Who doesn’t know video games these days? From toddlers to adults, almost everyone has played a video game or two at least once in their life. Warcraft III: DotA, Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Crysis – these are some recent popular games.

So what was the very first video game? By popular agreement, Tennis for Two (1958) was the pioneer game on a video screen. William Higinbotham, an American physicist, devised the computer game to entertain visitors at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The device that played the game was originally created for the military to simulate missile trajectories!

After 1958, developers created a few more computer games, but few people bought them. Back then there were no consoles and home computers were scarce and expensive. Video games were mostly created as a hobby by scientists, developed and played on huge mainframe computers.

When Spacewar! came out in 1961 video games started selling to the masses. It was hailed as the first widely available computer video game.

In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari and issued their first arcade game, Pong. Pong became widely popular and was commercially successful. Innovative games became good business. Atari created a boom in arcade games across America and Japan.

Games and the equipment to play them grew quickly, side by side. Ralph Baer created he first console, the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. It was the first machine gamers could play at home by hooking the box of hardware to a television set. Other companies followed suit with their own consoles. Shortly thereafter, second-generation consoles featuring microprocessors (1977) and handheld consoles (1979) were developed.

Though the hardware technology advanced by leaps and bounds, the games themselves did not. Most games in that era were either copies of existing games or variations on successful games. Many video game companies sprouted up, lured by the lucrative market, and tried to emulate Atari’s success.

With the boom in full swing, video game developers rushed to finish new games, sacrificing quality. Companies were more concerned about quantity feeding the new consumer demand. Many games contained so many bugs they became unplayable. In 1983 the video game industry in America crashed: Consumers simply refused to buy more video games, and many video game ventures went belly up. Other factors contributed to the crash, but the plethora of low-quality video games put the nails in the coffin.

Japanese companies took the lead in the video game market after the crash, with Nintendo at the helm. Nintendo single-handedly revived the video game market in America, with their Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console and the golden Nintendo Seal of Quality.

Because Nintendo would review and guarantee the quality of every videogame it released for the NES, consumer confidence returned. That practice continues until today, emulated by other video game companies.

If we fast forward to today, advancements in hardware and software technology have made these games completely different experiences. State-of-the-art graphics accelerators, blazingly fast microprocessors and internet connectivity has changed the face of all video games.

The most recent must-do among video game players is multiplayer online play, over the internet, be it on a PC, gaming console, or with a handheld videogame. MMOGs, short for massively multiplayer online games are in high demand and many are available, from an Indonesian favorite Ragnarok Online to the global giant World of Warcraft. Playing solo is quickly going out of style.

Almost all major video game companies these days talk up their graphical superiority. Could another crash happen? Who is to say that gameplay and contents will maintain quality as they struggle to outdo each other? Terminator Salvation for PC, PS3 and 360 looked good, but it met with hard criticism because it was short and painful to play.

And what about the plethora of games on the Wii platform? It’s a nice thing that developing video games for the Wii is relatively cheap, but many of the results are buggy, basic and boring. They are viewed as generic games, compared to other, more interesting games by bigger companies. Budget constraints may be a fact, but even low-cost WiiWare games could be more enjoyable and interesting to play.

Video games today are more advanced than anyone could have imagined back in 1958. And the fast-growing technological advancements continue to break new ground. What started as a hobby among scientists has become a gold mine for technology companies and a major industry.

There you have it. In a nutshell, video games are not just fun and games, they are serious business.