One of the courses of study offered through CMII is intro to video games. Students get to learn about when and how video games came about. We also discuss the many different genres of games that were born throughout its history, such as text-based games being popular for a time, the giant boom of the arcade scene, and development of console games. Students also learn about the rise of the three titans, Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation and why they continued to stay successful compared to companies like Sega who started strong but eventually died out as console creators.        

  In class, we study topics such as Atari and how it became a monster gaming company, and about how at its peak within a few years it went bankrupt. Even though Atari died in the 1980s it laid the groundwork for how the industry of games conducts itself. Almost 40 years later, the gaming industry still lives by the codes it has set to make sure it never has another Atari incident. After the fall of Atari, the industry of games pretty much died as well. If not for Nintendo, video games may have become drastically different or they may never have returned. Nintendo showed the world that games were still fun and enjoyable and that anyone could play their games whether you were a child, adult, or an elderly person. They established their games as family friendly which was important because of the events that were taking place at the time.

by Mikal Greene