined this term in the late 40's. My only wonder now is if the use of the word "video game" will change to a more broad term further on in the future, or if it will continue to foster as gameplay in a virtual world.
3 comments:
I find it hard to believe the first "video game" was a television program. It makes since seeing that the program is playing on medium is video and the program is a game. I would have never thought that a game show was called a video game.
I can also understand how a football game was also called a video game.
I was expecting the first references to the video game as we know it to be made around the 1960s. I was shocked that it was referenced before then.
Before reading this, I didn't think that the term was going to change, but I was really surprised! Great choice!
I find this very interesting of how the term has changed from then to now. I could see how it was used back then to describe a game show, or any show that was a video or televised. I think the term was used as both words being separate, so if something was a video about a game, then it was referred to as a "video game". This is different from how we use the term nowadays and it is interesting to see the change. I thought that the first uses of the term would be about very early video games that were the first ever, but I guess I was wrong. Nice choice of a term that has evolved!
Te'Asia, this is a really interesting post. You had a great intro, which you did a nice job of continuing to reference throughout the post. It is interesting to think of the early video games that are actually the early versions of what we have around today. It is also funny to think of the term "video game" used in other contexts in earlier times. I would never have thought of any other uses of that term. It would also be interesting to explore the beginning of video games as we know them today. Great post!
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