It’s funny how we categorize things, isn’t it? We’ve got computer games, and then there are video games, and often, we keep them neatly separated. But what if that line is blurrier than we think? I was recently digging through some old notes, and a conversation I had back in 2011 with Nolan Bushnell, one of the pioneers of the video game industry, really got me thinking about this.
Bushnell, you know, the guy behind Atari and the world's first mass-produced video game, Computer Space, was on the phone, driving home from an appointment. We were talking about the very essence of what makes a game a 'video' game. I posed a question that’s been rattling around in my head: if you wrote a game on an old PDP-1 computer that used a visual display, was it fundamentally different from what we now call a video game?
His take was pretty straightforward: he didn't see a real distinction. He pointed out that even early games like Tempest and Lunar Lander, which used vector graphics, were undeniably video games. The technology just got cheaper, allowing more of these visual experiences to become commercial realities. He suggested that the technical differences, like raster versus vector graphics, were just details that didn't change the core nature of the experience.
So, could we just call them all 'electronic games'? Bushnell thought you really needed that 'video' component in there. But then he added a twist: even that definition gets complicated with modern LCD TVs. The core idea, he proposed, is an image that can move, driven by some kind of electronic construct. That’s the heart of it.
This led to a fascinating thought experiment. What about an electronic checkers game from the 1960s, displayed on a screen? "Oh yeah," he said, recalling Atari's Chess cartridge for the 2600. But then, what if it was just text? What about those text-based games on mainframes? Is there a point where they stop being 'video' games because they aren't necessarily graphical?
That, he felt, was a more meaningful distinction. If a game's output could just as easily be printed on paper, then perhaps it wasn't truly a video game. The illustrations, the worlds, were being rendered in your mind, not on a screen. Video displays, by their nature, offer fast refresh rates and the ability to show dynamic, moving images. While it originally meant a CRT, the term 'video' now encompasses almost any electronic display capable of showing arbitrary visuals.
It’s a neat way to think about it, isn't it? The defining characteristic isn't just the electronics, but the visual, dynamic display that brings the game to life, not just in our imagination, but right there in front of our eyes. It’s about that moving image, powered by circuits, that truly makes it a video game.
