How trillion-shilling video game industry came to be

Child friendly video games. (Courtesy)

What is now a multi-trillion-shilling industry started out as a humble arcade machine created by a group of college students in 1971. Playing video games had been a geeky pastime for small groups on university tech campuses, but in 1971, Nolan Bushnell, a student at the University of Utah, joined up with Jim Stein, a Stanford University researcher, to make a game.

They were both players of a game called Spacewar!, which was being run in a university lab. From Nolan’s experience of working at amusement parks, the pair saw potential in making an arcade version of a video game.