ABSTRACT
Computer games, or perhaps more accurately, video games, began with the invention of “Tennis for Two” in 1958. It was not until the 1970s that Atari introduced a wider audience to computer games with the successful console game Pong. Since then computer games have become a multibilliondollar industry with countless titles published every year. Despite the large number of individual game titles, there is a relatively small set of different game genres. The exact list of genres is debatable, and just like with movies, people argue about which genre(s) a particular game belongs to. This book’s companion web site (www.ai4games.org) has links to sites that provide a comprehensive list of genres and example games from each. There are also additional links to interesting information on the history and status of computer games.
