The Nimatron: first 'video game' debuted in 1939
daily.jstor.org
daily.jstor.org
I once [1] came up with the following criteria for the term "digital video game":
- Digital real-time computing* running some kind of simulation,
- A visual display to communicate the state of the game (preferably a CRT as in “video”),
- Means of user input for uninterrupted real-time interaction.
- Further, the simulation and its on-screen rendition should be updated at a pace, which conveys the impression of a seamless interaction (i.e., about a minimum of 10-12 steps per second).
Meaning, there's a closed feedback loop between the machine and the player(s), which exposes intervals for accepting interactive input, which may be used by the player to change the game's state or may be passed, as well, and that the rendition (primarily visual, on a planar surface) of the output of this loop is supposed to generate a seamless experience of the game world (as governed by its mechanics, rules, and internal states, which may be exposed to a varying degree). In other words, according to this proposed definition, video games in the stricter sense are frame based (as opposed to turn based) and include a temporal dimension. (E.g., Lunar Lander for the PDP-8 is not a [digital] video game, even when displayed and operated by a video terminal, while Lunar Lander for the GT40 is.)
*) Notably, "real-time computing" doesn't necessarily mean general purpose computing. Any kind of interactive signal generator will do. (Compare Computer Space, Pong, etc., in the analog domain Higinbotham's Tennis, AKA Tennis for Two.)
For example, this rules out anything turn based which listens to input only when it is the user's turn and updates the screen only when turns are taken. This could be anything from a simple board game to a highly complex turn-based 4X strategy game.
I would also argue this doesn't allow for any type of text based adventure game in the vein of Zork: they may listen to input most of the time, but there's no indication of a continuous logic or render loop running while waiting for user input.
But if I were to take a crack at some of the major boundaries that come up around video games specifically - the phrase "scene and feedback" comes to mind. That is, there is a scene presented, real or imaginary, and player actions automatically produce rules-mediated feedback on that scene through computation alone.
So that excludes mechanical actions like a pinball game, or human game masters(which do come up in online multiplayer often enough to make this a tenuous definition, but somewhat recognizable - we tend to not treat social networks as video games, even though they do resemble MMOs). It says little else about implementation, but the aspect of scene then comes to the forefront. Is Nim a "fictional scene" or is it just data? And are "real scenes", like controlling a robot from afar, actually still video games?
I think the scene question is primarily reflected by focus and player mastery. A game that's been solved like Tic-Tac-Toe is perceived without mystery or anticipation: to win play here, to draw play there. But something with a lot of essential complexity like Chess can draw players into obsession. And something like a painting app explicitly positions the content as data, something to be manipulated in totality, rather than as a scene that is "interacted" with according to rules. For productivity apps to be as interesting as a game, you have to provide your own ruleset, which is a good deal harder than just following one that's handed to you from a designer. Likewise, if the scene is literally just a real-world scenario, the game has no coherent focus and stops being game-like.
But, video games that are "quintessential video game" - the Marios and Minecrafts - adhere pretty strongly to this abductive hypothesis: they have a strong notion of scene, and a focus on direct, rule-based, computationally automated interaction. They have a specific lens through which the scenes are defined that supports the types of interactions being explored - Mario has levels that let him run and jump, Minecraft worlds are designed to support building and exploring.
What makes people willing to swallow Higinbotham's "Tennis for Two" or "Spacewar!" as video game and not OXO(1949) or Nimatron really is about the notion of scene and its associated fiction. Adding an action element immediately makes it more of a scene, one that is limited by your ability to react and manipulate the controls. Graphics and real-time operation accomplish this most easily, but text adventures and strategic wargames with no substantial graphics and turn-based gameplay likewise also produce enough of a fiction to be lumped in the category, albeit reluctantly so by the more graphics-obsessed.
The keyword here is diegesis. In other words, there's a fictional world exposed by the apparatus and things happen in this world, by means of interaction with objects that are occurring both in this fictional world and the rendition on the screen. Game mechanics, rules and narrative content necessarily overlap, by this creating an investment on the side of the player. (Compare the somewhat peculiar importance put by Spacewar! authors to provide an explanation for why shots are not subject to gravity, i.e. weightless "photon torpedoes", or why hyperspace is prone to fail eventually, i.e. experimental "Mk I hyperdrive".)
The aspect of note here is, how this investment is established. As in all games, this is subject to things like riddle, challenge and mastery. So, how is this presented in a specific, typical way? I'd suggest to emphasise the presence of an iconographic viewport and seamless interaction in order to separate video games from other kinds of computer games. Notably, video games present a challenge, which is both tactical and strategical in nature. There are necessarily multiple levels (a hierarchy, not game levels) to the puzzle, with motor skills – as introduced by the temporary aspect of seamless, frame-based interaction – at the basic level. Also, there's an incessant need on the player's side to update her/his/* orientation, of what is going on in the diegesis and what hints may be exposed on the viewport.
(We may even expand on this to establish sub-genres: E.g., first person shooters introduce a specific, subjective instability to the viewport, which adds to the riddle and the challenge of mastery.)
Arguably, in early video games, there was on emphasis on the motor skill and orientation challenge, which contributed to the popularity of person-to-person two player games: For the first time humans of widely differing size, weight, strength, age, and abilities could match on an equal level in a competitive way. (In a way, video games didn't abstract their in-game world as much as they did abstract human players by the very mode of interaction.)
How can a computer be non-programmable? The whole idea of a computer is that it runs a list of instructions.
Found this quote that sums it up nicely.
The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the use of the term to mean "'calculating machine' (of any type) is from 1897.
The Online Etymology Dictionary indicates that the "modern use" of the term, to mean 'programmable digital electronic computer' dates from "1945 under this name
So computer is the correct term before 1945.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/compute
I'd be inclined, though, to exclude "non machine" counting tools such as an abacus.
* edit just to add your quote is definitely wrong. A CPU is a set of logic gates that executes a fixed set of operations.
People have used the word “computer” for a lot of non-programmable machines over the years, and it’s clear in the Wikipedia article I linked to that programmability is a recent feature of computers, and was not always there. (Nor is it always there to this day.)
While I’m sure you can find examples of people that agree with you, that doesn’t invalidate history. A computer is anything that computes something, that’s how the word has been defined and used up to and including today. This includes the Antikythera (analog computer) and even (loosely) the Abacus (digital “computer”).
We're in a very weird transitional phase for a lot of this kind of thing. It's still largely a fixed set of operations, but it can be re-programmed and in theory isn't completely restricted to just those functions. Someone could port doom to it (I do actually want to see that one).
Digital general purpose computers are programmable by the means of a set of discrete operations. However, this doesn't generalize to include all sorts of computers.
In the 1940s, there were computers, such as ENIAC, that were programmed with plugboards that changed the connections between modules that performed various mathematical operations.
If the modules in the Nimatron could be reconfigured to perform other operations, the Nimatron would, by the standards of the era, be considered an electronic computer, even if today we usually reserve that term for Von Neumann style machines where the program consists of symbols stored directly in the machine's memory.
It might be easier to think of mechanical computers, such as the WW2 fire control computers aboard Navy Ships[0] or more famously the Antikythera mechanism[1]. These are fixed devices, they compute values from inputs. The "program" is stored in the gears camshafts and differentials and ratios between them.
Similarly, fixed digital computers such as the Nimatron have their operations stored in relays and digital logic. These sorts of computers don't have a list of instructions. They just have schematics, inputs going through electronic circuits that wind up at outputs. You can do a lot of calculating with just simple logic gates.
Machine to Play Game of Nim (1940) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29642355 - Dec 2021 (3 comments)
Also: https://pbgames.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/1940-nimatron/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12319633, but no comments there)
It would for example spawn a 4, then you had two buttons, one to rotate through all the numbers and one to fire (ie. match). Over time it would spawn faster and faster, but it had different levels and some special game elements.
This Alan Kay quote was, at its time (early 70s) one of the most succinct expressions of a general principle: that electronic computing and electronic gaming are inextricably linked and that where you found one the other soon followed. Apparently... even back in 1938.
Somewhat related, I noticed that the Nimatron Wikipedia page [1], which has quite a bit of interesting info, also mentions Nimrod.
On its Wikipedia page [2], it says, "The Nimrod, built in the United Kingdom by Ferranti for the 1951 Festival of Britain, was an early computer custom-built to play Nim, inspired by the earlier Nimatron. The twelve-by-nine-by-five-foot (3.7-by-2.7-by-1.5-meter) computer, designed by John Makepeace Bennett and built by engineer Raymond Stuart-Williams, allowed exhibition attendees to play a game of Nim against an artificial intelligence."
Also an interesting read, in my opinion at least.
These handhelds LCDs that could only display a small number of images are also considered video games.
I didn't consider them video games growing up. It's going to vary from person to person.
For example in the 1980s I owned a hand-held electronic interactive game made by Tiger, called John Elway's Quarterback [1]. They try to call it a video game on the back of the packge it was sold in (an "LCD video game"), but back then (~1989) Nintendo games were video games, and that Tiger device was merely an interactive electronic toy game (as far as I was concerned). GameGear was a video game however, as was GameBoy (video game playing devices; the cartridges were the video games, to be specific); I think it's the depth/elaborateness of the game (what it's capable of) and level of interactivity possible that separates them in my view.
[1] photo from eBay: https://i.imgur.com/PVcMFok.jpg