Father Of Videogames Dies
June 8th, 2006 Posted in Articles, PC, Technology
Alan Kotok, creator of worlds first true videogame, Spacewar, died of a heart attack, aged 64. He developed Spacewar at MIT in 1961, where players used a mainframe science computer to fly small spaceships around a wireframe screen, shooting missiles. He has never been truly credited for his work, and didn’t make any money on videogames either. He said to New York Times once that “The only money I made from Spacewar was as a consultant for lawsuits in the video game industry in the 1970s.”
June 8th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
He’s not the father of video games; Ralph Baer is, he created “worlds first true videogame” long before Alan Kotok did.
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2005/06/the_father_of_v.html
June 8th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Have you actually read the article (link) you posted? Not only does it say that Steve Russel developed a video game, curiously also called Spacewar, in the 1950s, but even Alan Kotok developed his game system before Ralph Baer.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
Yea u idiot Kraptreon,
Baer was born in 1966 and kotok created that game in 61 stupid……
June 8th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Baer was the first to make a game that was affordable for the public. Steve Russel created a game that could only be played on a 60k mainframe at that time.
the more you know.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Obvioiusly you also cannot read theridgesfinest…
Quote from the linked article: “But that title really belongs to Ralph Baer, who several years before Atari was born, in 1966, created the first games that ran on TV sets.”
It appears that the Atari was born in 1966 NOT Ralph Baer.
Baer was born March 8, 1922.
Now would you care to go on calling other people stupid?
June 9th, 2006 at 12:19 am
im not really arguing the title though, that guy made really the first arcade game..
June 9th, 2006 at 12:38 am
this is confusing, this article says that alan kotok created ’spacewars’ in 1961, while the link left by krapteon says that steve russel made ’spacewars’ in the 50’s. they can’t both be right.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:03 am
so like 4 college i did game history so like yh, read this
In 1949 Ralph Baer was ask to make the best TV ever made but he decide to go further and make it interactive, a game. This idea got stolen by his manager and the idea took 18 years to happen. The first video game was created by some people at Sander Associates. In 1966 they came up with the idea of have a ball fly around the screen and the players have to catch it, the game evolved into ping pong.
Early computers were very big, had poor graphics and low processing power. Many very old classic games were updated from older games. ‘Asteroids’ is an updated version of the game ‘Spacewars’ which was made by 1 man and took him 200 man hours to make, he never made any money from the game.
June 9th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
You stupid nerds. The guy’s dead and you’re argueing like a bunch of wankers about videogames. Shame on you lot. May the dude rest in peace, whether he created the first video game or not.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:51 am
I just finished a history of videogames class at the end of May. Actually, the first video game ever made was called Tennis for Two, and was designed to run on an oscillospe. Spacewars was created by the TMRC at MIT, and credit was given to them as creating the first videogame. Steve Russel was the origional and most credited member of the club that was working on the game. Baer’s first game was actually Fox and Hound, and was the first to be played on a TV (it was a magnavox tv, btw). His invention was dubbed The Brown Box, but that didn’t fly…hence the Odyssey.
All of you have just been rocked.
Thank you ^_^
btw – I have written proof of all of this. Read the book The Ultimate History of Video Games
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761536434/103-6401925-7649455?v=glance&n=283155
June 11th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
u took a class in the history of videogames… well i guess it payed of
May 8th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
your all wrong XD
the first game was on the (CRT)cathode ray tube in 1897 by german physicist Ferdinand Braun.
the game came out shortly after WWII in 1947.
the game was a missle simulation game.
Go look it up on wiki
(doin’ a project on video games)