TABLE OF CONTENTS. Video games: An origin story. The evolution of video game controllers. Why you should play video games. The rise of esports

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2 2 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Video games: An origin story 20 The evolution of video game controllers 8 Why you should play video games 24 The rise of esports 12 Games for non-gamers 28 The truth about violence in video games 16 Return to retro games 30 5 tips for parents Question or comments about this premium edition, Brian.Ries@heraldtribune.com Premium Plus Editions is a division of the Pulitzer Prize winning Herald-Tribune Media Group. HTMG is proud to be a part of Gatehouse Media. Our goal is to provide high quality Premium Edition products that engage and captivate all readers.

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4 4 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Spacewar! running on the Computer History Museum s PDP-1. [Joi Ito]

5 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 5 Video Games An origin story By Rick Dakan, GateHouse Media Video games didn t start as a business, and the people who made them weren t in it for the money. At the dawn of the computer age, games were a way to show off a computer s capabilities. The earliest games were onetime demos, like William Higinbotham s Tennis For Two in 1958, made to show off the Brookhaven National Laboratory s new computer. The first truly successful game that was designed to be fun, distributed, and played as much as possible was Spacewar!, created by an unruly gaggle of MIT students who called themselves hackers. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT was exactly what it sounds like: a club for students interested in building model trains. These were complicated, immense train set-ups, with intricate wiring and signaling systems to switch tracks, run the lights, and so on. The students who focused on the electronics side used the term hack to describe something that, according to the club s own definition, applies ingenuity to create a clever result and which is often at odds with the design of the larger system. Instead of the modern redefinition of the word to denote a computer criminal, the original hackers were people who looked at a piece of technology and, instead of asking what s that supposed to do? asked, what can I do with that? 1940 Nuclear physicist Edward U. Condon designs and patents a computer game machine for the World s Fair that plays the classic mathematical strategy game Nim, where players try to avoid picking up the last matchstick. Around 100,000 people played the game in the Westinghouse pavilion and the machine won about 90 percent of the time A.S. Douglas creates OXO (a tic-tac-toe game) for his doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge. It was one of the first games to display information on an electronic screen.

6 6 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Tennis For Two at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. [Brookhaven National Laboratory] 1954 Programmers create a blackjack program on an IBM-701 computer at New Mexico s Los Alamos laboratories The U.S. military creates a computer wargame called Hutspiel to simulate war between NATO and Soviet forces.

7 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 7 When the Digital Equipment Corporation gave MIT one of its new PDP-1 computers in 1961, they certainly weren t thinking about games. The size of a couple refrigerators and costing $120,000 (over $1 million in today s dollars), this was a serious machine for serious business. But Tech Model Railroad Club members Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, Pete Sampson and Wayne Wiitanen saw it as a potential source of limitless fun. Russell conceived of the idea of making a game, and his pals spurred him on and helped out. The result was Spacewar!, displayed on a small, circular, monochrome monitor, played with homemade controllers and instantly addictive to their fellow students. Spacewar! pits two players against each other in a duel between spaceships. The simple line graphics are reminiscent of the later game Asteroids, with similar controls. Players fire missiles at one another, contend with momentum and gravity, and can warp to a random location when things go bad. It s still fun to play today, and you can try it for free in your browser at masswerk.at/spacewar, which faithfully recreates the original PDP-1 experience. As PDP computers spread across the country to other colleges, so did Spacewar!. Digital Equipment Corporation even used the game to test its computers, since the game used the machines to their maximum computational capacity. Over the next decade students all over the country played the game, and even staged tournaments such as the 1972 Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics at Stanford University. Reporting on this competition for Rolling Stone Magazine, Stuart Brand said Spacewar, if anyone cared to notice, was a flawless crystal ball of things to come in computer science and computer use. He was absolutely correct. But there were some who saw Spacewar! s potential without the benefit of hindsight, including a student at the University of Utah named Nolan Bushnell. He d played it on his college s PDP, and after graduation in 1968 took that experience with him to what was becoming Silicon Valley. Together with his friend Ted Dabney, he made a simplified version of the game called Computer Space. With just a single player and even more primitive graphics, this version was much more like a pinball machine than a mainframe. It was meant to sit in a bar and take quarters, not stay walled up in a lab only college students could access. Steve Russell, designer and main programmer of the initial version of Spacewar, working on a PDP-1 in [Joi Ito] Computer Space wasn t successful when it was released in It was complicated, strange, and expensive. But Bushnell didn t give up. He and Dabney started a new company and hired Allan Alcorn to develop another game based on a computerized tennis game he d seen at a trade show. They called their company Atari, and the game Pong. Pong would launch both the home and video arcade industries within just a few years. Those original MIT hackers never did make money off Spacewar!. They were in it for the challenge, to have fun, to prove it could be done. They just happened to launch an industry by accident Arthur Samuel, an early pioneer in machine learning and artificial intelligence, creates a self-learning checkers program which is shown on national television.

8 8 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 1957 Alex Bernstein creates the first complete chess program on an IBM-704 computer Willy Higinbotham creates a tennis game using an oscilloscope and a computer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, essentially an early version of Pong.

9 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 9 Why you should play video games By Brian Ries, GateHouse Media It s happened to me. I ve sat down to play a video game, then looked at the clock and realized an entire day has passed me by. When I tell my friends, they ask me why I would waste and entire day playing a game. There are a lot of reasons. And if you aren t currently a gamer, there are even more reasons you might want to start. 1. It s mature If your video game experience is limited to the consoles you had as a kid (and maybe a timewaster on your phone), then you probably missed how sophisticated the medium has become over the past decade. Though action still dominates, some game developers have used the unique qualities of video games to produce storytelling masterpieces. In a game, you tend to identify with the character you are playing, because you are constantly making decisions about what that character is doing. You become invested in a visceral way that is very different than in movies or books. Smart game developers can (and do, even in action games) take advantage of that to give their story impact. Try the post apocalyptic journey of damaged characters in The Last of US, the discovery and mystery of BioShock, or the gut-wrenching horror and self-hate in Silent Hill Steve Russell creates Spacewar!, called the first computer-based video game, while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dartmouth s John Kemeny creates the BASIC programming language, which makes it possible for students to create their own computer games.

10 10 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 2. It s good for you There is plenty of evidence out there that shows surprising benefits for people who play video games. Here s a short list of some of the benefits shown in research studies: Your mind: Playing video games helped improve cognition in people over the age of 50; faster decision-making; reduce stress; improve problem-solving; improve short- and long-term memory, improve concentration; and, finally, can actually increase brain size. Your body: Games can distract you from pain, and even produce a pain-killing response; improve balance and coordination; improve vision; reduce cravings; and encourage physical activity Your social life: Online games have been shown to improve social skills and even encourage real-life interaction; build leadership and teamwork skills; and encourage teaching behavior. 3. It s fun There is a style of video game for pretty much everyone. You may not want to execute no-scope headshots in the latest Call of Duty, but what about exploring ancient Egypt or acting as the general of a Napoleonic War army? Test your rhythmic skills in a psychedelic musical wonderland or solve complex puzzles in a comic book mystery. Race real cars, build an undersea empire, construct and manage a city or beat up zombies with a baseball bat. Whatever you can imagine, there s likely a game for that The first video game console called The Brown Box is created by Ralph Baer at Sanders Associates, Inc. It was multiplayer, multiprogram and could be played on a television Massachusetts high school student Jim Storer creates Lunar Lander, a text-based game that was eventually developed into an arcade machine.

11 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 11 TOP 20 BEST-SELLING VIDEO GAMES OF ALL TIME All platforms, number of units sold, in millions Tetris 170 Minecraft 144 Grand Theft Auto V 95 Wii Sports Player Unknown Battlegrounds 50 Super Mario Bros Mario Kart Wii 37.1 Wii Sports Resort Pokemon Red and Blue New Super Mario Bros New Super Mario Bros. Wii 30.2 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 30 Duck Hunt 28.3 Wii Play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 27.5 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Call of Duty: Black Ops 26.2 Grand Theft Auto IV 25 Call of Duty: Black Ops II 24.2 Kinect Adventures! College students Paul Dillenberger, Bill Heinemann and Don Rawitsch create Oregon Trail. It was later distributed nationwide, where many people found out how easy it was for pioneers to die of cholera Based on Baer s Brown Box, Magnavox releases Odyssey, the first home video game system.

12 12 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn of Atari release Pong, the first arcade video game. The prototype was placed in a California tavern where it promptly broke it was played so much it became jammed with quarters Maze Wars an ancestor of first-person shooters is released, featuring a labyrinth of wire-frame passages and deadly creatures.

13 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 13 Games for non-gamers Innovative fun for people who don t (normally) play video games By Rick Dakan, GateHouse Media Video games have never been bigger, better or more common, but non-players often think of them as hard to play, overly violent, or just for kids. Now, though, there are games for everyone if you know where to look for the kind of fun that works for you. Party Games These games defy the stereotype of players locked in their own worlds or just interacting with strangers online. These are fun, easy to understand but sometimes challenging to win games that require everyone to be in the same room, focused on one screen. Jackbox Party Packs 1-4: These are perfect party game packs, from the venerable designers of the You Don t Know Jack trivia game series. Each pack contains five different games where players can use any cell phone, tablet, or computer to participate in goofy fun ranging from trivia contests to drawing competitions. The first pack has a great variety, but all four are worth checking out. Available for $24.95 on consoles, mobile, and Mac/PC. Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes!: This is more of an acquired taste, but it manages to make virtual reality into a party experience. One player dons the virtual reality (VR) headset and interacts with a colorful, cartoony bomb. The rest of the players have a manual that explains how to disarm it. The VR player shouts out descriptions, the others shout out how to defuse it, and together you only have five minutes to save the day. Available on Steam VR, Playstation VR, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear, and Daydream VR for $ Atari releases a home version of Pong Don Woods releases a version of the fantastical text-based game Adventure which was created by William Crowther a year before.

14 14 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Interactive Video Back in the 1990s, the game industry thought fully interactive video was the future, but the games never lived up to the hype. The concept of a movie you play never went completely away, and a few games in recent years have done it just right. Her Story is a brilliant mystery experience that presents players with an archive of police interview footage from a British murder investigation. Players search through the short scenes in whatever order their search reveals, which leads to some great discussions and arguments about who did it and what really happened. It s available for PC, Mac and mobile for around $6. Late Shift really is an interactive movie, and was even shown in theaters with the audience voting on their phones to guide the story. Like a classic choose-your-own-adventure tale, this slick crime flick has one story but seven different possible endings. With good acting, writing, and production values, it s the best-looking interactive video around. Available on consoles, PC and Switch for around $10. Puzzle Games There s no running, jumping, shooting, or punching in these games, just beautiful art, ingenious design, and challenging puzzles that are perfect for inquisitive individuals or clever cooperative couples. The Witness is a striking, cerebral game wrapped in a very pretty package. Explore an island solving hundreds of variations of a unique style of maze puzzle, which grows more and more complicated as you uncover new secrets. Around $40 on consoles, Mac, and PC; $10 on ios. Gorogoa offers the unique experience of exploring within a series of nested paintings, and is unlike any game you ve ever seen. Ingenious and captivating, this beautiful game is available on the Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC and mobile devices for around $ Atari releases the Atari 2600 also known as the Video Computer System which included game cartridges, a joystick and color graphics Taito releases the Space Invaders arcade game. Within a year, there were more than 60,000 Space Invaders machines in the United States. Adjusted for inflation, it is estimated that players of the game spent over $10 billion.

15 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 15 TOP BESTS-SELLING VIDEO GAME FRANCHISES OF ALL TIME 20All platforms, number of units sold, in millions Mario 557 Super Mario 326 Pokemon 307 Call of Duty 275 Grand Theft Auto 250 Wii 201 The Sims 200 Tetris 170 FIFA 150 Need for Speed 150 Minecraft 144 Final Fantasy 135 Mario Kart 124 Wii Sports 115 Lego 100 Madden NFL 100 Assassin s Creed 100 Pro Evolution Soccer 100 Sonic the Hedgehog 89 The Legend of Zelda Mattel releases the Intellivision Activision becomes the first game developer to exclusively create games, instead of consoles and arcade cabinets.

16 16 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 1980 Namco releases the iconic Pac-Man arcade machine. It later becomes a hit on the Atari Nintendo releases Donkey Kong, important in its own right, but also famous for introducing Jumpman, the character that would eventually become a little plumber named Mario.

17 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 17 Return to retro games How to play the classics By Rick Dakan, GateHouse Media Over the past five decades, video games have grown from a novelty to one of the most important and influential pastimes in the world. No other form of entertainment has evolved so much in that time, and today s blockbuster console games would have been unimaginable in the days of Pong and the Atari It s easy to focus on the fancy graphics and forget that, despite their visual simplicity, a lot of old games were and still are great fun. Fortunately, today it s easier than ever to go back to those classics of the previous century. Here are four ways to relive your youth and bring that old-school excitement back into your home, or discover it for the first time: The Internet Archive This is the place to start if you want to both have the most options (many hundreds) and pay the least money (totally free). Archive.org has collected and curated classic video games and made them easily playable in your web browser on its Console Living Room page. Whether it s old Apple II games, Atari 2600 cartridges, or even arcade cabinets, the site s virtual consoles have something for the nostalgic or those curious about the good old days. Archive.org has even added emulated versions of the old LED handheld games from companies like Mattel that were the precursors to modern portable games. Some of the biggest names are missing, sometimes the games don t control well with a mouse and keyboard, and occasionally they might not work at all, but it s all free to play and an entertaining way to while away the hours Tron hits theaters, along with a game version for arcades Dan Bunten s M.U.L.E. an early hit for Electronic Arts pushes the limits of multiplayer video games.

18 18 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Atari Flashback AT Games has released new versions of their Atari Flashback console every couple of years since The newest and best is the Atari Flashback 8 Gold, which has two old-school style (but wireless) joysticks, and hooks up easily to modern TVs. The machine is loaded with 120 Atari 2600 games, including classics like Pitfall, Frogger, Combat, Missile Command and Yar s Revenge. It retails for around $65. NES Classic Edition When Nintendo originally released the NES Classic Edition in 2016, the limited quantities sold out instantly. Thankfully, it s back this year, featuring a mini version of the original 8-bit console, a controller and 30 games, including Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Final Fantasy, Metroid and Mega Man 2. It retails for $60. Super NES Classic Like the NES Classic, this is a miniature Super Nintendo and has twenty games on it, including the never-released Starfox 2. Highlights include Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, Street Fighter II and Final Fantasy III. This version has two controllers and retails for $80. Other Flashback Consoles Like the others above, there have been flashback-style consoles made for the Sega Genesis, Intellivision, Colecovision and others, all available to greater or lesser degrees from resellers Russian mathematician Alexey Pajitnov creates Tetris. It is licensed to Spectrum HoloByte by a British company (before they had managed to acquire the rights themselves) and was released in the U.S. in It has since become the best-selling video game of all time The Nintendo Entertainment System debuts in the United States, breathing new life into a sluggish U.S. game industry.

19 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 19 Retro Systems If you want to do the work (fun?) of tracking down old game cartridges, you can also buy one of the modern systems designed to play old games. The best have the ability to read game cartridges from retro systems like the NES, SNES and Genesis like they were the original consoles and connect right to your TV. Prices for these systems start at around $25, but you ll want to spend more to get the best results, especially if you want to play games from 16- bit systems. Raspberry Pi Emulator For those with a little flare for tinkering and a hankering for some DIY retro gaming, there s the Raspberry Pi. These cheap computer processors are great for student projects, homebrew makers and enthusiasts who re willing to put in a little work for maximum flexibility. The results aren t as stylish as the official retro consoles above, but the ability to download thousands of old games and run them right on your TV or monitor is unmatched by any other option. The RetroPi Arcade Gaming Kit from Vilros comes with everything you need, including a controller, and retails for about $80. If you want to really up your gaming, you can combine that RetroPi with joysticks and buttons from a seller like X-Arcade. They make already assembled sets that plug easily into whatever system you end up with, or, if you want to go all the way, you can buy a kit that s ready to be inserted into your own custom-built arcade cabinet Nintendo releases Legend of Zelda, created by video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto Leisure Suit Larry introduces people to the idea of an adult video game The first John Madden Football is released for computers.

20 20 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 1989 Nintendo releases the Game Boy 10 years after Milton Bradley s Microvision and expands an untapped market for handheld video game consoles Sega releases the 16-bit Genesis console in North America.

21 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 21 The evolution of video game controllers From the classic joystick to dual-shock, paddles to joy-cons By Brian Ries, GateHouse Media You can thank pilots for the name joystick. The first use of the term appeared in Robert Lorraine s diary in 1909, when he went to France to learn to fly an early aircraft. Nowadays, the term is antiquated. Instead of the iconic Atari joystick with a single red button, modern video game consoles come with controllers that have a multitude of buttons, sticks and pads. (The Xbox One version has no less than 11 buttons, two sticks which can also act as buttons and a directional pad.) Besides merely adding quantity to control options, there have been a few innovations along the way. Light guns, steering wheels, paddles and pads have come and gone and come again. Nintendo s Wii found great success with its motion sensitive controls while Xbox s Kinect where you were the controller failed to find traction. In the end, however, it s all about control Microsoft begins bundling Solitaire with Windows 3.0, introducing the concept of casual gaming to millions of people who wouldn t otherwise play a video game Sega releases Sonic the Hedgehog Nintendo releases the 16-bit Super NES.

22 22 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 1972 Magnavox Odyssey Designed to sit on a flat surface, the first home video game console had a controller with three knobs on the sides and a single button on top Atari 2600 The iconic video game joystick Mattel Intellivision The Intellivision controller was the first with a directional thumb pad. Some games also came with an overlay for the keyboard that would illustrate the necessary controls Nintendo Entertainment System The NES controller was copied from Nintendo s earlier Game & Watch series and was long a template for useful and comfortable gamepad controllers Sony PlayStation 1999 Sega Dreamcast 2006 Nintendo Wii 2017 Nintendo Switch Sony released the first handheld dual stick controller, followed later that year with the DualShock, which added buttons under the sticks. The Dreamcast controller included two expansion slots, used by memory cards that could display data on a tiny screen and peripherals like a microphone. The revolutionary Wii remote had the ability to gauge acceleration along three axes, as well as determining where the controller is pointing. Continuing its new controller trend, Nintendo s Switch has a controller that can be used in a traditional dual stick format, or split in two to be used in two hands, or as two separate controllers 1993 Doom, the proto-typical first-person shooter, is released The U.S. Senate holds hearings about violent video games partially due to games like Mortal Kombat which later results in the creation of a video game rating system Blizzard releases the real-time strategy game Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, progenitor of the immensely popular massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft.

23 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 23 TOP BEST-SELLING VIDEO GAME CONSOLES OF ALL TIME 20All platforms, number of units sold, in millions PlayStation Nintendo DS 154 Game Boy 118 PlayStation 102 Wii 101 Xbox PlayStation 3 84 PlayStation Portable 82 Game Boy Advance 81 PlayStation 4 79 Nintendo 3DS 72 NES 62 SNES 49 Nintendo Sega Genesis 30 Atari Xbox One 30 Xbox 24 GameCube 21 Nintendo Switch Sega releases the Saturn, the first 32-bit console Sony releases the Playstation Nintendo releases the 64-bit Nintendo 64.

24 24 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Associated Press 1997 IBM s Deep Blue supercomputer chess program defeats world champion Gary Kasparov Sega releases the Dreamcast. Lauded by fans as the best console ever made, the Dreamcast was a commercial failure that caused Sega to leave the console business.

25 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 25 The rise of esports From Space Invaders tournaments to a $1.5 billion business By Brian Ries, GateHouse Media You re probably familiar with the Super Bowl, the World Cup and the Kentucky Derby, but what about The International? Last August, 90 athletes on 16 teams assembled at the KeyArena in Seattle for the seventh annual The International. They played for a record-breaking prize pool of almost $25 million, with the winner Team Liquid, based in the Netherlands taking home almost $11 million. The game they played was DOTA 2, a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena video game released in In the past decade, video game competitions or esports have grown into an international phenomenon, with an audience that is projected to top 200 million in 2018 and 300 million by Some esports tournaments have received double the viewers of the average MLB World Series game. And it all started in That year, Stanford s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory hosted the Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics, which brought together 24 players to compete in Spacewar! arguably the first competitive video game. First prize was a one-year subscription to Rolling Stone magazine, which makes sense considering the competition was covered by Rolling Stone sports reporter Stewart Brand and shot by legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz Sony releases EverQuest, which introduced hundreds of thousands of people to the concept of massively multiplayer online games Sony releases the Playstation 2, which went on to become the best-selling game console of all time.

26 26 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Associated Press (For the record, Bruce Baumgart won the free-for-all and Slim Tovar took the singles title.) In 1980, Atari held the National Space Invaders Championship, with about 10,000 people competing in regional tournaments and the finals. It was won by Rebecca Heineman (then known as Bill Heineman), who went on to become a prolific video game programmer. There were more tournaments throughout the 1980s, but it was the rise of first person shooter games especially Quake and real time strategy games especially StarCraft that kicked off modern esports in the late 1990s. These days, some of the biggest leagues and tournaments feature multiplayer online battle games like DOTA 2 in which players compete as a team. Although esports has appeared on television a few times over the past two decades, the real audience is online. Much of the growth in both revenue and audience has been in Asia especially China and South Korea but a new generation of fan raised on Youtube videos and Twitch streaming of people playing video games has drastically increased esports popularity in the U.S. If you want to break into professional esports, don t quit your day job. Just like traditional professional sports, there are only a few spots at the top and getting there takes a combination of innate talent and extensive training. The best of the best are asked to join esports teams located around the world. Like any sports team, they can offer salaries, benefits, trainers, equipment and more, depending on your contract. In recent years, many professional esports teams have been purchased or created by current or former owners of traditional sports teams, including the owners of the New York Yankees, Texas Rangers, Cleveland Cavaliers and many others. And with the esports industry projected to earn almost $1.5 billion by 2020, you can expect more money to be poured into teams. Even colleges have begun to form their own teams, some even offering scholarships to promising esports players. So, maybe you do have a shot Nintendo releases the Gamecube Microsoft joins the console wars by releasing the Xbox Valve creates Steam, a platform that allows players to buy and download games from the internet.

27 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition Associated Press Associated Press Most Popular Esports Games of 2018 (by number of professional players) Top Esports Teams (based on prize money earned) 1. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 1. Team Liquid $20.5 million 2. League of Legends 2. Evil Geniuses $17.2 million 3. Counter-Strike 3. Newbee $12.7 million 4. DOTA 2 4. Fnatic $11 million 5. Overwatch 5. Virtus.pro $10.1 million 6. StarCraft II 6. Wings Gaming $9.7 million 7. Super Smash Bros. Melee 7. LGD Gaming $8.7 million 8. Heroes of the Storm 8. SK Telecom T1 $8.6 million 9. Heroes of Newerth 9. Vici Gaming $8.2 million 10. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 10. Natus Vincere $7.6 million 2004 Nintendo releases the Nintendo DS handheld game system Blizzard releases World of Warcraft, which will become the most popular MMO of all time.

28 28 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 2005 Microsoft releases the Xbox Sony releases the Playstation Nintendo releases the Wii, featuring new motion-sensitive controllers that encourage (some) people to get off the couch and be more active while playing games Harmonix releases Rock Band, featuring a drum set, guitars and mics.

29 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 29 The truth about violence in video games Research doesn t show a link between violent games and violent behavior By Brian Ries, GateHouse Media Although there are plenty of games out there that don t rely on violence for entertainment, it s true: Video games tend to be violent. The American Psychological Association (APA) found that 85-percent of video games on the market contain some form of violence. In 2015, the APA concluded in a policy statement that there is a link between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior. That same year, more than 230 researchers wrote the APA asking it to stop releasing policy statements and in 2017 the Media Psychology and Technology arm of the APA released a statement telling the media and elected officials that they should stop linking violence and video games. There s little scientific evidence to support the connection, and it may distract us from addressing those issues that we know contribute to real-world violence, said the statement. In 2015, Christopher Ferguson, professor of psychology at Stetson University, analyzed more than 100 studies about violent video games and found that violent video games had little impact on kids aggression, mood, helping behavior or grades. Any claims that there is consistent evidence that violent video games encourage aggression are simply false, said Ferguson, on theconversation.com. The Supreme Court agreed in 2011 in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, when it ruled that California could not ban the sale of violent video games to children. Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively, said the majority opinion. Recent studies also show that there is no link between video games, violent or not, and violent or aggressive behavior in adults or children. Even if the research doesn t support a link between violent video games and aggression or violence in children, that shouldn t give kids free reign to play whatever games they want. Commonsensemedia.org a site devoted to helping parents make smart media choices has excellent advice for parents when navigating what media their children should consume: As parents, we can make a choice to consistently expose our kids to media that reflects our own personal values and say no to the stuff that doesn t. Just because a game doesn t cause violence, doesn t mean it is appropriate Microsoft releases the Xbox Sony releases the Playstation World of Warcraft surpasses 10 million subscribers Angry Birds introduces millions of people to the idea of casual gaming on phones and Farmville gets people gaming on social media sites.

30 30 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition istockphoto.com 2010 Swedish developer Markus Persson releases Minecraft, creating one of the biggest indie-game success stories of all time Nintendo releases the 3DS Nintendo releases the Wii U Microsoft releases the Xbox One.

31 VIDEO GAMES GateHouse Media Premium Edition 31 5 tips for parents Ways to find appropriate video games for children and teens By GateHouse Media Video games are often on children s wish lists for birthdays and holidays, but parents can sometimes feel a little overwhelmed trying to decide which games are appropriate for their children. The Entertainment Software Rating Board, the non-profit organization that assigns age and content ratings for video games, is an excellent resource for helping parents navigate both the real and virtual game aisles. The familiar ESRB ratings are now also assigned to downloadable games and apps in Google Play, Microsoft s Xbox Live store, Nintendo eshop and the PlayStation Store. Here are five tips for parents looking for console games or mobile apps that are suitable for their children: 1. Check the rating. Start with the recommended age rating. ESRB assigns E (Everyone), E10+ (Everyone 10 and older), T (Teen), M (Mature) and AO (Adults Only), which are clearly labeled on video game boxes or on the game s page prior to downloading from an online or mobile storefront. 2. Review the content descriptors. ESRB uses about 30 different content descriptors for depictions involving violence, suggestive or sexual themes, language, controlled substances and other types of content to help parents understand what may have triggered a particular age rating. 3. Look for interactive elements. Interactive elements describe certain aspects of a game or app that may be of interest to many parents and consumers, and can be assigned to downloadable games and apps. These include the sharing of the user s location, if the game or app enables the purchase of digital goods, if users can interact and/or if unrestricted internet access is provided. 4. Set parental controls. Today s gaming devices have parental controls built in, which allow parents to block titles by age rating, ensuring children can access only ageappropriate games and apps. Depending on the device, parents can also control specific features like with whom their children can play online and whether in-game purchases can be made. 5. Do your research. Check ESRB rating summaries at ESRB.org, which provide a more detailed explanation of content in many packaged games. Commonsensemedia,org can be an amazing resource for parents thanks to the site s editorial reviews, but also for the crowd-sourced reviews by parents and kids, who are asked to assign an age to each game. You ll find that both parents and kids often assign ages that don t agree with the ESRB. No matter what you decide, make sure to interact with your child about the games they play and show interest in their gaming. Even better, play video games with them! 2013 Sony releases the Playstation Mobile game sales surpass console and PC games for the first time Nintendo releases the Nintendo Switch, the first home console that doubles as a handheld gaming system.

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