Olivia Seeney COMM 215 Foundations of Communication December 12, 2016 Video Games: History and Communication In today’s society the video game industry has become a large part of both our culture and our sources of communication throughout the world. The impact that video games have on the youth of today develop lasting communication skills that become useful for individuals within a culture such as the one that exists today. In a matter of years the video game industry has evolved from one that only allowed for communication between a few people at one time to a massive network of people around the world being able to connect to one another over a similar interest. Fairly new technology such as this is quickly transitioning into becoming a …show more content…
Communication has also become a key part of this growing industry because of the additional level of fun that it adds to this recreation. Being able to partake in a group activity without having to be directly in contact with one another not only provides a more convenient way to meet more people, but it also gives nearly complete assurance that two individuals will be able to bond over the game itself. Many of the video games that have been produced today have been developed to revolve around the secular community in order to increase profit. This puts those who believe in Christianity at a disadvantage due to the fact that each Christian must now guard themselves more heavily against some of the themes that are found within some video games. This does not mean however, that Christians cannot or should not participate in recreation electronic video game activities. It is only imperative that each person is able to recognize the dangers of involving themselves in secular games. With the development of these video games the reaches of communication …show more content…
The first idea of any sort of electronic game such as the ones we know today was proposed in 1950 by Claude Shannon, a mathematician and engineer, who suggested that it would be possible to play chess on the computer. This thinking sparked a whole new industry of electronic gaming that was born out of the same laboratories that had begun work on the computer. In 1958 William Higinbottom created Tennis for two, an experiment that showed the potential for on-screen game play. Although, this had been the first of many experimental games to come, “many today do not consider this to have been a real video game (Wolf).” Although work on these computer generated electronic games still continued for a number of years after this development, it was not until 1971 when “the first coin-operated arcade video game, Nolan Bushnell’s Computer Space, appears (Wolf).” Only one year went by before the first home electronic game system, the Magnavox Odyssey, was introduced to the video game industry. With the invention of this console as well as the up and coming game Pong, the electronic video game industry took off. The