Gamer’s Day: From Pac-Man and Tetris to Augmented Reality

Every August 29, computer game fans celebrate World Video Game Day, also known as Gamer Day. It has been commemorated every year since 2008, when the special magazines PC Mania, PlayMania and Hobby Consoles decided to dedicate this date to one of the most popular hobbies among young people.

But this form of entertainment has taken years of development to reach its current popularity, in which the evolution of computers has played an essential role. It’s the only way to explain how we went from playing Pac-Man (known as “comecocos” in Spain) and fitting pieces in the beloved and addictive Tetris, to searching for Pokémon in the real settings of our cities through augmented reality.

appearance

Video games developed by computer programmers since the fifties have emerged as applications of a playful nature. Since it could not be less in rational and mathematical minds, the first attempts gave form to chess programs, through which scientists, while killing time, created the syntax of new computer languages.

A physicist named Willie Higginbotham went one step further in the late 1950s. In an attempt to make a themed exhibit at a US government laboratory more entertaining, he designed a simple game played on a black-and-white television that simulated a game of tennis.

These primitive efforts were limited to laboratories and scientists, and did not conform to the basic rule of what we know today as a video game: its widespread use in any place and place. We have to wait until the seventies to find its closest predecessors.

From laboratories to entertainment venues

In 1972 Nolan Bushnell patented the first interactive game in history, Pong, and founded the Atari company, which is still active today. The innovation was that for the first time video games left the laboratories and were installed on entertainment machines located in public places. In exchange for a few coins, anyone can access an innovative gameplay experience that wowed players during those years.

Since then, the evolution of video games has been unstoppable. If the first step is to install labs in entertainment machines, they will soon reach personal computers and living rooms, and from there mobile phones. An unstoppable path whose only limits are technology and the imagination of programmers.

A multi-million dollar business

But in addition to technological development, the other important factor in the success of video games is economics. According to Newsoo Agency, in 2021, the video game business will generate almost 160,000 million dollars worldwide. The report lists a total of 3,000 million players, of which 55% are from Asia and the Pacific.

The study points to the strengthening of games in the “cloud”, the rise of entertainment applications on smartphones and the expansion into new markets as the engines of this growth. The report also points out that the results of 2021 are higher than those of 2020, which saw a multifold increase in the consumption of video games due to the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Video Game as a Cultural Element

Along with technological and economic elements, video games play an important role as a cultural element. For millions of people around the world who consume them, video games are no longer part of their leisure time. They sustain their social relationships and their daily activities, creating communities that transcend geographical boundaries.

Rather than judging whether this penetration of video games into the psychology of users has positive or negative effects, it should be recognized that their irritation has come in parallel with other social changes. That is, rather than a disruptive factor, video games are a facet of the unstoppable change in today’s world.

For all these reasons, if you are an inveterate gamer and move into the digital world like a fish in water, then Happy Gamer’s Day to you and enjoy your favorite pastime. On the other hand, if yours is the real world and your taste is more traditional, it is better to wait for a day dedicated to your hobby, of course it exists and is written in red on the calendar.