One of the most frequently asked questions about video game history is perhaps the simplest: what was the first video game? It’s a logical question to ask. After all, we’re always curious about these questions of primacy. Who was the first man on the moon? Neil Armstrong. Who was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic? Amelia Earhart. Who was the first person to climb Mount Everest? Well, in this case it was actually two people: Sir Edmund Hillary […]
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Designing the Duke
Denise Chaudhari was the first woman hired for the then-secret Xbox project, where she designed more than just the original “Duke” controller that launched with the system in 2001.
Digital Resources from The Strong’s Women in Games Initiative
Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ralph Baer, Jordan Mechner, Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, John Romero. These are some of the most recognizable names in the history of video games. They’re also—well, noticeably, all men. Yet, there are obviously plenty of women who have made a huge impact on the games industry—and one of our most recent projects at The Strong seeks to highlight that.
The Women in Games initiative at The Strong began in 2017 as a key program of the museum’s […]
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Carol Kantor: The Video Game Industry’s First Market Researcher
How do you know if a game will be a hit or a flop with players? According to legend, video game pioneer Atari knew their 1972 coin-operated video game Pong would be a winner because players filled the test game’s coinbox with so many quarters that it jammed up the machine. As any veteran of the arcade game industry will tell you: “The coin box never lies.” But surely there should be more to it than that? In […]
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A Brief History of Online Games
For most of human existence our ability to play together has been circumscribed by our physical connection with others in our immediate vicinity, a radiating circle of family, friends, and neighbors, spiced with an occasional get together with more distant associates. As I write this blog, we are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has mandated new social distancing rules greatly limiting our ability to gather with others. And yet the play must go on. Fortunately for us, […]
Saving Speedrunning and Digital Communities
How do you preserve the history of a community? What even makes up a community? How can you store something so abstract, intimate, and interpersonal in files and text? These are the questions I was asking last summer at The Strong. My goal as an intern at the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) was to curate and archive the history of video game speedrunning—the act of beating video games as rapidly as possible by any means […]
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Off the Grid: Tron Evolution and DRM Authentication
Digital rights management (DRM) tools have been used on software for decades. Companies install these protections to defend software from piracy or the unauthorized copying of the data. However, although designed with the best of intentions, DRM can have a negative effect on legally purchased software as well.
In 2010, Disney released the game Tron Evolution as a tie-in to the company’s Tron: Legacy movie, and distributed it on console and Windows computer platforms. While the console versions have their own […]
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Building a Mystery—Spotlight on Jane Jensen
Since 2017, The Strong has directed significant energy toward our Women in Games initiative, which documents and celebrates the crucial contributions of women to the electronic games industry. Under the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG), the initiative builds upon the holdings of museum artifacts and archival records which illustrate the impact of women in the field. (If you attended the Women in Games: Inspire! or Women in Games: Create! programs in 2018 or 2019, […]
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Displaying Your High Score With Activision Patches
People play video games for a myriad of reasons. Relaxation, mental stimulation, engrossing plotlines, eye-catching graphics, and much more draw gamers to certain titles. But one goal in particular lures players back to games over and over again: high scores. In the modern world of gaming, it’s easy to share personal accolades. Consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation offer achievements and trophies for completing various tasks throughout their games. Mobile apps often feature badges, online ranking boards, […]
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