The pre-history of computer games

I ran a computer games company for 12 years and before that, when I was at school, I loved reading about and playing computer games. This was back in the ‘old days’ when video games took one or two people a few months to make – not hundreds of person-years. 

Being a geek historian, back in the day, I used to give lectures at the Game Developers Conference about the history of computer games. You can see an online version on my personal site.  I also wrote an article (which ended up as a cool diagram) for Wired about the subject (see previous post).

However, I came across this slideshow today which goes into the pre-history of computer games in way more detail than I did.  It’s great.  I don’t know if there’s a word for the kind of nostalgia you have for a time that you didn’t live through; but if I had my time again, I’d want to write games on Plato.

Related posts:

1. Unanswerable questions by email and computer games
2. Computer games and historians
3. Computer History Museum YouTube Channel
4. Video games and writing
5. Ten questions with Lee Skittrell, computer games PR insider