	Your pulse is pounding.  You hold your breath.  Your finger is itching on the trigger, ready to put Saddam Hussein in his place.  The door flies open and you take the shot.  HONEY!  Come take the towels out of the dryer! your mother yells.  Aw mom.  I was just about to take Saddam out! you yell in reply.  
	Scenes like this take place in many households on a daily basis.  Due to the violent nature of some video games, more and more research is being conducted into their effects.  Not all video games are violent, but those that are seem to be scrutinized more closely than those that are not.  Many people, young and old,  play video games in their spare time for many different reasons.  Video games have many psychological and social effects, both positive and negative.

The History of Video Games

	The first true video game was developed at Harvard University in 1962.  In the fall of 1961, the students at Harvards Littauer Statistical Laboratory had just received a PDP-1 mainframe computer with a cathode ray tube (CRT) display.  The students were very excited about what this new computer was capable of doing (Bloom 2).  It was smaller and faster than the previous computer, and possessed much more processing power.  In January 1962, a student named Steve Russell had designed a program that would make a dot bounce across the screen.  Later that month Russell had changed the bouncing dot in for a spaceship with controls (left/right, up/down) and a torpedo button.  Thus, the first video game was born, Spacewar (Bloom 4).
	Although video games had been developed, it was not for some time that video games were available to be played in the home.  A German emigrant named Ralph Baer claims to have invented the black box that moves spots around on the standard TV set for the standard TV monitor [raster] and allows you to play games  (Bloom 5).  By 1966, Baer had developed games and projected them onto a standard television.  By 1967, Baer had convinced his superiors at Sanders Associates (an electronics firm that Baer worked for) to allow him and a couple of other people to start developing games.  Sanders Associates allocated out an entire floor of their office building to allow the three men, Baer, Bill Harrison, and Bill Rusch to work in private.  The development of these games were kept confidential (Bloom 6).
	In 1969 a man by the name of Nolan Bushnell began to develop raster (television) hardware on which to play video games.  In 1970 Bushnell convinced Nutting Associates, an arcade game manufacturer to build his hardware.  Nutting Associates built and distributed the crude arcade version of Spacewar called Computer Space.  Selling Computer Space was hard, but 1500 units did manage to get sold.  In 1972, Bushnell formed Atari and developed a classic video game, Pong (Bloom 8).
	Also in 1972, Magnavox licensed Baers black box and produced the first home video game system called the Odyssey 100.  It allowed people to play hockey, tennis, and even navigate their way through electronic mazes at home on their television sets.  At about the same time as the Odyssey debuted, Pong was shipped to arcades across the nation (Bloom 8).
	From that time on video games, both in the arcades and at home, became more and more popular.  Over the years, over forty different home video game systems have been manufactured, not including personal computers.  There are millions of computers in homes around the world, and all are potentially video game systems.  For only the home video game consoles (a console is a machine like a nintendo) there have been well over eight thousand games developed for distribution in the United States (Video Game Museum).  

Why People Play Video Games

	There are many types of people in the world and they all enjoy different types of entertainment.  Video games are a type of entertainment unlike any other media.  Interactivity is what sets video games apart from the other more traditional media such as movies and television.  Video games have the power to take you away to a wonderful place, and there, let you do an amazing thing (Adams).  Books and movies can transport a person to an amazing place, but once there, that person cannot do anything other than observe the world which the author has created.   
	Many people play games for different reasons.  The most popular reason is entertainment.  Other reasons for playing games include:  money, relaxation, competition, socializing, making friends, fun, to relieve stress, and a sense of challenge.  Interactivity is what makes games so much more appealing than other forms of media.  Slaying dragons and goblins or running a multi-million dollar railroad company or saving the world by defeating evil are things that almost no one can do.  
	Games are useful for many educational purposes as well.  Students with learning disabilities are able to learn more efficiently when prompted with a video game.  Poor readers have been able to make great improvements in comprehension when done with a computer game.  Video games can help educate children because they keep them interested in learning (MediaScope).
	Geoffrey Loftus, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, believes that people play video games because they become addicted to them.  He believes that people can become addicted to video games through reinforcement.  Reinforcement is the reward that usually comes after playing for a certain amount of time.  Loftus believes that this sense of reward keeps people playing video games, just like people play in casinos (Loftus 14).

The Social Effects of Video Games

	Many people play video games over the Internet to socialize with fellow gamers.  While playing games on the Internet, players can meet other players from across town or across the world.  During my gaming experiences I have met people from:  Modesto, Stockton, Riverside, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Sweden, Germany, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, and many other places.  These are people that I would not have met in any other way.  Video gaming really does have the power to bring people together.  
	Several studies have been conducted into the social effects of aggressive video games and their effects on young children.  In 1987, a study conducted by Silvern and Williamson established that young children... showed less prosocial behavior when they were observed during free play after playing an aggressive video game (Wiegman 368).  Some video games require players to act prosocially, but the effects of these games have not been studied enough to make any conclusions about their effects on children.  
	Most social studies regarding video games have been conducted only on children.  I decided to do some research of my own into the social effects of video games on teenagers and adults.  I surveyed six people via the Internet.  Most people that play video games on a regular basis believe that playing games does give them something to socialize about with their friends, but does not directly help them socialize with people. 
	Video arcades act as a social gathering place.  In the mid 1980s J. David Brooks surveyed over nine hundred people at arcades concerning how much time they actually spend playing games.  He found out that a majority of the people in arcades only spent about half their time there playing video games and the other half socializing.  This would tend to show that video game arcades do, in fact, help people socialize (Greenfield 98).   
	
The Psychological Effects of Video Games

	Video games affect people in many different ways.  Aggressive video games tend to get more exposure than non-violent ones.  This has led to more studies into the effects of violence and aggression in video game players.  Aggressive video games do lead to periods of assertiveness in children, usually allowing children to better handle bullies.  Graybill, Kirsch, & Esselman (1985) reported that children who had played a violent video game exhibited fewer defensive fantasies and more assertive fantasies than those who played a non-violent game (Wiegman 368).  
	Several studies that attempted to link video game violence to real world aggression have failed.  One test conducted by Graybill, Strawniak, and OLeary (three psychologists)  found that after playing a violent or non-violent video game no significant differences in aggression were found between the conditions (Wiegman 368).  Another similar study conducted by three other psychologists, Winkel, Novak, and Hopson found that teenagers who had been playing a violent video game were not displaying significantly more aggressive behavior in a teacher/learner paradigm (Wiegman 368).   
	Due to the fact that there have been several conflicting studies conducted, it is hard to tell whether or not aggressive video games really lead to aggression or not.  Some studies have found that aggressive video games do lead to enhanced aggression in children, whereas other studies have found that they do not.  No one I surveyed believed that video games affected their level of aggressiveness.  It is hard to make a true conclusion as to whether or not violent video games truly lead to aggression or not.
	Several studies have also shown that aggressive video games can act as a vent for stress and anger.  One such study conducted by Kestenbaum and Weinstein showed that aggressive video games had a calming effect on teenagers (Wiegman 369).  Out of the people I surveyed approximately eighty percent of them said that they felt relaxed and less stressed after playing a video game.  It has also been shown that multiplayer violent games tend to act as a release for aggression and stress (Greenfield 104).  With the ease of access to the Internet, more and more people play video games online with other players everyday.  

The Gaming Industry and Community

	The video game industry is a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise.  In 1999 alone, over six billion dollars were spent on video games.  The video game industry is also expanding.  According to a study conducted for the Interactive Software Developers Association, employment in the average development company grew by 18 percent between 1997 and 1998, with about 50,000 people working in video game development in 1998 (Crosby 3).  Salaries in game development can range from 35,000 to 80,000 annually, and can even go higher than that (Crosby 4).
	The video game industry is somewhat similar to the recording industry.  The games are usually developed by third-party companies known as developers.  These developers make the game and test it.  Then the rights to the game are sold to larger companies called publishers.  These publishers market and distribute the game either paying royalties or a flat rate to the developer.  There are also some companies that do both themselves.  They are either very large publishing companies that have in-house development studios, or they are small, independent game developers.  
	The gaming community is not an actual organization, more of a friendship.  People who play games online are usually members of the gaming community.  The Internet allows people to make new friends, play games with people, compete with other people, even win money by playing games.  People from all over the world play games online and they are some of the most interesting people to meet.  Everyones background and culture are different, so are the styles of playing games.  It is an amazing way to learn about other people and cultures to talk to other people about games and how they play them.
	Video games effect many people in many different ways.  Some of these effects have been shown to be positive and some negative.  People play games for many different reasons, the number one being entertainment.  Video games can be violent and for this they are scrutinized.  Video games effect people all over the world.

