The video game Pong turns 50 this year. The rules are simple. It’s ping-pong, so you and another person each control a paddle on the screen — hit a ball back and forth and try to avoid missing it for a higher score.
Pong and the Odyssey council were the first two games that were widely available for people to play when they came out in 1972. While other electronic games were available before Pong, it’s often regarded as the first video game experience for people that involved a TV screen with a controller.
UW-Milwaukee professor of English Michael Newman shares more about Pong’s impact and the many video games that followed.
"It was the first hit game, the first popular game. The legend goes that the first Pong was put into a tavern in in northern California and it stopped working because it got stuffed so full of quarters," he shares.
After the success of Pong, other similar games followed, like Space Invaders and Astroids. And after 50 years of Pong, it remains a classic.
Even though the graphics are simple, there's a draw to the simplicity the game offers. "Simplicity can be great. You know, it makes sense you want it to be accessible to people. I think that that's been enduring actually, a lot of video games have succeeded by having that kind of appeal," Newman says.
