Video Games and the Diffusion Theory

Video games have become a staple in most households all around the world. They allow for engaging entertainment. They can shape the way you view or see the world or they just allow people to have an outlet to escape their day-to-day lives.

In 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari created a virtual ping pong table that you could play in an arcade called Pong. This was the birth of modern video games as we know it. It became so popular that the machines would often break due to overuse and clogging the coin slots with quarters.

Soon after Pong came Space Invaders from Taito in 1978. This began the big boom in video game production that included Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Tron that all came along in the early ’80s.

Video games began to gain popularity due to the kids of that time. They wanted things to do outside of the house and this was an easy escape for them. It got so popular so quickly due to how fast trends catch on with kids. They might discover it while they were bored one day and tell all of their friends how much fun they were and soon those friends would be telling their friends and so on and so forth.

The late adopters would usually have held off due to not having the time or the money to invest in playing and learning a new video game every time a new one came out. That is a huge negative about video games. The people that are playing have to be willing to, nowadays, invest money, time, and energy into the games as well as the computers or consoles needed to play them.

Video games also have plenty of positives as well though. They not only allow for the escape from day-to-day life, as previously mentioned, but they can now allow you to connect with and meet new people around the world. It has almost become a new form of social media.

When making the choice on whether or not to invest in a game, you have to decide if the time and the money is worth it to you. For some people, it is not.

https://www.museumofplay.org/about/icheg/video-game-history/timeline

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