The North American Game Industry - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 83

HISTORICIZING THE NORTH
AMERICAN GAME INDUSTRY
As Chapter 1 noted, the history and emergence of the video game industry
in North America is inextricably tied to the birth and emergence of the
software industry. At the same time, these two industries have followed
very dif erent paths and produce very dif erent things. Thus, this chapter
takes the game industry to be something very dif erent from the software
industry. The “birth” of the video game industry in the U.S. is a highly
contested topic, in part, because of the central role that the U.S. played in
the early years of the game industry. It is debatable that a single individual
can be cited as “creating” the industry. Some would point to Steve Russell,
a student at MIT working on the Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC)
Programmed Data Processor-1 (PDP-1) who along with Martin Graetz and
Wayne Witaenem created Spacewar! (Hingham Institute 1962). Ralph Baer
has also been cited as the “father” of the video game industry because of his
involvement in the creation of the Magnavox Odyssey, which was released
in 1972. Ralph Baer also created a device that allowed him to play Tennis
for Two on a television screen, though this device was never released. Nolan
Bushnell, the founder of Atari is also credited as having an early role in the
creation of the game industry with his creation of the early Spacewar! clone
Computer Space and the hardware that supported the game. Bushnell's
inclusion is likely more for his involvement in the founding and early years
of Atari, and its release of the Atari Video Computer System (VCS), which
served as the foundation for the creation of the game industry (Malliet and
Zimmerman 2005). The Atari VCS, more commonly known as the Atari
2600, enabled the emergence of a new wave of game development and the
foundations for “third-party” game development, or games made by com-
panies other than the console's manufacturer. It was also the introduction
of game “cartridges” that really allowed the game industry to fl ourish. Up
until the release of the 2600 in 1977, game consoles came preloaded with a
small collection of software, which could not be expanded upon. The abil-
ity for developers to make new games for a console and for users to buy new
games, much like buying records at the time, created an opportunity for the
emergence of what can properly be called “the video game industry.”
As a handful of Atari game developers became dissatisfi ed with the
organization, they left to form a new game company, the fi rst independent
game studio. Activision was formed in 1980 by David Crane, Alan Miller
and Bob Whitehead (Kent 2001, 193). As Activision successfully developed
and brought to market games like Pitfall! (Crane 1982) other “third-party”
companies emerged and a semblance of the modern video game industry
emerged. Companies like Coleco, Imagic, Parker Brothers, Sega and the
XXX game company Mystique all emerged during this period. In part,
some claimed that it was the emergence of too many companies simultane-
ously that resulted in the “crash” of 1983-1984.