The history of games development - interactive gaming map
Ever wondered where it all began? You know, when you're playing The Last of Us with all its prettiness and engagement and highly developed characters? Ever thought, if I had been born twenty years before I was, what would I have had to sit down with after tea?
Now you know that ten years ago, we still had gems such as Half Life 2... 20 years ago, the original Resident Evil came bursting onto our screens, and 30 years ago, Mario was rocking out, discovering that the Princess was in another castle for the umpteenth time.
It's becoming the case these days where children see gaming as just a part of life, like we used to see TV. Even if you don't own a console, you are well aware that they exist and that there are thousands of games to play.
There was a time though when it was all new. You would pay through the roof to play as a splodge that looked vaguely human, dodging other splodges for no apparent reason.
Over the years games developers have made games last longer by upping the difficulty, being ruthless with extra lives, and rewarding the slightest mistake with a nice long trip back to the beginning. Of course, these games had to happen for the better ones to become possible. In order for you to be able to track the history of gaming, PriceSpy have created an interactive gaming map, which can be found here.
This fantastic tool is an easy way for you to pinpoint what happened, when and where. It is simple to navigate, while staying in depth.
As Lorna Baker, Senior Marketing Manager for PriceSpy, explains: "The timeline looks at over 400 of the most popular game developers in the world and examines their company history and most popular games."
The industry was technically born way back in 1889, when Nintendo began mass production of Hanafuda playing cards, which are, despite Nintendo's massive success with video games, still produced today. When the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1983, the industry snowballed into what we see today, with consoles such as the Megadrive, Nintendo64, Playstation and Xbox exploding onto the scene over the years. We saw such sights as 'console wars', with kids originally arguing over whether Sonic or Mario was better. This is still the case, with a great divide over whether to buy a Playstation 4 or an Xbox One, and will probably carry on far into the future. With this interactive map in tow, it gives us a nice easy way to look at where it all came from.
