ABSTRACT
Nonverbal Communication Ever since the world’s rst video game, Tennis for Two (1958), games have espoused an unspoken dialogue based on actions over words. As the name suggests, Tennis for Two immersed two competitors in a virtual space in which they could serve and volley a sphere using controllers featuring buttons and rotating dials to adjust the angle of an invisible tennis racquet’s swing. Words were
abandoned within this virtual space in favor of an interactive dialogue made visible by the to-and-fro of the ball passing over the digital net. What made this dialogue possible was the result of the game’s creator, William Higginbotham’s, curated choice of physical inputs and virtual outputs. Little has changed in intervening years to alter this basic tenet of dialogue in games.
