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.
Cathode-ray tube amusement device
Despite being a game that used a graphical display, the cathode-ray tube amusement device is generally not considered under most definitions to be a candidate for the first video game, as it used purely analog hardware and did not run on a computing device; some loose definitions may still consider it a video game, but it is still usually disqualified as the device was never manufactured. Nevertheless, it is the earliest known interactive electronic game as well as the first to incorporate an electronic display, thus making it a forerunner to other games in the early history of video games. As the device was never manufactured or widely shown it did not directly inspire any other games and had no impact on the future video game industry.