ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the historical overview of video games' evolution with a very brief glance at the evolution of trends in research on the social impact of video games over the medium's lifespan. The better people remember that there is variety in the inspirations and innovations leading to the modern video game landscape, the better they will be equipped to try to understand the current societal role of video games. The social, cultural, and economic presence of video games is so overwhelming in the electronic media milieu. The term 'video game' is used as a talismanic catch-all for nearly any form of interactive digital entertainment, that it is easy to assume that the technological and social developments leading to what people call video games are not composed of a single evolutionary pathway. Evolutionary biologists use a term called convergent evolution to explain the existence of similar traits in living organisms that are otherwise markedly different and only distantly related.
