Not to piggyback, but the year Pong was released is the only answer anyone could have put here. It might have been better to ask the question a bit more specifically. Like in terms of early hardware

Interesting question. So, if you ask for the beginning, the first game, even that is difficult to answer. There is an hour long video exploring this question, and this hour is not boring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHQ4WCU1WQc

Pong is a pretty decent answer, as this is a very early game that is:

• fairly successful
• commercial (most of the games before there shared freely)
• had cultural impact

The 70's. Before that, other than pinball, it was basically tech-demo stuff. Pong was where gaming took root with the mainstream, so that's what gets my vote.

This feels more accurate and defined, especially when you factor in the timelines and what comes after each point.

Computer Space actually beat Pong to market, releasing in 1971. But then again it was based on Spacewar.

In any case, I guess it depends on whether you want to define it as when the first video game was invented, or when the first commercial video game was released, or when gaming first started getting popular.

It's 1958, no point rewriting history by altering definitions

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200810/physicshistory.cfm

October 1958: Physicist Invents First Video Game

VR started in 1968 with The Sword of Damocles.

The first movie is also not the train driving to the camera (1896), it was actually in 1888, Roundhay Garden Scene.

Dawn is before sunrise, the rise of video games indeed starts with Pong.

As the thread title is written you are all wrong since humans have played games basically as long as we have existed. So the dawn of gaming is basically the dawn of humanity. Be it throwing bones/sticks/balls.

Also I would say that the dawn of ”arcade” games then should be attributed to spring launched pinnball machines and that then is somewhere in the middle of the 1800’s.

If we talk about dogital games it probably ahould be pinned to 1961 spacewar game (since some how I think a large part of tennis for two was mostly analouge on a oscilloscope screen).

Basically I’m saying OP is poorly worded and needs to be more defined.

I prefer to list the years based on Donkey Kong, which would be 1 ADK or 1 AD. This year is 43 AD. Pong came out in 9 BC.
The name BC stands for “Before Christ” since Donkey Kong was the anointed Christ of video games, although history has shown his enemy, Mario, to be taking all the glory of the Kongdom of Heaven.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get preachy :(

I'd say either 1972 because of Pong, or 1985 because of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Both made huge strives for gaming as a whole.

Homo-sapiens = NES and all other systems after

Homo heidelbergensis = Atari and all the other ancient boomers.