The Video Game Archive: Investigating origins of a new medium in the context of sports gaming
Part 1: The Object
Video Games have become one of the most prevalent forms of digital mass media since their inception in the 1970s. The dominant narrative holds that the video game system as we know it today was the brainchild of inventor and engineer Ralph Baer. As noted in NPR’s obituary article after his death in 2014, Baer is considered “the Father of Video games” and is listed as the holder of the first video game patent in 1971. Reporting from the Smithsonian institute further details the origins of the gaming concept, noting that as far back as 1966, Baer had been investigating how to play games on a television screen. The result was his prototype machine known as “The Brown Box”, which would later lead to the formal production of the system known as the Magnavox Odyssey in 1972. Culturally, most people likely recognize “Pong” as the first popular video game, but Baer’s version of electronic television did come first, a fact which lead to a significant copyright infringement lawsuit against Atari in which the case was settled for $700,000 and licensing rights to Atari. With all this in mind, the archive I visited had some surprising insights into the earliest origins of electronic gaming as well as its role in popular culture as time progressed.
Part 2: The Archive
In investigating the origins of video games, I came across a wealth of knowledge at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NY. Previously, the museum had a small exhibit that featured various video game systems and applications that were significant as either technological or pop-cultural benchmarks. Beginning in September of 2018 and displaying through Spring of 2019, a new more focused exhibit titled “A Whole Different Ball Game” discussed how the concept and execution of sports video games was integral to the origins, advancements and proliferation of gaming as a whole. The first and possibly most significant of the primary source objects I encountered in the exhibit was “Tennis for Two”, a Donner Model 3400 analog computer with an oscilloscope display created in 1958. The game’s visuals show a representation of a tennis court viewed from the side, and players adjust the angle of their shots with a knob on their controller and try to hit the ball over the net by pressing a button. Although displaying a simple simulation of a sports game, the program was actually intended to showcase how computers could process missile trajectories, a valuable capability during the height of the cold war.
The other primary source object I investigated was the Commodore 64 videogame system running the game application “One on One”, the game itself released in 1983. This product is particularly important because it is the first ever known use of professional athletes having their names licensed as part of a game’s title and creation. This would have significant implications for the future growth of video games, as many popular modern sports titles use licenses from sports associations such as the NBA and NFL, along with the rights to individual athlete’s likenesses.
Part 3: Making History
“Tennis for Two” was designed in 1958 by William Higinbotham, head of the instrumentation division at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, NY. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information, a division within the Department of Energy, wrote an account of the project’s impact in a 1981. The article was meant to show the importance of the research and development program led to the pioneering development of video games, a medium gaining exponential popularity with titles such as “Donkey Kong” and “Frogger” being released in that same year. According to the article, Brookhaven had visitors days during which thousands of people came to tour the lab and see exhibits. Higinbotham’s game was an illustration of what the Instrumentation Division could design and build. The article quote’s Higinbotham giving his reasoning behind his invention, as he states “I knew from past visitors days that people were not much interested in static exhibits, so for that year. I came up with an idea for a hands-on display — a video tennis game.” Higinbotham was not alone in the development of the system, as he credits technical specialist Robert V. Dvorak, with the bulk of the construction, along with Alexander Elia for drafting the official blueprint (the Brookhaven National Laboratory website also credits technician David Potter in its construction.
Part of what makes these findings so unique is that the information, which was not commonly known for many years, first gained public prevalence during a lawsuit concerning the aforementioned Magnavox Odyssey and its creator Ralph Baer. An article from the website Videogame Historian talks about the details of the deposition:
Tennis for Two did not inspire later designers, however, it did gain a new notoriety in the 1970s when lawyers for arcade companies defending against a patent lawsuit brought by Magnavox discovered the existence of the game and unsuccessfully attempted to portray it as an example of prior art that invalidated Ralph Baer’s television gaming patents. Higinbotham was called to testify on multiple occasions during various patent suits that continued into the 1980s, which is one reason the game is far better documented than most of its contemporaries.
The history of gaming requiring several moments of reappraisal is a fascinating aspect of a medium that advances at such a rapid pace. When compared to technology-based mediums such as radio, television, and even cinema, the power and complexity in video games has advanced rapidly in their comparatively short lifespan.
One of the overriding messages of the “Whole Different Ball Game” exhibit is how integral the connection of real world sports was in the proliferation of video games. This is evident from the very inception of the medium being able to depict a sport, but developed rapidly based on how closely the games could emulate aspects of our real world. One of the key components of this was the licensing of sports association name brands as well as the names and likenesses of real world athletes. The 1983 Commodore 64 game “One on One” was the first to feature named athletes in its production, as NBA superstars Julius “Dr. J” Erving and Larry Bird offered their likenesses to the game. Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher that was created a year prior, would use this template as the cornerstone of their eventual videogame sports empire.
From this groundbreaking concept, Electronic Arts and its EA Sports games division has grown in to a multibillion-dollar company. While the technical aspects of translating real life sports physics into complex algorithms has been an important factor in its growth, it’s true claim to fame has been its well-publicized licensing agreements with organizations such as the NFL, NCAA, and FIFA. In particular, the John Madden football game series has become synonymous with innovative gameplay that replicates the look and feel of watching a live sports program.
Part 4: The Method
Looking closely through the various exhibits in the collection reveals an attempt to explore the deeper social implications with in the development of sports video games. This is indicated in the banner at the entrance of the exhibit, which reads:
The exhibition considers what it means for full-body sports to be transposed to screens and controllers in the service of realism, who is or isn’t represented in sports video games, the ways broadcast sports and video games reflect one another, and the primacy of statistics in professional sports and sports simulators.
In investigating the origins of the physical media and its proliferation, one of the subjects notably absent from the exhibit was the development of the video game cartridge. Inventor and technician Jerry Lawson designed the cartridge in 1976, which allowed multiple interchangeable games to be played instantly on one home system without a cumbersome software installation. An article by Wired Magazine details his early life and contributions to mass media technology. Of note, the article lists his time in Silicon Valley association with the “Homebrew Computer Club, a group of early hackers that included Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.” Why is his name not known with the same popularity as those two famous icons? This in part speaks to the discourse on Technological Determinism and the concept of “Pure Invention”, where the prevailing idea is that only a small group of isolated geniuses determines the course of technological development. Jerry Lawson, an African-American, thus shares the same fate of other black scientists and engineers whose crucial work would be overshadowed and/or subsumed by more famous white icons; the black inventor Lewis Latimer who contributed greatly to the success of Thomas Edison and the development of the lightbulb in the late 19th century is one such example.
The subject of racism is hinted at in one portion of the exhibit, which showed past images of sports journalism articles featuring black athletes, as well as imagery of more contemporary figures such as Collin Kaepernick, criticized by racist objectors for his support of the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality. This is significant as it applies to video games because much of the representation of African Americans and other people of color in video games is primarily through sports video games. Whereas most fictional protagonists in video games are continuously built in the cis-gendered white male template, sports games, in their goal to simulate reality, must inherently feature black people, as that is statistically the largest demographic in the NFL and NBA. This speaks to the study of ethnography in media as discussed by Tobing Rony. However, in this case, the study applies to depictions in games as opposed to on screen. Having said that, this also brings up the question of stereotypes: are black people/people of color only viable/valuable as assets in sports, and not as fully formed characters in fictional narratives? The exhibit never presents and answer to these questions. As it is, we are left with exhibits such as the working copy of the Xbox One X title “NBA Live ‘19”, a 4k HD title that looks as real as a live NBA game broadcast even up close.
Gender inequality also appears to be a key takeaway in the exhibit, as several exhibits highlight rare instances of sports games featuring female athletes. One of the items on display is “Jennifer Capriati Tennis”, released in 1992 for the Sega Genesis. Another instance of the importance of personal brand licensing, her game was one of the first examples of a cultural movement in the ’90s that saw the rise of women’s sports, to include the founding of the WNBA in 1996 and the FIFA women’s cup in 1999. Despite this, one of the curiosities of history not immediately apparent is the fact that the game cover art for all other non-North American regions had a completely different title and featured only male athletes. In thinking about communication theories regarding gender, I had first considered Goffman’s explanations on gendered commercials. However, rather than analyze how Capriati might be displayed in questionable typology, we must instead contend with the complete erasure of her identity from her own game. This too is a powerful manifestation on the stake of gendered advertising, as it completely removes the power of the game to have progressive effects on gender equality.
Conclusion
The museum of the Moving Image exhibit titled “A Whole new Ballgame” provided a trove of information that built upon a previous installation about the history of video games. The focus on sports games in particular highlights their critical role in the popularity of video games from the earliest manifestation s of the media. The exhibit also attempts to analyze cultural changes and conflicts associated with that rise. However, despite some artifacts of inestimable value, there are still opportunities for further textual objects that could have delved deeper into how sports video games address social and cultural issues in a way that no other medium can.
Works Cited
Kohler, Chris. “Jerry Lawson, Inventor of Modern Game Console, Dies At 70.”
Wired.com, Condé Nast, 11 April 2011, https://www.wired.com/2011/04/jerry-lawson-dies/
Mullis, Steve. “Inventor Ralph Baer, The ‘Father Of Video Games,’ Dies At 92.” NPR.org, NPR,
8 December 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/12/08/369405270/inventor-ralph-baer-the-father-of-video-games-dies-at-92
Sauer, Patrick. “How Dr. J and Larry Bird Helped Build a Video Game Empire.” Vice Sports,
Vice Media, 25 May 2017, https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/wje9kq/how-dr-j-and-larry-bird-helped-build-a-video-game-empire
Smith, Alexander. “Tennis Anyone?” Videogamehistorian.wordpress.com, 28 January 2014,
https://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/tennis-anyone/
“A Whole Different Ball Game: Playing Through 60 Years of Sports Video Games”, Museum of
the Moving Image, 14 September 2018, http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2018/09/14/detail/a-whole-different-ball-game-playing-through-60-years-of-sports-video-games/
“The Father of the Video Game: The Ralph Baer Prototypes and Electronic Games.” National
Museum of American History, Behring Center, The Smithsonian Institution, https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/the-father-of-the-video-game-the-ralph-baer-prototypes-and-electronic-games
“The First Video Game?” Brookhaven National Laboratory, Office of Science of the U.S.
Department of Energy, https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php
