Early history of video games
Throughout the rest of the 1960s, digital computer games were created by increasingly numerous programmers and sometimes sold commercially in catalogs. As the audience for video games expanded to more than a few dozen research institutions with the falling cost of computers, and programming languages that would run on multiple types of computers were created, a wider variety of games began to be developed. Video games transitioned into a new era in the early 1970s with the launch of the commercial video game industry in 1971 with the display of the coin-operated arcade game "Galaxy Game" and the release of the first arcade video game "Computer Space", and then in 1972 with the release of the immensely successful arcade game "Pong" and the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which launched the first generation of video game consoles.
Edson Hendricks
As an undergraduate, Hendricks visited the MIT student employment center where he was offered the position of computer operator, running an IBM System/360 model 65 computer. 
Hendricks was rapidly promoted to systems programmer. When IBM added a 2250 video display to the 360/65, Hendricks looked for a project to learn how to program it. Upstairs in the same building, Steve Russell had created “Spacewar!,” the first computer game, using a DEC PDP-1 computer. Hendricks wrote his own game, also named “Spacewar!,” which was the first computer video game to run on an IBM Computer. For several years, MIT used Hendricks version of “Spacewar!” at their Annual Open House, making it possibly the first video game ever to be seen (and played) by the general public.