Fiorella La Guardia

Important enough that he has an airport named after him, Fiorella La Guardia (1882-1947) served as the mayor of New York from 1934-1945. In 1942, Mayor La Guardia made a push to ban pinballs as part of his campaign to address problematic gambling in New York. This led to a citywide ban on pinball machines, with remaining contraband machines being altered to rebrand them as games of skill rather than games of chance. One of these alterations was the addition of the flippers that most nowadays would consider central to the game of pinball. Prior to 1947, the player’s only real interaction with the machine was to drop in money and launch the ball. The ball would then fall randomly down different paths—the outcome of which could and was used as something to bet on. With his effective takedown of pinball in its original form, La Guardia paved the way for a new version of pinball that distinguished games from gambling through the implementation of a new mechanic; in this one case at least.

Ralph Baer

While we often credit Nolan Bushnell as the father of videogames due to his founding of Atari in 1972 and his extensive contributions to the development of the early videogame arcade scene, Ralph Baer can be thought of as the father of home videogaming. In 1967, Baer began prototyping a method of interfacing with commercial televisions (which were becoming more and more affordable at the time). The technology that he created would go on to become the Magnavox Odyssey—the first home console (1972).
Please watch this video.

Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto Shigeru is one of the undeniable greats among the pantheon of legendary videogame developers and designers. A lifelong developer of toys and games, Miyamoto created many of the character franchises—such as Donkey Kong (1981) and Mario (1981), the Legend of Zelda (1986), and many others that are still receiving updates and reboots to this day. While it is difficult to think of Nintendo without Miyamoto, since he began working at Nintendo in 1977 Miyamoto has never been its boss.

Please watch the following video from Vox.

For more information, read this article by the New Yorker

The Korean Videogames Industry

Alongside the many individuals whose work intentionally and/or unintentionally advanced the technology and culture surrounding videogames, various interesting social, political, and economic factors have played important roles in the present state of the field. While South Korea has become widely recognized for its avid gaming culture (with around 20,000 gaming cafes around the country; Statista, 2022), widely popular MMORPGs (e.g., Black Desert Online; Maplestory; Tera), and renowned esports professionals (e.g., Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok; Lim “BoxeR” Yo-hwan; Cho “Maru” Sung-choo), this was not nearly the case in 1996.

Then everything changed when the 1997 International Monetary Fund financial crisis occurred. The 1997 financial crisis is generally accepted to be the worst economic recession in South Korea’s history (Jin, 2020). The recession led to two important factors: the South Korean government pouring money into the tech sector to boost the country’s economy; and a surge of penniless, depressed, and unemployed Koreans with a lot of time but little money on their hands. Fortunately, while they were not able to buy games of their own at the time, many of these people could still afford to enjoy videogames at internet cafes (known in South Korea as PC Bangs) where the hourly rates for computer use were less than US$1—significantly cheaper than other entertainment options (Jin, 2020). The government’s push to improve the South Korean tech center led to widespread availability of high-speed internet and funds for videogame startups. Coupled with the burgeoning esports and videogaming culture, South Korea quickly rose in prominence as a powerhouse not only for esports athletes but game developers as well.