Talk:Early history of video games/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 05:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

This article has grown mightily in the past few months, and I would be pleased to conduct this review. Comments to follow shortly. Indrian (talk) 05:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Okay, here we go. I want to start by saying this article is truly outstanding and now serves as one of the best primers to 1950s and 1960s video games that exists anywhere in the world. Wonderful work. I have recently made a few grammatical changes, leaving just a few corrections/concerns, virtually all of which minor. Here we go:

General
✅To start off, the only really big complaint I have is with the section headings. The first section claims it discusses "single-game computers," but it also covers software programs available for multipurpose computers. The third section is called "digital computer games," but that description applies to nearly every game discussed in this article, including OXO, Strachey's draughts, and MIDSAC pool. I think we need to do a little better here. The divisions themselves work fine, its just the names that need to change.
 * Do you have any suggestions? Maybe "Initial games"/"Interactive visual games"/"The spread of games"/"A new industry"? -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I am okay with the new headings.Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Defining the Video Game

 * ✅"the earliest known interactive electronic game to use an electronic display" - two uses of "electronic" in quick succession. Perhaps the second use could be changed to CRT.
 * Done. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"It was invented by Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1947" - I don't think we really know that it was invented in 1947; we just know that this is when the patent was filed. It could have theoretically been invented slightly earlier.  Probably should change "invented" to "patented" in this language.
 * Done. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Speaking of the patent, the text is available through Google patents, so I think that should be the source here rather than a website that does not contain this info.
 * That's just where Cite patent goes; it does have the original source- click "original document" on the left side. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sure how I missed that, but I obviously did. Please disregard. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Single-game computers

 * ✅"for the Pilot ACE that ran for the first time in July 1951 at the British National Physical Laboratory" - It did not really run in 1951: Strachey tried to run it, but it did not work. Should be clarified.
 * Done. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"successive iterations developed rudimentary artificial intelligence by 1955 and were shown on television in 1956" - Needs a language tweak. Makes it sound like all the successive iterations were shown on television as opposed to the current version at that time.
 * Done. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"Their move would appear on the screen, and then the computer's move." - The second clause of that sentence is a fragment.
 * Done. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"OXO and Strachey's draughts program are the earliest known games to display visuals on a video monitor" - We need to be a little careful with language here. Those computers incorporated CRT displays, but they did not output video.
 * Changed to electronic screen; I don't want to get too caught up on "CRT", as while that was really the only possible electronic screen they could be using, I don't want to get readers unaware that it was all CRTs for decades to get caught up on "the first on a CRT" and wonder if there was previously a "first on some other type of screen", nor get distracted with a big discussion of display technology during the 50s-70s. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That's fine. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅" the computer game simulated a game of tennis or ping pong" - I think because of the success of Pong, some sources have been tempted to call this a table tennis game. However, it is really just simulating tennis (not that there is a real functional difference at this level of extraction).
 * Cut to just tennis. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"and the game simulated hitting the net as well as hitting the ball back to the player" - I assume this means calculating the ball trajectory, but the way it is worded implies that it is a one player game and that the computer returns the ball to the player, which would not be accurate.
 * Reworded. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"by a community of undergraduate students in the Tech Model Railroad Club (TRMC) led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and Bob Saunders, included Tic-Tac-Toe, which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and Mouse in the Maze" - A couple of problems here that again go to language precision.  First, there were some members of TMRC that were either graduate students (Dan Edwards) or university employees (Steve Russell) rather than undergrads.  Saunders, Kotok, and Samson were all undergrads in this period and led the hackers, but there were also some non-TMRC members in their ranks, most notably local teenager Peter Deutsch.  I am not suggesting the article should elaborate on all of that, but using a phrase like "a community of programmers, many of them students affiliated with the Tech Model Railroad Club" would get the same point across without introducing potential inaccuracies.
 * Reworded; your version captures the reality better than what I had, and better than some of the sources, unfortunately. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅Problem number two in the above sentence is that the TMRC hacker community did not create either Tic Tac Toe or Mouse in a Maze. I do not know who created the Tic Tac Toe game, but Mouse in a Maze was created by Doug Ross and John Ward, who were neither students nor TMRC members.
 * Should be better with the above changes. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Digital Computer Games

 * ✅" In 1962, students Martin Graetz, Steve Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen, inspired by the previous work by the TRMC, created the game Spacewar! on the PDP-1" - Again, two problems here. First, Neither Graetz, nor Russell, nor Wiitanen were students when they conceived of Spacewar!.  They were all university employees at either Harvard or MIT.  Also, they were not inspired by the work of TMRC.  Outside of their science fiction interests, Russell's main influence in wanting to program the game was the "Minskytron" demo created by MIT professor and AI pioneer Marvin Minsky.
 * Well, it's a bit hard to say that they weren't inspired at all by the TRMC- they clearly knew the TRMC guys, and Kotok at least well enough that he got Russel the sin/cos routines from DEC and told him to stop stalling, even if they weren't the main inspiration for the trio or their programs an inspiration for the game itself. Still, all that really means is that they were in the same niche community, not that they were directly inspired by other members of the community, so changed it to focus more on sci-fi/Lensman as their inspiration for the game itself, and noted that they were university employees- hopefully that counters the implication that they were in the TRMC, since TRMC members submitted features to Russel after release. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I tweaked the language a bit more, and think this works now. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"had the players engaged in a dogfight between two spaceships against a randomly generated background starfield" - Awkwardly worded. It really implies that the opponent of the two players is the background starfield.
 * I honestly didn't think about how the common usage of "against" could also apply there, but now I see it. Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"A number of games for purchase could be found in an April 1962 IBM program catalog" - So in the early days of mainframe computing, the complete focus was on computer hardware. Software was needed to actually do anything useful on a computer, but that is not what the customer was buying.  There were no third-party software companies, and programs were just bundled with the computer rather than sold individually.  While I cannot say this with 100% certainty, I doubt the programs in the 1962 catalog were sold; they were probably made available upon request to those leasing an IBM computer.  To be safe, I would avoid using words like "sold," "bought," "purchased," etc. in regards to these programs.
 * You're right, there's no prices; completely missed that its a reference catalog, not a sales catalog. I agree that when selling a few dozen very expensive machines, the manufacturers wouldn't have been looking for microtransactions. Dropped the "for sale". -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅" Hamurabi in 1969, a text-based BASIC game by David H. Ahl and one of the first strategy video games ever made" - This is incorrect, but the actual sequence of events is a bit tricky. Ahl does not credit an author in 101 BASIC Computer Games nor has he ever taken credit for the program.  Traditionally, credit has gone to Richard Merrill, who released a version in 1968.  It appears, however, that a version was created by one Doug Dyment of DEC Canada even before that as discussed here.  If you don't want to get into the Dyment stuff absent better sourcing, that's fine, but at the very least it should be credited to Merrill rather than Ahl.
 * Oh, I see the issue. The 1978 edition credits it to Ahl, because he wrote the BASIC version and the original author was "unknown". We now, of course, know that Merrill did the FOCAL version, and that Dyment may have done a prior version, but that wasn't in the source. I'm going to leave it as Merrill, since I can't cite a mailing list and I'd like a bit more proof that the Dyment education game was an early version of the strategy Hamurabi, and not just a direct inspiration. Leaving Ahl in as "translator" since the BASIC version, by virtue of being in his book and being luckier with the language, is the most well-known. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

A New Industry

 * ✅A lot of people like to state that Galaxy Game was the first video arcade game because Computer Space was released in November 1971, but its actually not. Galaxy Game was installed in September 1971, but according to the book Atari, Inc.: Business Is Fun, Computer Space was first tested on location in August 1971.  While that was just a test of a prototype, so was the Galaxy Game installation, so the latter really has no claim to being first.  Both games should still be covered here, of course, but the wording should be tweaked.
 * Ugh, I wish these video game history books would be more consistent. Had not read Atari, Inc., and foolishly assumed that the other sources had the timeline right; Replay talks about the Dutch Goose like it was after the release, not their prototype location that they used several times, including before Galaxy Game was displayed. Adjusted with new source, and adjusted the lead to not call GG the "first". -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"Only the prototype unit was ever built" - As you correctly state later in the article, there were two prototypes, not just one. The second version was not just the original hardware with a few modifications.  They were completely different units.
 * Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"Bushnell had also found a distributor in Nutting Associates to sell the game through" - I cleaned this up a little, but this sentence reads awkwardly still. Also, Nutting was a manufacturer, not a distributor.  In the coin-op business, this is an important distinction.
 * Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"this version was never shown" - Again, some confusion on the history. Version two replaced version one at Stanford and remained there for years.
 * Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"While initially this game was to be a driving game that Bushnell had designed" - There was no design, just an inclination to do such a game.
 * Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"They were unable to find a distributor, but on the evidence of the success of their prototype installation, decided to manufacture and distribute the game themselves" - Again, manufactures and distributors are two different entities in the coin-op food chain. Atari could not find a manufacturer and decided to manufacture the game itself.  Atari did not do its own distribution.
 * Fixed; I hadn't realized that the manufacturer sold to the distributors, rather than acting as one itself. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅"and the "Brown Box", the last prototype of seven, was released in May 1972 by Magnavox" - Magnavox made changes to the "Bornw Box" before release, so it would not be accurate to say that Magnavox released the "Brown Box" as opposed to licensing the technology and adapting it. Also, the system was announced to the public in May, but did not go on sale until September.
 * Fixed. -- Pres N  17:43, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

And that's it. The list is a little long, but its mostly just minor language tweaks. I have no doubt this article will pass in short order, so I will place it while these changes are enacted. Indrian (talk) 03:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No worries, its all stuff that needed to be fixed. I've gotten to everything you brought up, I think. -- Pres N  17:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay on finishing this; I blame the Holidays. Anyway, I have made a few more language tweaks and am now satifised that the article meets the GA criteria.  Well done!. Indrian (talk) 16:34, 26 December 2015 (UTC)