> What makes people willing to swallow Higinbotham's "Tennis for Two" or "Spacewar!" as video game and not OXO(1949) or Nimatron really is about the notion of s

> What makes people willing to swallow Higinbotham's "Tennis for Two" or "Spacewar!" as video game and not OXO(1949) or Nimatron really is about the notion of scene and its associated fiction. The keyword here is diegesis. In other words, there's a fictional world exposed by the apparatus and things happen in this world, by means of interaction with objects that are occurring both in this fictional world and the rendition on the screen. Game mechanics, rules and narrative content necessarily overlap, by this creating an investment on the side of the player. (Compare the somewhat peculiar importance put by Spacewar! authors to provide an explanation for why shots are not subject to gravity, i.e. weightless "photon torpedoes", or why hyperspace is prone to fail eventually, i.e. experimental "Mk I hyperdrive".) The aspect of note here is, how this investment is established. As in all games, this is subject to things like riddle, challenge and mastery. So, how is this presented in a specific, typical way? I'd suggest to emphasise the presence of an iconographic viewport and seamless interaction in order to separate video games from other kinds of computer games. Notably, video games present a challenge, which is both tactical and strategical in nature. There are necessarily multiple levels (a hierarchy, not game levels) to the puzzle, with motor skills – as introduced by the temporary aspect of seamless, frame-based interaction – at the basic level. Also, there's an incessant need on the player's side to update her/his/* orientation, of what is going on in the diegesis and what hints may be exposed on the viewport. (We may even expand on this to establish sub-genres: E.g., first person shooters introduce a specific, subjective instability to the viewport, which adds to the riddle and the challenge of mastery.) Arguably, in early video games, there was on emphasis on the motor skill and orientation challenge, which contributed to the popularity of person-to-person two player games: For the first time humans of widely differing size, weight, strength, age, and abilities could match on an equal level in a competitive way. (In a way, video games didn't abstract their in-game world as much as they did abstract human players by the very mode of interaction.)