When was the first computer game released

Spacewar! was a first person shooter game written in 1961 that ran on a DEC PDP-1. While this was not sold commercially, the software made its way to a number of different installations.

Computer Space came out in 1971, by some of the people who later founded Atari. It is considered the first coin operated computer video game.

Pong was released in 1972 by Atari. It was one of the first computer games to achieve wide spread market share.

Microchess, by Peter R. Jennings, was originally a microcomputer chess program for the MOS Technology KIM-1 microcomputer, first released on December 18, 1976.