Part 1: The Golden Age of Arcade Games.

In the beginning, there was chess.Chess was one of the first interactive games programmed onto a 'regular' computer, in the early 50's.Major computer scientists such as Alan Turing and Claude Shannon believed that when the computer could beat a human,they would mark a milestone in artificial intelligence.We came a long way since then.During the late 1970s, video-game technology reached a critical point where they became sophisticated enough to offer decent graphics and sound,while still being very basic (full motion video was yet to be added).That's why their focus was simple but fun gameplay.Of course internet was yet to be invented which made competition a bit difficult .Competition did start however, be it in a peculiar way.One of the first games actively played in competition was Space War (1960).In the mists of time there was theIntergalactic Spacewar Olympics (1972),people gathered to beat each others high-scores, a slow way of competition, but it started here.The grand prize was a year subscription to the rolling stones magazine.[INDENT]Spacewar pro's.[/INDENT]A while later the first real convention was hosted by Atari, in 1981, called theSpace Invaders Championship.The event had approx. 10.000 visitors, which was a huge success.Different ambassadors of that era credit Space Invaders for the beginning of the 'Golden Age' of Arcade games.Space Invaders (1978) started in Japan, and legend has it that the Japanese government couldn't keep up with the demand of coins.[INDENT]Back in the days these men proved to be legit.[/INDENT]In the same year high scores moved from being scattered and bound to a gameto a centralized high score system called Twin Galaxies, by Walter Day.This organisation heavily promoted video games and revolutionized the scene.The most accomplished player of this era is Billy Mitchell,as he held the high score record in 6 different games (such as Pacman and Donkey Kong).

Part 2: Connectivity.

Internet started out in the USA, as a reaction to the launch of the Sputnik by the USSR.The ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) worked with MIT to network computers in the interests of national defence.Say hello to ARPAnet (1969).One of the first network games was "MUD" (Multi User Dungeon) (1978), a text-based game like o-game.Around 1980 it was first fully running on the ARPAnet at the Essex University.In 1984 this became "MAD" (Multi Acces Dungeon), which made it possible for anyone to connect trough Bitnet,a joint operation of Yale University and the City University of New York.This combined with the 1977 release of the Apple 2, the Commodore PET and the TRS-80, hence home computers, kick-started the on-line era.Especially pc-games enjoyed from the many advantages of internet connectivity,such as the game Xtrek (1986).This was the predecessor of the game Netrek (1988), it was the third internet game and the first on-line team-game.The game became a huge success with the option to be played by 16 players at the same time.[INDENT]Cutting Edge Technology.[/INDENT]Quake deserves some special attention here, especially Quake World (1996).Doom used a peer-to-peer network, which used to be a pain in the ass.Quake innovated this into the first true pc server client architecture.This meant completely revised TCP/IP support, people became able to connect trough a dial-up modem.Another thing Quakeworld excelled at is the separation of the client and the server.Players would only get the client and would use it to connect to a server on some other machine, usually one elsewhere on the Internet.An early form of server browsing was QuakeSpy, which later became GameSpy.[INDENT]Connecting to a server never was so easy.[/INDENT]John Carmack stated that TCP/IP support got upgraded mainly for making late-game server entry possible.Of course he dreamt of easy accessible on-line play, but at that time internet connections were very unstable.When he found out people were still connecting for on-line play, despite the low quality,it gave him the incentive to create Quake World Executable, basically focusing on net code improvement.This somewhat gave birth to the 'on-line scene', as normal Quake versions were devised for LAN networks.

Part 3: Meet Your Makers.

The last huge boost to the gaming industry was the ability to mod games.The modder's were really creative and invented a dozen of game play modes.The idea is to produce a development kit for personal usage, one of the early examples being The Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991)Id-Software released its QuakeC, Blizzard had its Warcraft III World Editor".Valve's hammer kit started out as Worldcraft, a tool designed for creating custom Quake maps.In 1997 Valve hired the author Ben Morris to use the Worldcraft tool for Half-life maps.Needless to say these SDK's where crucial in the great strife of the video-games.Quake gave birth to Team-Fortress (1996), Action Quake 2 (1998), ...Half-life spawned Counter-Strike (1999), Day of Defeat (2000), Natural Selection (2002), ...Warcraft 3 spawned the infamous Defence Of The Anchients (2003).Although they didn't invent the MOBA genre, they created a MOBA-hype.MOBA is an RTS mod, pioneered with Starcraft's map Aeon of Strife.[INDENT]Quake family tree.[/INDENT]

Part 4: The East-West Axis.

The revolution of e-sports happened independently in the West and in the East.Quake and Counter-Strike are signature Western e-sports,while on the other side of the world, prophecy's foretold the conception of Street Fighter (1987) and Starcraft (1998).While the Western world boosted legends such asSpawN,Fatal1ty,elemeNt,XeqtR,trace,Ksharp,Grubby and many more.In the east you had cs legends likeSolo,glow,jungle and the starcraft legends who were larger than life:Flash,Jaedong,BoxeR,...While in China Warcraft 3 and defense of the ancients (dota) was really big:SkyLyn,Dividust,Snoy,...A milestone in western e-sports history is theRed Annihilation event (1997).It was an early Quake competition , sponsored by Microsoft.Several hundred people competed for the first price, John Carmac's own Ferrari 328 GTS.Tresh, the winner of the event rode the Ferrari back home, in what was arguably the most wanted e-sports price.[INDENT]To the victor goes the spoils.[/INDENT]This event enjoyed a lot of attention, up to the point of changing an 'outsider' his life.Angel Munoz, a former stock broker, saw this event and saw the potential.With Red Annihilation, the concept of modern tournaments was born.He later organized the firstCPL (1997), the first fully sponsored tournament.It hosted a Quake compo, won by Tom "gollum" Dawson.The rest is history.In South-Korea Starcraft: Brood War gained immense popularity, and the game also wanted steady ground to grow on.It started with leagues and gaming-dedicated channels, "OnGameNet" (2000) and the "MSL/OSL" (2002).An instant later, they became the 2 first Starcraft tournaments. (?)They were larger than life, televised nearly since the beginning, enjoying immense exposure.Another game that was larger than life was "Street Fighter" (1987).Born in the late arcade age, it survived the transition to the on-line age, and kept growing.It grew so much on both sides of the world, that an immense clash between East and West was inevitable.Here is this legendary clash.[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnEWSO6NrQo[/YOUTUBE]

Part 5: The Deathmatch Era.

Wolfenstein 3D used to be, and still is a popular first person shooter.It is said to be the first arcade-shooter.A short while later DooM was born and then the deathmatch genre was invented.Deathmatch, and especially Id-software continued to thrive,setting the standards of a fast-paced arcade shooter the later scene learned so much from.The missing link between deathmatch-shooters and realism-shooters is definitely Navy SEALs (+- 1997) and later Action Quake.In other words this is where Minh Le started meddling with the scene.He later teamed up with Jesse Cliffe, which he met trough Action Quake forums, to form Counter-Strike.[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOwPcmcOSNY[/YOUTUBE][INDENT]The FPS Family Tree.[/INDENT][INDENT]Maze War (1973) - Pioneered first person view.[/INDENT][INDENT]Wolfenstein 3D (1992)[/INDENT][INDENT]Doom (1993)[/INDENT][INDENT]Quake (1996)[/INDENT][INDENT]Quake 3 Arena (1999)[/INDENT][INDENT]Action Quake 2 (1998)[/INDENT][INDENT]Counter-Strike (1999 half-life mod, 2000 retail)[/INDENT][INDENT]Counter-Strike: Source (2004)[/INDENT][INDENT]Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012)[/INDENT]

Part 6: RTS Frenzy.

RTS first started with Dune 2 (1992) and Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994).The Command & Conquer series series sophisticated this genre, and made it popular with the general audience.They started out with Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn (1995), followed by the Red Alert series (1996).Which made me a huge RTS fan without even knowing it :).Of course Starcraft lifted the game to an e-sports and co-created the MOBA genre with the Aeon of Strife map.[INDENT]The RTS Family Tree.[/INDENT][INDENT]Dune 2 (1992)[/INDENT][INDENT]Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994)[/INDENT][INDENT]Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)[/INDENT][INDENT]Starcraft: Brood War (1998)[/INDENT][INDENT]Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty (2010)[/INDENT][INDENT]The MOBA family tree.[/INDENT][INDENT]Aeon of Strife (Starcraft mod)[/INDENT][INDENT]Warcraft 3: Defence of the Ancients (Warcraft mod)[/INDENT][INDENT]Dota2 (Valve software)[/INDENT][INDENT]League Of Legends (Riot Games)[/INDENT]I wanted to make something small for CoD and UT, but it got a little bit too big.If I made any mistakes, please tell me, this project was a bit bigger than expected.If you read this, thanks for reading!