The world of video games unites different generations and represents one of the most beloved pastimes of all time. Whether you are passionate about the sector or not, perhaps you are among those who think about Atari’s “PONG” (released in 1972) as the first video game ever. Well, that’s not exactly true, since the first video game in history It dates back to 20 years before PONG and consisted of an on-screen representation of the good old game of tic tac toe: OXOLet’s retrace its history together and also see why some don’t consider it a real video game.
The story of OXO: the first video game in history
In the 1952, Alexander S. “Sandy” Douglasa researcher at Cambridge University, was working on his doctoral thesis and decided to use one of the first computing machines to create an interactive game. The result was OXOa simulator of the classic tic tac toe gamealso known as tic tac toe (by the way, by searching for this term on Google you can play a web version of tic tac toe). Despite the simplicity of the rules – the winner was the one who managed to line up three identical symbols (crosses or circles) on a 3×3 grid – OXO represented an innovative experiment: for the first time, a human being could challenge a machine!
To place his symbol in the desired box, the player had to use a telephone disk and choose a number between 1 and 9: each number corresponded to a specific box on the grid. Once the choice was made, it was the computer’s turn to analyze the situation and respond with a move that could block or defeat the human opponent. The whole thing took place on a 6 inch cathode ray tube monitorwhere the movements were displayed via green light spots.
Nicholas Mulas Marcellopresident of the Bologna association Insert Coin APSactive in preserving the historical memory of video game art (which revived OXO in 2024), stated in this regard that «it was one of the most pioneering interactions between man and machine, we are at the dawn of artificial intelligence»
The importance of OXO, in fact, does not lie so much in its entertainment function, but rather in its ability to demonstrate one of the first direct interactions between man and machine.
Why Some Don’t Consider OXO the First Video Game in History
Despite its historical value, Not everyone agrees that OXO can be fully defined as the “first video game in history”. Why? According to the supporters of this thesis, it was born as a demonstration academic and not for the purpose of entertainment for the general public, OXO cannot be considered a real video game. Unlike other titles that would come later, such as the famous PONG (1972), was not intended to be played and sold to a mass audience.
OXO was actually limited to a specific hardware platform, theEDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), a computer used for academic purposes, which was not accessible outside the Cambridge university environment. This made it an extremely elitist game, far from the idea of a “video game” as it is understood in pop culture and this also applies to other titles that have tried to compete for the place of “first video game in history”, such as Tennis for Two (1958) and Space war! (1962).
Still on the definition of videogame, some enthusiasts of the sector maintain that in order to be considered as such a title must include a interactive graphics and allow the manipulation of visual elements on the screenthings that in OXO are rudimentary to say the least.
Regardless of “what” qualifies as a “video game,” however, there’s no denying that OXO at least laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most beloved tech sectors of all time.
