Computer and Video Game Designers

The computer and video game industry did not begin to develop until the 1960s and 1970s, when computer programmers at some large universities, big companies, and government labs began designing games on mainframe computers. Steve Russell was perhaps the first video game designer. In 1962, when he was in college, he made up a simple game called Spacewar. Graphics of spaceships flew through a starry sky on the video screen, the object of the game being to shoot down enemy ships. Nolan Bushnell, another early designer, played Spacewar in college. In 1972 he put the first video game in an arcade; it was a game very much like Spacewar, and he called it Computer Space. However, many users found the game difficult to play, so it was not a success.

Bruce Artwick published the first of many versions of Flight Simulator, and Bushnell later created Pong, a game that required the players to paddle electronic ping-pong balls back and forth across the video screen. Pong was a big hit, and players spent thousands of quarters in arcade machines all over the country playing it. Bushnell's company, Atari, had to hire more and more designers every week, including Steve Jobs, Alan Kay, and Chris Crawford. These early designers made games with text-based descriptions (that is, no graphics) of scenes and actions with interactivity done through a computer keyboard. Games called Adventure, Star Trek, and Flight Simulator were among the first that designers created. They used simple commands like "look at building" and "move west." Most games were designed for video machines; not until the later 1970s did specially equipped TVs and early personal computers (PCs) begin appearing.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, designers working for Atari and Intellivision made games for home video systems, PCs, and video arcades. Many of these new games had graphics, sound, text, and animation. Designers of games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders were successful and popular. They also started to make role-playing games like the famous Dungeons and Dragons. Richard Garriott created Ultima, another major role-playing game. Games began to feature the names and photos of their programmers on the packaging, giving credit to individual designers.

Workers at Electronic Arts began to focus on making games for PCs to take advantage of technology that included the computer keyboard, more memory, and floppy disks. They created games like Carmen Sandiego and M.U.L.E. In the mid- to late 1980s, new technology included more compact floppies, sound cards, and larger memory. Designers also had to create games that would work on more than just one platform—PCs, Apple computers, and 64-bit video game machines.

In the 1990s, Electronic Arts started to hire teams of designers instead of "lone wolf" individuals (those who design games from start to finish independently). Larger teams were needed because games became more complex; design teams would include not only programmers but also artists, musicians, writers, and animators. Designers made such breakthroughs as using more entertaining graphics, creating more depth in role-playing games, using virtual reality in sports games, and using more visual realism in racing games and flight simulators. This new breed of designers created games using techniques like Assembly, C, and HyperCard. By 1994, designers began to use CD-ROM technology to its fullest. In only a few months, Doom was a hit. Designers of this game gave players the chance to alter it themselves at various levels, including choices of weapons and enemies. Doom still has fans worldwide.

The success of shareware (software that is given away to attract users to want to buy more complete software) has influenced the return of smaller groups of designers. Even the lone wolf is coming back, using shareware and better authoring tools such as sound libraries and complex multimedia development environments. Some designers are finding that they work best on their own or in small teams.

What is on the horizon for game designers? More multiplayer games; more virtual reality and augmented reality devices; more wearable gaming devices; improved technology in coprocessors, chips, hardware, and sound fonts; the increasing use of artificial intelligence (and especially generative AI) to generate game assets; and "persistent worlds," where online games are influenced by and evolve from players' actions. These new types of games require that designers know more and more complex code so that games can "react" to their multiple players. Mobile computing has also placed new demands on game developers, who now create games—or, in some cases, re-create existing games—for play on smartphones and tablets.