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The emergence of video games was preceded by the development of programmable computers for military purposes. Their later emergence as a form of entertainment was facilitated by the development of television. Although television existed even before World War II, the conflict forced manufacturers to shift production away from televisions and toward displays for radar and other equipment for the armed forces. In 1940, the Nimatron—a computer game machine using electronic relays, designed by American physicist Edward Condon—was demonstrated for the first time at the World’s Fair in New York. Although Nimatron’s influence on the subsequent development of electronic games and digital computers is considered negligible, it was the first computer designed for entertainment and a contender for the title of the first computer game. It is also believed that it was the first in history to implement intentional computer slowdown. On February 14, 1946, six months after Japan’s surrender in World War II, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was created at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. Its purpose was to calculate firing tables for various types of weapons using different ammunition. The pinnacle of computer development was thought to be the creation of artificial intelligence. British mathematician Alan Turing and American engineer and mathematician Claude Shannon viewed artificial intelligence as the ultimate goal of computer research, and both believed that a computer’s victory over a human in a game of chess would be an important step toward realizing this dream. Chess was chosen as the most suitable game because it has simple rules yet an enormous number of possible moves. It was estimated that if a computer could play a million chess games every second, it would take 10¹⁰⁸ years to calculate all possible variations. Therefore, a computer capable of defeating an experienced chess player would be able to anticipate an opponent’s moves in war and react to them proactively. In 1947, Turing wrote the world’s first theoretical program for playing chess on a computer. However, computers of that era lacked the processing power to implement chess to that extent. In 1948, Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann patented the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, which simulated a rocket’s flight to a specified target. In 1949, at the University of Cambridge, Maurice Wilkes constructed the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer (EDSAC), a computer whose memory allowed information to be freely added and deleted. Later, some mathematical games were implemented on it.

After Turing’s suicide in 1954, scientists such as Alex Bronstein continued to develop chess for the computer, albeit using simplified rules. However, chess was not the only game planned for computer adaptation. In 1951, the British Labour government decided to hold the Festival of Britain, designed to instill confidence in a better future among the postwar population. Ferranti was unable to fill the exhibition space, so the company’s Australian employee, John Bennett, proposed building a computer capable of playing a simple mathematical game called Nimes. In this game, two players take turns picking up matches from several piles. Each player may take one or more matches from any pile. The player who takes the last match loses. Bennett came up with the idea of using the Nimatron electromechanical machine, which had been displayed at the 1940 World’s Fair in New York, to implement the game. Bennett noted that this machine was not intended for entertainment but was meant to demonstrate its capabilities for computation and performing practical tasks. The new machine, named Nimrod, was completed on April 12, 1951. Visitors to the exhibition were invited to compete against Nimrod and showed great interest in the game. Later, Nimrod was exhibited at the Industrial Exhibition in Berlin, where it was also popular. This success encouraged Ferranti to continue working on computing technology within the framework of more serious projects. In 1952, Alexander Douglas, a student of Maurice Wilkes, wrote a tic-tac-toe game for the EDSAC. However, it was intended to visually explain how computers work, rather than for entertainment. Arthur Samuel, an IBM employee, wrote a program that same year that allowed people to play checkers on the first commercial computer, the IBM 701. In 1955, Samuel developed a version that could learn from its mistakes, and after being advertised on television, it contributed to a rise in IBM’s stock price. Tennis For Two on an Oscilloscope A turning point came with the work of William Higinbotham, who had previously worked on the Manhattan Project. At a 1958 exhibition at Brookhaven National Laboratory, he presented an electronic tennis game, the action of which was displayed on an oscilloscope screen. The players’ rackets were represented by lines, and the ball by a dot. Controllers with buttons allowed players to move their rackets and hit the ball. The game was particularly popular with high school students and was demonstrated at the next exhibition in 1959. However, Higinbotham had to dismantle the equipment for other projects. He himself did not attach much importance to the game and turned his attention to work on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Later, researchers came to the conclusion that the 1950s marked a “false start” for video games.

In 1961, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was provided with a PDP-1 computer from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The institute had a Technical Railway Modeling Club, whose members included students, many of whom were fans of pulp science fiction. Club member Robert Wagner had previously written a program called Expensive Desk Calculator for the TX-0, which professors deemed an unworthy use of such expensive and powerful (for the time) hardware. Unlike its predecessors, the PDP-1 had a keyboard and a screen, so it immediately caught the attention of the club members. Students Wayne Wittenheim and Steve Russell decided to create a game on it where one could control a spaceship. Settling on the name Spacewar!, they decided to create a game based on the principle of a space duel between two players. The first version was ready in 1961, but had numerous flaws, including the inability to simulate the behavior of objects in space. After adding stars, developing special controllers, and using a background from the Expensive Planetarium program, the students completed the game in 1962. The game became very popular among MIT students, and Russell tried to sell it, but ran into the problem that it only ran on a PDP-1, which cost $120,000. However, news of the game spread beyond MIT, and many other universities recreated it on their own computers. DEC even began including Spacewar! with every system it sold to demonstrate its capabilities. In August 1966, Ralph Bayer, head of the technology design department at Sanders Associates, came up with the idea for a gaming device that would connect to a television. Together with his colleagues, he developed the device, which he named Channel LP, in secret, fearing that the idea would be dismissed as frivolous. In 1967, the Channel LP prototype was completed, and the generation of game ideas based on already well-known computer games began. Corporate director Herbert Kampman took an interest in the project and allocated a small budget for it. TelePrompter Corporation, which was involved in cable television, also expressed interest. However, due to Sanders Associates’ military focus and TelePrompter’s financial problems, the device—previously known as the Brown Box—never went into mass production. When DEC introduced the new PDP-11 computer priced at $20,000, Stanford student Bill Pitts, impressed by Spacewar!, decided that it was entirely feasible to create a device specifically for games—the Galaxy Game—based on the PDP-11. Together with his friend Hugh Tuck, he developed an arcade machine that allowed players to play for coins and would thus pay for itself.

Nolan Bushnell of Nutting Associates learned about Pitts and Tuck’s idea. In 1971, the student union was already prepared to allocate funds for the Galaxy Game machine, but Bushnell suggested using a Data General Nova computer, which cost only $3,995. Faced with the game’s slowness, they decided to port the entire program to microchips, each of which handled a specific aspect of the game. The game’s concept shifted from a duel to a single-player mode featuring battles against machine-controlled enemies. Meanwhile, Bill Nutting, who was investing in the U.S. Navy, became interested in one of the devices—a quiz machine that displayed questions on a screen, and cadets had to press a button indicating the correct answer. Together with his brother Dave, he used the quiz machine as a basis to create the popular arcade games Computer Quiz and 3600 I.Q. Computer. In their search for new ideas, they learned about the development work of Pitts, Tuck, and Bushnell. As a result, in 1971, the Galaxy Game machine was created and attracted public attention, and later Computer Space was released. However, their success was not as great as expected, since video games were popular among students but not among blue-collar workers, failing to compete with pinball machines. At the same time, Magnavox agreed to take on the production of the Brown Box, giving the device a new casing and the name Skill-O-Vision, and later Odyssey. This TV console had 12 built-in games and additional accessories. The Magnavox Odyssey was unveiled to the public in 1972. Inspired by the console’s capabilities, Bushnell founded Atari Incorporated. The company soon released an arcade machine featuring the popular game Pong, which was played by 2 million Americans. By September 1974, approximately 100,000 video game machines were in operation across the United States, generating about $250 million annually. Young people began frequenting arcades, and the arcade business shed its stereotype of ties to the mafia by offering entertainment for various social and age groups. In March 1974, Atari’s experiments led to the release of Gran Trak 10—the world’s first racing video game, which became very popular. However, due to errors in financial calculations, it became unprofitable. Additionally, Atari suffered losses in its attempt to enter the Japanese market, lacking knowledge of the local business culture. The Japanese company Taito sought to become the Japanese counterpart to Atari, releasing arcade machines with the games Elepong and Soccer in 1973, which were clones of Pong. Its original game, Speed Race, gained popularity in the U.S., pushing Atari to the brink of bankruptcy. To compete with Boushnell’s idea, Kee Games was formed, allowing the company to circumvent restrictions on game distribution laws and sell video game machines. Due to the success of its products, Kee Games was merged with Atari. An arcade hall from the 1980s In 1974, Atari engineer Harold Lee proposed creating a proprietary game console for the television that would compete with the Magnavox Odyssey. The main difference was that each game was contained on a separate integrated circuit. In 1975, such a console, the Sears Tele-Games Pong, was released and became a huge success. When General Instruments released the AY-3-8500 chip, other video game developers gained the ability to create any games without having to design their own integrated circuits from scratch. By the late 1970s, programmable microprocessors had become widespread, allowing for changes without altering the hardware circuitry. Atari saw the future solely in microprocessors. According to Bushnell, they forced the video game industry to emerge nearly a decade earlier than it otherwise would have. In 1976, the last two fairly popular games using transistor-transistor logic were released: Breakout by Atari and Death Race by Exidy. Death Race, in which the player had to run over pedestrians with a car, caused a wave of panic. Exidy received a barrage of criticism and even threats of physical violence. In contrast, Breakout, which was developed with the involvement of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, became a hit. Atari engineer Dave Sheppard revolutionized gaming with his 1976 title Night Driver, introducing a first-person perspective. The Text-Based Adventure “Colossal Cave Adventure” While arcade machines and home consoles were enjoying success, the personal computer was not yet regarded as a full-fledged gaming platform. The only games available on PCs were relatively simple ones, such as Tic-Tac-Toe, Hangman, or Battleship. The first home computers were, in part, used specifically for gaming. Users could write their own game programs, the code for which was published in specialized magazines and books. In 1975, programmer Will Croater took notice of the Eliza program (1966), which created the illusion of meaningful dialogue with a computer. Crowther wrote the game Adventure (Colossal Cave Adventure), which used phrases entered by the player to shape the game world. By 1977, the game had spread through universities and inspired many programmers to write their own similar games, which came to be known as text adventures and described the world solely through text. In contrast, Maze (1973) used graphics and became the progenitor of multiplayer games, allowing two human players or a human versus a program to compete in destroying each other’s game characters. A 1974 update that enabled this feature marked the beginning of the “death match” mode, which was emulated in numerous other games. The success of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, released in 1974, prompted many enthusiasts to adapt it for computers, such as in Alakabeth. On April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was founded, releasing 150 hand-assembled Apple I computers. That same year, Steve Wozniak began work on the Apple II, planning, among other things, to make it a full-fledged gaming platform that would compete with arcade machines. Unlike its competitors, the Commodore PET and TRS-80, it featured a color display. Also in 1976, Michael Katz invented a portable video game on a standalone device that used technology similar to the screens of portable calculators. The first of these games, Auto Race, sold hundreds of thousands of copies in 1976. The Atari 2600 with controllers and game cartridges, the most successful game console of the 1970s Around the same time, Fairchild Semiconductor developed the Fairchild Channel F home console. Unlike the Magnavox Odyssey, it used convenient cartridges instead of boards and supported color graphics. However, many buyers did not understand how to use the console or what it was actually intended for. In 1977, Atari developed the VCS 2600—a new type of home console where each game was stored on removable microchips, or cartridges. But besides the Channel F, there were other earlier promising developments, such as the RCA Studio II. Despite expectations, they all had certain limitations that prevented the products from being as successful as anticipated. Moreover, the VCS 2600 was deemed obsolete, and the game console market was saturated. Although the Atari console was a huge success, the company’s policy of keeping video game developers anonymous led to numerous scandals. Programmers did not receive their fair share of the profits, and several pornographic games were released, which drew condemnation. Ultimately, in 1979, Bushnell was banned from working in the video game industry until 1983. Meanwhile, the Japanese company Taito, seeing the future of video games in microprocessors, developed and released the Space Invaders arcade machine in 1978. The game became a hit, generating over a billion dollars in revenue in two years. By the end of 1979, competition in the home video game market had intensified, particularly with the release of the powerful Bally Professional Arcade system. Walt Disney Pictures produced the film “Tron,” based on video games. Industry giants—Lucasfilm, Quaker Oats, Parker Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Thorn EMI—established their own video game divisions.

In the early 1980s, all of North America was obsessed with video games. Following the debut of *Space Invaders*, video games became even more popular than before, with the video game industry growing by 5 percent each month. Some critics believed that video games would surpass movies and television in popularity. Advances in vector graphics and color displays made it possible to create video games with a new level of quality. Arcade games became truly colorful, rather than monochrome with colored overlays on the screen. In the early 1980s, hits such as Missile Command, Tempest, Galaga, Defender, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong were released. The release of the 3D game Battlezone (1980) caught the attention of the military, who decided to create a military simulator based on it. The release of arcade games on home consoles significantly boosted their sales, especially for Atari. On November 9, 1982, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Everett Koop issued a statement warning of the harm video games posed to the physical and mental health of adolescents. Prior to that, parents, teachers, and officials had been alarmed that arcade halls had become hotbeds of juvenile delinquency. Articles about illnesses linked to video games began appearing in medical journals. Rumors spread among the public about teenagers dying of heart attacks after playing for hours on end. In late 1981, Indonesia and the Philippines banned video games, citing concerns about protecting the morals of young people. Developers faced the need to make games increasingly complex to fuel players’ excitement and, consequently, generate profits. Facing competition from arcade machines and game consoles, they had to lower prices amid a general economic downturn in the U.S. Gradually, home consoles established themselves as more flexible and reliable. The game Mystery House on the Apple II PCs also began to be viewed as full-fledged gaming platforms. Text-based quests, such as Zork! and Adventureland, received a boost with the spread of color displays on home computers. In 1980, the couple Ken and Roberta Williams from Los Angeles released Mystery House. In addition to text, this game illustrated events with simple black-and-white images. Within six months, they managed to sell 3,000 copies, and by 1981, the couple had created The Wizard and the Princess with color graphics. The Williamses founded Sierra Online, a company that became known for this type of game. Text-based quests gave rise to the MUD genre of multiplayer games, where players could assume different roles and interact with one another. The capabilities of the Apple II inspired programmers to create technology simulators, such as Flight Simulator (1978), but in 1981, Chris Crawford conceived the idea of creating a military simulation. He wrote the game Eastern Front 1941, which recreated battles in real time, similar to tabletop wargames. With color displays, role-playing games reached a new level: Ultima: The First Age of Darkness (1980), Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981), and Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress (1982). However, the vast majority of video games continued to be released for arcade machines and home consoles. A crisis hit the gaming industry; developers one after another acknowledged that all possible original games had already been created, and video games had run their course in terms of popularity. Dragon’s Lair marked a breakthrough, utilizing sequences of pre-rendered animations in the style of Walt Disney cartoons, recorded on a CD-ROM. However, the use of discs did not gain traction due to the complexity of operating the machines with them. The console game market plummeted from $3.2 billion in 1983 to $100 million in 1986. The failure of the potential hit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1983), based on the movie *E.T.*, was a major blow to Atari, which was still holding its ground. Game cartridges were buried in the ground, which, as many believed at the time, marked the symbolic end of video games. Гра Laser Squad на ZX Spectrum The UK, however, had no game consoles; games were available for PCs and were distributed on cassettes by a few stores via mail order. In 1980, Clive Sinclair developed the ZX80 home computer, which, thanks to its low price, became the best-selling PC in the UK at the time. After the release of the even cheaper ZX81, programmer Kevin Tomes realized he could create a vibrant and popular game for it. Tomes wrote Football Manager, which quickly sold 2 million copies. In 1982, Sinclair released the ZX Spectrum, which became the UK’s new most popular PC and a symbol of the country’s technological superiority. The widespread adoption of the ZX Spectrum sparked a British video game boom. Over the course of two years, 1,188 video games were created by 458 companies. A notable feature of these games was their psychedelic and surrealistic style, inspired by the Monty Python show and the early games of Mel Croucher. The craze for PC video games and experiments with game design also spread to Spain and Australia. In 1982, French programmer Le Breton acquired an Apple II and, finding the graphics of Mystery House lacking, decided to create a better game. In 1983, he wrote Le Vampire Fo, which became the first French text adventure. Breton founded Froggy Software, which specialized in text adventures, focusing on topical issues such as politics, homosexuality, and drug addiction, in contrast to the fantasy themes of games from the U.S. and the U.K. German video games at the same time emphasized themes of war and Nazism, which eventually drew the attention of the Bundesprüfstelle für Jugendgefährdende Schriften (Federal Censorship Board). Over 90% of video games were placed on the “blacklist.” Italy had been the main producer of arcade machines for Europe since the 1970s, but did not progress further when, in 1984, the company Zaccaria decided that video games had no future. By the early 1990s, Italy had no well-known video game development companies. In the Netherlands, active game piracy emerged in the 1980s. Programmers cracked popular games and distributed them for free via email. Although the Netherlands did not produce any well-known video games, it was there that the demoscene originated and gained popularity throughout Europe. Gradually, major video game publishers emerged in Europe, such as Ocean Software, Infogrames, and Ubisoft, as well as budget-friendly ones like Mastertronic. In the USSR, the development of electronics lagged behind that of other countries by 5–10 years. Video games existed on arcade machines such as the Poly Play, created in East Germany and distributed throughout the communist bloc in 1985. Specialized magazines published instructions for writing simple PC games, which were far less widespread than in other countries. In 1984, Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov wrote a video game based on the pentamino puzzle for the Elektronika-60 computer. After a series of revisions, it became the game Tetris, which quickly spread to computers across the Soviet Union and, by the late 1980s, to Western Europe. In the late 1980s, the company “Extrema-Ukraine,” based in Vinnytsia, merged with “Terminal” and began producing arcade games using its own technology. The company’s most famous game is considered to be “Konek-Gorbunok” (1988). Famicom, connected to a TV Japan in the 1980s was slowly developing its console market, though it was known for individual successful console games and arcade machines. However, the rapid spread of PCs manufactured by NEC and Fujitsu contributed to the emergence of the first Japanese video game publishers. In 1982, Night Life was released—an illustrated sex guide for the NEC PC-8801 computer, which was not a game but gained widespread popularity. Along with the introduction of text-based adventure games like Mystery House, this spurred the creation of erotic adventure video games, which, due to their nature, were released only within Japan. In the late 1980s, concerns about their spread led to the creation of Computer Software Rinri Kiko, an organization tasked with monitoring the content of interactive works. While Japanese PC game developers were exploring new genres, Nintendo was working on launching a new console. Engineer Masayuki Uemura was tasked with developing a console that would outpace the competition and be affordable. Uemura developed the Family Computer (Famicom) with a keyboard, disk drive, and modem, but to keep costs down, he redesigned it in 1983 into a cartridge-based console with a game controller featuring a directional pad. The point of the new product was not the sale of the console itself, but the variety of games for it created by third-party companies. Nintendo required its partners to make advance payments for cartridge production, taking a cut of the sales profits and reserving the right to veto the release of any game. By 1985, 17 game companies had received licenses from Nintendo to create games for the Famicom. Hank Rogers, founder of Bullet-Proof Software, who moved to Japan in the 1970s, discovered that tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons were unknown in Japan. The role-playing game The Black Onyx, released in 1983, went unnoticed until it gained massive success after the principles of role-playing games were explained in specialized magazines. Players previously unfamiliar with the genre became interested in role-playing video games, and in 1986, Enix released Dragon Quest for the Famicom, which became known as the first truly Japanese role-playing game. Players bought the Famicom just to play it, and sales of the console skyrocketed. The sequel, Dragon Quest III (1988), sold a million copies on its very first day. The popularity of Dragon Quest III was so immense that schoolchildren across Japan skipped school en masse to buy the game. Enix had to promise the government that its future games would be released only on weekends. After that, Japanese video game manufacturers were ready to conquer the U.S. market as well. Examples of NES graphics in the game Final Fantasy (1987) The Famicom, which had been modified earlier for the U.S. market—the Nintendo Entertainment System—had a security chip that blocked the launch of unlicensed games. To clearly distinguish this console from its predecessors, the Zapper light gun was added. The NES did not gain popularity and was distributed in trial batches with a money-back guarantee in case of failure. In March 1986, Nintendo released Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka’s Super Mario Bros. on the American market. The game became a global phenomenon—millions of copies were sold alongside millions of NES consoles. Nintendo flooded the market with games such as The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Double Dragon, and Final Fantasy. By the summer of 1987, critics acknowledged that the gaming market had begun to grow again. Fortune magazine cited Nintendo as the company that single-handedly revived the gaming industry. The company implemented strict requirements for the quality of video games and their content. Nintendo’s “Code of Conduct” closely mirrored the Hays Code for films, which prohibited the depiction of sexual scenes, nudity, drug use, portraying criminals in a positive light, profanity, and mocking religion on the silver screen. The code also prohibited themes such as cannibalism, torture, zombies, werewolves, and sex, and required that “in every specific case, good must always triumph over evil, and criminals must always be punished for their crimes.” It also stated that federal officials, police officers, judges, and other respected representatives of American law and government should not be portrayed in a negative light. Nintendo’s success and influence caused concern in the U.S. American business was generally losing ground to Japanese competition, and many felt that Japan was “buying up” America. This massive success led to accusations that Nintendo had created a monopoly by stifling competition. Criticism of the company did nothing to change the situation, and Nintendo set its sights on Europe with the NES console. But by that time, European gamers already owned Commodore Amiga or Atari ST PCs, which offered graphics that the NES could not match. Nintendo brought home consoles back to the market, and a new licensing model emerged. The company’s rise revitalized the American gaming industry, transforming a $100 million business in 1986 into a $4 billion one by 1991. Nintendo’s strict requirements for game quality raised the overall level of professionalism among developers. Japan came to be seen as the country with the best video game creators.

In the late 1980s, Sega was struggling to compete with Nintendo, and its game *Sonic the Hedgehog* (1991) was the result of an internal competition among the company’s developers to create a new character who would serve as Sega’s mascot. This character, Sonic the Hedgehog, was not immediately well-received, as people in Japan and the U.S. knew very little about this animal, but the game itself, which stood out for its fast-paced gameplay, became the most popular title for the Genesis console. With the release of Final Fight and Street Fighter II, the arcade industry was revitalized. With the advent of 16-bit consoles, the rivalry between Nintendo and Sega raised consumer expectations regarding video game quality and led to increased development costs. As a result, companies began to restrict creative freedom and monitor the quality of their products more closely. In 1991, artist John Tobias and programmer Ed Boon, employees of the Chicago-based company Midway, began thinking about their next project. They conceived of creating a fighting game radically different from anything that existed, by digitizing the movements of live actors—Mortal Kombat. In addition, the game stood out for its violence, and over $10 million was spent on its advertising. Mortal Kombat’s violence—such as blood splatter and severed limbs—forced the U.S. Senate to once again reconsider the content of video games. A Fight in Mortal Kombat The first day of Senate hearings on video games was scheduled for December 9, 1993. Sega, which targeted primarily a teenage audience, wanted to establish an age rating system so that it could continue to create violent video games in the future. Nintendo, however, saw little point in a rating system, as it had its own policy regarding game content. The issue of the lack of Black protagonists and female protagonists in video games was raised. As a result, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was established in 1994, and the need for a government body to regulate video games disappeared. Violent games continued to exist, but now with an age rating. At the same time, game developers realized that scandals boosted popularity and began releasing adult video games with even higher levels of violence, such as Blood Storm, while sales of Night Trap—which had been reviewed by the Senate—skyrocketed. By the late 1980s, efforts by the music industry had led to a drop in the cost of CD drives, which, in turn, made them affordable for computers. In February 1989, the first computer with a CD-ROM drive—Fujitsu’s FM Towns—went on sale in Japan. From the gaming industry’s perspective, CDs were cheaper to produce than cartridges and could hold up to 600 times more data than floppy disks and approximately 300 times more than cartridges. By the early 1990s, some PC video games were released on 10 floppy disks, unable to accommodate materials such as high-quality music or video clips. In early 1990, NEC released the TurboGrafx-CD—a CD drive for the TurboGrafx-16 console. Other companies tried to follow suit, but the discs did not gain widespread adoption on game consoles due to the regional nature of their release and the lack of unified standards. On October 8, 1991, an agreement between Fujitsu, Microsoft, Philips, and Tandy established a set of standards for PCs, which included a CD-ROM drive, a graphics card, and a sound card. This allowed CD-ROM drives to be produced with the assurance that they would pay for themselves. By 1993, CD-ROM games had become commercially viable. The first truly successful PC game on CD was 7th Guest, which sold a million copies. Star Wars: Rebels Assault utilized graphics created on computers used for creating special effects in movies. In September 1993, Myst was released; thanks to its unhurried pacing and visual appeal, it became the best-selling PC video game of the year, selling 4 million copies in its first few weeks. The ability to play video clips in games brought video games and cinema closer together. Thus, in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father (1993), professional actors were invited to voice the dialogues, and the creation of The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1995) involved actors, cinematographers, costume designers, and makeup artists. Developers gained immense creative freedom, and sequences of pre-recorded videos that changed based on the player’s actions came to be known as interactive movies. The horror game Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of the Flesh (1996) once again sparked a wave of criticism regarding violence in video games, but it reinforced the idea that video games are not strictly for children. Just as there are movies intended solely for adult audiences, there are also adult-oriented games. By the mid-1990s, game developers were already facing the problem that large amounts of video data took up a lot of space on discs. Some games required as many as 6 CDs. The development of 3D graphics largely contributed to the end of the era of interactive movies. 3D in Wolfenstein 3D In November 1991, Texas developer Id Software released a PC game called Catacomb 3-D, which was a breakthrough in games with 3D graphics. It used Chris Green's software engine, created in 1990. It allowed to apply different textures to each 3D object, turning the same models into visually different ones. In March 1992, Blue Sky Productions released its game, Ultima Underworlds: The Stygian Abyss, which also used textures. After the success of Catacomb 3-D, Id decided to develop the ideas of the game Castle Wolfenstein (1981). This game, Wolfenstein 3D (1992), thanks to 3D gave players a new feeling, immersion in the game. After the game's successful sales, Id Software did what was previously considered unthinkable among game developers - to sell their engine for use by other companies. Before that, the developers regarded their technologies as secrets, which was the key to their success. They created all the tools themselves, but the ability to buy video game creation tools greatly simplified their creation. In the next project, Id rewrote the code, which allowed the creation of rooms of any height, curved walls and lighting effects like light bulbs on the ceiling. Programmer John Carmack changed the approach to the plot, saying that plots in video games, like in pornographic films, are not necessary. In addition, the new game, Doom (1993), was distinguished by an atmosphere of horror and the ubiquitous depiction of violence, such as bodies strung on stakes. Doom allowed players to fight each other by connecting PCs over a network. Programmer and designer John Romero called such competitions death matches. A demo version of the game was distributed from the company's website and was downloaded over a million times in half a year. Doom became a model for the creation of numerous new first-person shooters, which, due to their 3D nature, required 3D graphics cards. The cards contained a separate graphics processor (GPU) designed for the calculations necessary to create 3D graphics. Mass interest in GPUs further accelerated the transition of video games to 3D. An example of 3D game graphics in the late 1990s (Unreal Tournament) The question arose of introducing 3D graphics on consoles. In 1994, the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation were released in Japan, which began to compete in the US and European markets. Core Design worked on games for the Saturn and PlayStation, one of which was Tomb Raider. The game's revolutionary nature was the introduction of a female protagonist and a rich 3D world. At that time, the feminist movement Riot grrrls was active and the number of female gamers increased, which determined the interest in Tomb Raider. In addition, in Doom there was a phenomenon of discrimination against female players in multiplayer battles, when they were called transvestites, as if men were hiding under female nicknames. There were associations of women who set themselves the goal of defeating male players. The heroine of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, became a symbolic image and icon of pop culture. Meanwhile, experiments with the atmosphere of games were taking place. Alone In The Dark (1992) had primitive three-dimensional graphics, but impressed with the constant expectation of danger, when at any moment the floor could collapse, or a monster would jump out from behind the door. This idea was developed by Resident Evil (1996), which used cinematic angles and fear-mongering, and Silent Hill (1999). PlayStation's advantage over Nintendo was largely ensured by the game Final Fantasy VII (1997), which was released on discs rather than cartridges for the new Nintendo 64 console. The game became the first Japanese role-playing game to achieve success overseas. Games such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Golden Eye 007 allowed Nintendo 64 to sell about 30 million copies, but this was a small number compared to PlayStation sales. Sega lost market share in this struggle and in 1998 discontinued production of the Saturn. Video games, thanks to Sony's products, finally began to be perceived as a full-fledged part of popular culture, and not just entertainment. Despite losses of $ 242 million, Sega returned to the market with the Dreamcast console. Sega equipped the console with numerous accessories and a modem to promote its role-playing game Phantasy Star Online, which differed from the then multiplayer online games like Ultima Online in its focus on player cooperation. But, despite all the ambition and creativity, the Dreamcast did not become sufficiently successful, and the company returned to the role of a game publisher. In the late 1990s, approaches to storytelling in video games changed noticeably. Ever since the creation of Adventure, narrative had dominated adventure games and, to a lesser extent, role-playing games. But games like Planescape: Torment, The Longest Journey, contained philosophical overtones, the theme of finding oneself. The shooter Unreal had a more developed plot for its time, being closer to a feature film than other shooters, but a real breakthrough in plots was Half-Life (1998). Events were shown without video inserts or direct explanation, the entire plot unfolded in the game itself, with the player retaining control over the persona.

The implementation of the plot in Half-Life became an example of a combination of action, interactivity and cinematic presentation.

Released in 2000, Deus Ex was another important step in the complexity of action game plots. Attention to the moral side of the player's actions, which influenced the further development of the plot, was a discovery for its time. Esports emerged as a real industry, presenting video game competitions as a spectacle. Initially, the main discipline was the Quake series of games, but since 2001, competitions in Counter-Strike and others began to be held. In November 2004, World of Warcraft was released, which gave impetus to the growth of popularity of multiplayer online games. The mid-2000s opened the era of digital distribution, in which video games, for a fee or for free, were distributed not via discs, but via the Internet. Steam became the dominant service, which, as a result of the popularity of Valve's Half-Life 2, became the main store for PC games. Initially, Steam only sold Valve's own games, but in 2005 the platform was opened to other game developers. This allowed independent developers and even individuals to reach a wide audience without resorting to the services of publishers. In 2005, Microsoft released its Xbox 360 console. Equipped with a hard drive and an Internet connection, the console allowed you to buy and download games through the Xbox Live Arcade service. The following year, similar services were launched on the Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation. In parallel, mobile phone games developed. The first mobile phone game appeared back in 1997 - Snake. Over time, the capabilities of phones expanded, displays gained higher resolution, and processors gained power. As a result, mobile phones became full-fledged portable gaming platforms. The advent of the iPhone smartphone with a touch screen and the launch of the AppStore in 2007 allowed the creation of another platform through which small developers could reach a wide audience. By the late 2000s, smartphone games accounted for a significant share of the total number of video games. Motion capture technology began to play an important role in the creation of video games, which allowed games to reproduce realistic movements and emotions of characters by recording the positions of actors' body parts.

The beginning of the decade was marked by the release of such successful games as Mass Effect 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, BioShock 2, Heavy Rain, Assassin's Creed II, Metro 2033, The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom, Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Gran Turismo 5, Plants vs. Zombies and Mafia II, Dead Space 2, Crysis 2, Portal 2, Battlefield 3, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Minecraft and Need for Speed: The Run. The 2010s saw the start of the eighth generation of video game consoles. At the 2011 E3 exhibition, Nintendo introduced the Wii U, the successor to the Wii. The console was released in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand in November 2012, and in Japan the following month. Critical reviews were mixed. Microsoft also decided to continue the eighth generation. On May 21, 2013, a few weeks before E3 2013, Microsoft showed its new console - Xbox One. Sony also introduced its next-generation console - PlayStation 4. Also, among gaming platforms, competition appeared with the advent of games on tablets and smartphones, on which, mainly in 2014, many hits of the 2000s appeared. In 2012-2013, several games appeared that became the most popular in the world: Grand Theft Auto V, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. Also in this decade, publicly available virtual reality helmets appeared. Since 2016, a large number of video games have been released for these devices. Players have become active participants in the creation and modification of video games by modding, constructing interactive works in special editors. It has become common to release downloadable add-ons for games, including paid ones, and to introduce microtransactions designed to make the game easier for real money. Over the past decade, mobile platforms have become full-fledged platforms for video games. While many of these interactive creations have gained popularity, they have long fallen short of the popularity of PC and console games. However, in 2016, Pokémon Go was released, which became a global cultural phenomenon. The number of installs on Google Play alone exceeded 10 million within a few months of its release. According to Sensor Tower, by the end of the week after its release, the average daily usage time for Pokémon Go was over 33 minutes. This is more than the average daily usage of Facebook (22 minutes per day), Snapchat (18 minutes), and Twitter (17 minutes). However, the record was still held by other games: Candy Crush Saga and Game of War.