Since there start Video games since there start have developed from a electronic novelty to a lifelike immersive universe. First radio allowed a person to hear a story, and then TV allowed a person to see a story. Video games allow a person to interact with a story. Video games have been threw several revisions throughout there lifetime but has become one of the most popular entertainment forms.
Video games first got their start with arcade games. These games where usually very repetitive and found a winner by a score. You might get a point for shooting a spaceship as in the game Space Invaders or for scoring on the other paddle in Pong. These games where not very colorful if at all and had almost no story to them. Most of the games at the time had no way to save a game so every time you turned it off you had to start all over next time. But for these arcade games that was fine because you only had so many lives or rounds before the game would end and you would restart trying to get a better score then the last time.
The next big jump in games was not until Sega Geneses in 1989 and Super Nintendo in 1991. These systems did allow you to save your games, which was an important step in the right direction for video games. It allowed you to have a character that you controlled to accomplish a task. Some characters people started to recognize whether it be Sonic and his fight with Doctor Robotnic or Mario and his quest to save the princess. These systems would soon be overshadowed by more realistic and better quality games. But they had a large impact on the game industry.
The next advancement was 3D graphics with the release of Playstation and Nintendo 64 in 1995. Games started to get full 3D environments to explore instead of sprites (2D pictures) with this games started to look more real. This was an important step and almost every large game after that time used full 3d graphics. This allowed for more accurate display of the world around your character which in role playing games (RPG's) is very important. It gives you a sense of surroundings and games start to be more immersive.
When the internet hit main stream it also effected games and consoles. The Playstation 2 and the Xbox now allowed a gamer to connect with a friend over the internet. Games started to focus on multiplayer action as more and more people started to play them. Then game communities started to spring up in computer games where fans started to voice thier opinions on what they want to see in their games. With the internet came the massively multiplayer online role playing game or mmorpg for short. These games take thousands of people from all around the world and put them into one multiplayer game. These games usually take a long time to play maybe weeks or months. As you adventure with other people through the world you gain experience and items that make you stronger and working as a team can eventually conquer even the hardest parts of the game.
With the release of a hardware upgrade to video cards where they now use PCI Express came the next generation systems the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. These systems now use high definition TV's and can truly produce a picture that looks real. Games now have complete physics engines that control the game's world. (Where we take physics in real life and program it into a game so that we get lifelike effects)
Also some gamers made improvements in user made modifications (mods) that added new multiplayer game play styles that the original developers didn't think of. Unfortunately mods are only available on the computer and not on console games, because individual people cannot control there own servers on console games. With the internet also came clans, clans are groups of people that come together to play a common game. Some clans go on to compete in tournaments such as the Cal tournament. This tournament is for many different games and usually offer cash prizes for the winners. There are several levels of the tournament including one open to the general public. They even have had matches put on TV.
As many people speculate on what video games of the future will be, many people come to the conclusion of virtual reality. This is the goal of video games, to make a world so real that you can use your own five senses to understand a virtual world around you. Many people think of this only as science fiction but it does not seem as far fetched as once thought. Most ideas for virtual reality at this point involve using the human body to simulate the virtual world. All of are five senses send information to are brain in electrical pulses down are nerves. If we could understand the electrical signals sent and figure out a way to send them we could tell the brain it senses whatever a computer would tell it to. When your brain sends the command to move your leg or arm it could send the signal to the computer. So instead of moving a mouse you just have to try to move your arm. Unfortunately the technology to get this done is not yet here but maybe in the future this will be possible.
