How have video games evolved

The history of video games goes as far back as the 1940s, when in 1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. and Estle Ray Mann filed a United States patent request for an invention they described as a "cathode ray tube amusement device." Video gaming would not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade video games, gaming consoles and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern culture in most parts of the world. There are currently considered to be eight generations of video game consoles, with the seventh and the eighth concurrently ongoing.

These types of interactive and multiplayer games reached their current extent late in the 1990s with the advent of competing platforms for proprietary games, even as the internet spawned a much larger genre with MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). The two genres are both represented in the current evolution of online-connected games such as Wii, XBoxLive, and the PlayStation Network.

(for more on the extensive history, see the related link below)