Video game development
The history of game making begins with the development of the first video games, although which video game is the first depends on the definition of "video game". The first games created had little entertainment value, and their development focus was separate from user experience—in fact, these games required mainframe computers to play them. "OXO", written by Alexander S. Douglas in 1952, was the first computer game to use a digital display. In 1958, a game called "Tennis for Two", which displayed its output on an oscilloscope, was made by Willy Higinbotham, a physicist working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. In 1961, a mainframe computer game called "Spacewar!" was developed by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students led by Steve Russell.
Pac-Man
The game is regarded as one of the most influential video games of all time: its title character was the first original gaming mascot, the game established the maze chase game genre, it demonstrated the potential of characters in video games, it increased the appeal of video games with female audiences, and it was gaming's first broad licensing success. It was the first video game with power-ups, and the individual ghosts have deterministic artificial intelligence which reacts to player actions. It is often cited as the first game with cutscenes, in the form of brief comical interludes about Pac-Man and Blinky chasing each other, though "Space Invaders Part II" employed a similar style of between-level intermissions in 1979.