The Pros And Cons Of Pong

In 1971 an engineer at Nutting Associates by the name of Nolan Bushnell created Computer Space, the first ever commercial video game. One year later he created Pong, the first commercial video game to be widely successful. Since then, video games have erupted in popularity and evolved from incredibly simple gameplay and graphics to complex systems running near-realistic graphics. Many of these changes only became possible as the hardware they ran on became more powerful. As time progressed, processors became able to handle demands whereas earlier processors couldn’t even come close. It would seem that hardware limitations ultimately had held back video games, and only now are we beginning to see their true potential. However, I would argue that it’s not that simple.

Sometimes limitation can be helpful. As I will show shortly, some of the greatest innovations in gaming happened because of limitation of some form or another. Developers have a habit of trying to do too much. Without constraints games quickly become massive projects with no clear …show more content…
Planned for release “well before Christmas 1998,” the game would ultimately be worked and re-worked every time a new technology came out. Rather than actually finish the game, the developer George Broussard dragged it out until it was finally released in 2011, to disappointingly low reviews. Why did this happen? After the incredible success of Duke Nukem 3D, Broussard and his company 3D Realms were quite wealthy. Unlike when they had developed the first game, there was no real threat of running out of resources. Therefore, each time a new piece of hardware came out, there was always enough money to scratch a part of the game in order to upgrade it. This would ultimately lead to a cycle of creating and redoing that would lead to the project almost being cancelled. Many fans almost wish it was, as the finished product was not worth the near 15 year