Evolution of Video Games: From Pac-Man to WoW [Infographic]

The next generation of game consoles is just about to take hold of the Video Game industry and with it they will bring never before seen levels of graphics and realism. 

Thanks to this awesome infographic published by National Geographic we can take a walk through some of the most influential moments in video game history. The games industry, as a whole, is now a milti-billion dollar industry and is widely accepted to be a part of the overal entertainment industry. Todays biggest games take hundreds of people, thousands of man hours and millions of dollars to make but in the early days things were very different. Many games were made by a single person, or a two man team, over the space of a few days or weeks and it was done. 

When people think of the dawn of video games they instantly think of Pong (if they are old enough to know that Pong was even a thing haha!). It was released in 1972 in Arcade cabinets and in 1975 as a home version and there is no denying that it was one of the most influential games of all time but it certainly wasn't the first video game. The accolade of the very first game played on a television screen was in 1947. It was made by Goldsmith and Mann and in essence was a WWII missile simulator in which a single dot on the screen would light up which you had to shoot down.

Since then things have gotten much bigger and much better. And more expensive too, the video and games industry was worth a whopping $14.8 billion in 2012.

Introducing Pac-man

In 1980 the lovable little yellow Pac-man jumped onto the game scene. When Pac-man launched it was against stiff competition from the popular space shooters of the time like Asteroid and Space Invaders - but it created it's own genre and became an instant pop-culture phenomenon.

Almost a quarter of a century later Pac-man is still popular, still appearing in games and still selling a ton of merchandise on top of that.

8-bit Mario

The 80's brought the beginning of the 8-bit era when the Nintendo Entertainment System released. In '83 the NES was launched and 2 years later Super Mario Bros was released. When Nintendo released their first Super Mario game it, like Pac-man, defined it's own genre too: the Platformer.

The original NES console has sold 60 million units to date and the original Super Mario Bros game is the number 1 game of all time, based on units shipped. Recently there was a re-mix of the original SMB game with portal if you want to check that out.

32-bit Era

Jump forward around about a decade and we arrive at the 32-bit era and things have progressed tremendously. The Sony Playstation and the Nintendo 64 are the 2 major home consoles of the time. There was 3D graphics, immersive writing and all new kinds of gameplay. It was also the first time most of us had seen thumbsticks on a controller. Remember when we had to learn how to use analogue sticks? lol!

The Nintendo 64 was grouped into the 32-bit era but, as it's name suggests, the N64 was a 64-bit system the same as the Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox.

Force feedback also became the norm with Nintendo's Rumble Pack and Sony eventually including feedback motors in their Dual Shock controllers. Nowadays it's just expected that a game controller will provide feedback to the player.

Online Gaming

During the 64-bit era was the beginning of online console gaming as we know it. In 2002 Microsoft launched their Xbox Live online gaming platform for their original Xbox console. It's actually still the same base platform that is used to power the Xbox 360's online gaming today.

Microsft wasn't the only gaming system that could go online, the PS2 and Gamecube both had online capabilities too and PC gamers had obviously been playing online games for years, but it defined the moment when it online functionality began to become part of almost every console game made since.

Just so you know there were networked games away back in the 80's and even Nintendo piloted a way to play the lottery through your NES console. So online gaming, and online gambling, have been around for a long time.

World of Warcraft

In 2004 World of Warcraft was released. It wasn't actually the first game in the series - in fact it was the fourth. Released on the 10th anniversary of the first World of Warcraft game. It fits into the massively multiplayer online role playing game genre, MMORPG for short.

WoW is a subscription based game where players pay a monthly fee to continue playing in Blizzard's online world.

You create your own character, level them up, collect rare weapons and armour and play with millions of people online. And I mean millions, there were 9.6 million subscribers as of the last quarter of 2012.

Pacman to Wow: The Evolution of Video Games infographic by NowSourcing.

The Future of Gaming

I don't actually know where the future of gaming is going. Since the release of WoW in 2004 there have been many advancements and tangents the industry has gone off in. 2004 was also the year that Wii was released and motion sensing in games became pouplar. Sony and Microsoft have each got their own versions of the motion controll but MS Kinnect is the biggest of the two, with over 10 million units sold worldwide.

Mobile gaming also took a massive hold on the industry sing 2004 and in 2009, what is arguably the most well know smartphone game, Angry Birds was released by Rovio.

Even in 2013 mobile gaming is still a massive thing. The Android mobile operating system has even been ported onto handheld and home videogame consoles and released this year. Nvidia's Shield is one of the handled variants (with some awesome unique Andoid-PC connection features) and I have to say it looks to be shaping up pretty nicely.

William is an avid gamer who writes occationally writes about games on his own site Gaming Now.