Curated category
Video game terminology
- Game mechanicsIn 1992, a researcher named Ian Bogost published an article titled "The Rhetoric of Video Games" that questioned how scholars define the very rules governing…
- Experience pointGary Gygax and Dave Arneson introduced the term experience point during the creation of Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s.
- Saved gameIn 1981, BYTE magazine described the save-game feature of Zork as a tool for players to retain their hard-earned position before making dangerous moves.
- Cooperative video gameThe first video game to feature cooperative play dates back to 1973, with Atari's arcade video game Pong Doubles. This tennis doubles version of their hit…
- Non-player characterIn the dim light of a 1970s basement, a group of friends gathered around a wooden table covered in polyhedral dice. The gamemaster held a stack of index…
- CutsceneIn 1966, Mabel Addis designed The Sumerian Game on a mainframe computer. This early title synchronized a slideshow with an audio recording to introduce its…
- Random encounterIn the early 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons introduced wandering monsters as a core mechanic for tabletop role-playing games.
- Player characterIn 1979, TSR Hobbies published Understanding Dungeons & Dragons. That book described a player character as a fictional body controlled by a human rather than…
- Video game remakeThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS stands as a clear example of a video game remake. It features new character models and texture…
- Arcade video gameIn 1966, Sega released Periscope, an electro-mechanical game that used lights and moving parts to simulate a submarine attack.
- Video game consoleRalph H. Baer devised the concept of playing simple, spot-based games on a television screen in 1966. This idea became the basis for the Magnavox Odyssey…
- Downloadable contentIn 1994, the Atari 2600's GameLine service allowed users to download full games using a telephone line. This early experiment did not provide downloadable…
- Mobile gameThe earliest known game on a mobile phone appeared in 1994. It was a Tetris variant running on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device.