From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames Page 65 - 114

Summary- The Pentagon provided input to the modern day videogames. During the Vietnam War, the military of the U.S. was becoming increasingly technological. The government could release bombs from jets remotely and their radar system improved to pinpoint a enemy's position. This program also lead to a game by programmers at MIT who created a game off of that idea, namely SpaceWars!. It was a game where the player controlled a space ship and shot at enemies while dodging meteors. It became very popular along with another game, Tennis For Two, which resembled Pong. What does this have to do with war? Those two games came off of research programs funded by the U.S. military. During the Cold War, science and technology was recognized as an important part of any military or government. They especially pushed the use of computers. This made sense because a bureaucracy needed to keep track of things much faster than group of humans could. Computer games spawned from the funding and research of computers in order to beat the Soviet Union in the Cold War technologically. These games were created by very same programmers working on these projects as they got more familiar with the new possibilities of the government funded computers. Videogames that could be played on T.V. came from the military contractor Sanders, one of the largest contractors in the world. In the 1960's, their electronics department expanded dramtically. They dove into new technological innovations, one of them being T.V. console games. The contractors used Cold War contracting to justify and fund their research on videogames that lead to the devlopment of T.V. games. The military is constantly looking for a war with no loss of lives for their own side. This dream manifests in automated warfare where humans control robots from a screen much like a videogame. The military puts many of its funding in technology after the Cold War. There is a controversy that comes with the possibilities of automated warfare. Many people fear that it will dehumanize the enemy, after all, killing someone on a T.V. screen is much easier than actually pulling the trigger in a battlefield. It is an interesting thought that videogames were actually byproducts of military research and technology. If those wars had not happened, there would not have been the videogames that we now see today.

Quote- "A programmer who was a hacker took obsessive pride in exploring new possibilities; it was a spirit that mixed the scientist's love for exploring new knowledge, the engineer's joy at tinkering, and an artist's creativity and inspiration" (Halter 107).

Reaction- The quote above was important to the book because it explained the people who created video games. Hacker did not have the negative connotation that are associated with it today. In the times of the Cold War, a hacker war merely a person who explored the possibilities of new technology and did new things with it. This was the breed of programmers that came with war. War's investment led to new technology and this new group explored those technologies to create videogames. These people were really unique, as they possessed qualities of a scientist, engineer, and an artist at the same time. This spirit the quote mentions was the fuel for new developments in videogames from military technology.