In 1972, one of the first popular video games looked like almost nothing: two white lines and a small dot. The game was called Pong, a simple electronic version of table tennis. People stood in line to play it — and an industry was born.
From the late 1970s, arcade halls appeared everywhere. Games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man swallowed coins by the millions, and for the first time, parents began to worry that young people played too much. Then home consoles brought the arcade into the living room. In 1985, Nintendo released a gray box with a game called Super Mario Bros., and a jumping Italian plumber became more famous than many movie stars.
One of the most popular games of all time came from an unexpected place. In 1984, a programmer in Moscow named Alexey Pajitnov created Tetris, a puzzle with falling blocks. It was simple, endless, and impossible to stop playing. When it appeared on Nintendo's Game Boy in 1989, people played it on buses, in offices, and secretly in classrooms.
In the 1990s, games became three-dimensional, and in the 2000s they went online, so players could compete with strangers on the other side of the planet. But the biggest change came with the smartphone. Suddenly everyone carried a game machine in their pocket, and people who never called themselves 'gamers' spent hours matching colored candies.
Today, video games earn more money than movies and music combined. Games are used in schools, in hospitals, and in job training. And in a nice twist, old pixel games from the 1980s are popular again — proof that in gaming, the past always gets another life.