Video Games

    While many games throughout history have taken centuries to travel from region to region or from aristocracy to the masses, in less than 40 years video games have gone from their inception to a multi-billion dollar industry. In 2009, unit sales of computer and video games stood at more than 270 million, and the U.S. computer and video game software industry employed more than 32,000 people in 34 states, about 41 percent of them in California. [Siwek]

    The increase in the use and popularity of video games has come part and parcel with developments and rapid changes in computer, computer graphics and telecommunications technologies. Early systems by Magnavox and Atari paved the way for today's Nintendo and XBox systems. Pong, the first arcade hit in the early 1970s, was followed in the late 1970s by Space Invaders, the "first video game to go mega in the U.S. and the first to really exploit the medium rather than hark back to older games like Ping Pong, pinball or hockey." [Herz] Games today can "create new worlds where players can manipulate and change their environment through realistic animation and unique motion-sensor controllers," [ESA, Transformation of the Video Game Industry], while at the same time about 42 percent of those playing games online report that the types of games they play most often are puzzle, board game, game show, trivia or card games." [ESA, 2010 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry] The ESA also reports that the number of Americans playing games on wireless devices such as cell phones or PDAs also more than doubled between 2002 and 2009.

    Beyond being products for play and entertainment, some video games (referred to as serious games) are becoming more widely used as a medium for education, training and social change in schools, businesses, health care organizations and the military. Serious games "attempt to impart skills, knowledge or ideas to players: practicing skills, knowledge gain through exploration, cognitive problem solving [skills] or social problem solving [skills]. [Ritterfeld, et al]

Reference Sources:

Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 2010 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. ESA: 2010. Available in pdf/viewed online June 2011 at www.theesa.com.
Entertainment Software Association (ESA), The Transformation of the Video Game Industry. ESA: 2010. Available in pdf/viewed online June 2011 at www.theesa.com.
Herz, J.C., Joystick Nation, Boston and NY: Little, Brown and Company, 1995.
Ritterfeld, Ute, Cody, Michael and Vorderer, Peter, editors. Serious Games, New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2009.
Siwek, Stephen E. Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report, ESA: 2010. Available in pdf/viewed online June 2011 at www.theesa.com.
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 130th Edition. Washington D.C.: GPO, 2010.