Uploaded February 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Spacewar is widely considered the predecessor of the legendary grandfather of all video games, Pong. It was made by graduate students from MIT in the early 1960s and is regarded as the first shoot-them-up multiplayer game that broke into the mainstream. However, when it first came out, most people didn’t know that it was entirely funded by the Pentagon.
In the early 1950s, with the tensions of imminent conflict against the Soviet Union during the first decade of the Cold War, the US government knew that technological dominance would lead to military supremacy.
The launch of Sputnik in 1957 was a direct consequence of the technological Arms Race between the Capitalist West and the Communist East, and the American public believed that the US military and its politicians were way behind the Soviet Union. And even though the US still retained nuclear dominance, the Soviets were rapidly closing in.
A year after Sputnik's launch, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA’s precursor.
The agency would go on to develop the internet, and military money flowed freely to any project related to computer development, including the Electrical Engineering labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1961, MIT’s lab acquired a microcomputer and built a processor 1 or PDP1. It cost hundreds of dollars, almost one million in today's currency.
A study group was then formed by students that would be responsible for creating the first video game. These students were inspired by the culture of their time, which comprised comic book superheroes and fantastical and futuristic novels.
The students were also influenced by the space opera works of E.E. “Doc” Smith and used the microcomputer to develop a space simulation. In Smith’s work, the heroes tend to get pursued by their enemies across the galaxy, giving the game its context.
One of the students then coded a simple rocket flying program that involved moving ships through a collapsed star, while another programmed a replica of the night sky for the simulation. In addition, two players could use switches and knobs to maneuver their spaceships through a gravity field while firing missiles at each other.
No one ever imagined that ordinary folk would be willing to pay for interactive entertainment such as the Spacewar project. Personal computers in the 1960s were non-existent, and the notion of having a personal computer in a household was unheard of.
Still, the team gave the game’s code to anyone interested in getting a taste of Spacewar.
A year after its development, Digital Entertainment Corporation, the Programmed Data Processor or PDP manufacturer, began including the game with every minicomputer it shipped.
The game became a hit in the following years, and some universities even banned it to force the students to focus on their studies.
Spacewar is widely considered the predecessor of the legendary grandfather of all video games, Pong. It was made by graduate students from MIT in the early 1960s and is regarded as the first shoot-them-up multiplayer game that broke into the mainstream. However, when it first came out, most people didn’t know that it was entirely funded by the Pentagon.
In the early 1950s, with the tensions of imminent conflict against the Soviet Union during the first decade of the Cold War, the US government knew that technological dominance would lead to military supremacy.
The launch of Sputnik in 1957 was a direct consequence of the technological Arms Race between the Capitalist West and the Communist East, and the American public believed that the US military and its politicians were way behind the Soviet Union. And even though the US still retained nuclear dominance, the Soviets were rapidly closing in.
A year after Sputnik's launch, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA’s precursor.
The agency would go on to develop the internet, and military money flowed freely to any project related to computer development, including the Electrical Engineering labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1961, MIT’s lab acquired a microcomputer and built a processor 1 or PDP1. It cost hundreds of dollars, almost one million in today's currency.
A study group was then formed by students that would be responsible for creating the first video game. These students were inspired by the culture of their time, which comprised comic book superheroes and fantastical and futuristic novels.
The students were also influenced by the space opera works of E.E. “Doc” Smith and used the microcomputer to develop a space simulation. In Smith’s work, the heroes tend to get pursued by their enemies across the galaxy, giving the game its context.
One of the students then coded a simple rocket flying program that involved moving ships through a collapsed star, while another programmed a replica of the night sky for the simulation. In addition, two players could use switches and knobs to maneuver their spaceships through a gravity field while firing missiles at each other.
No one ever imagined that ordinary folk would be willing to pay for interactive entertainment such as the Spacewar project. Personal computers in the 1960s were non-existent, and the notion of having a personal computer in a household was unheard of.
Still, the team gave the game’s code to anyone interested in getting a taste of Spacewar.
A year after its development, Digital Entertainment Corporation, the Programmed Data Processor or PDP manufacturer, began including the game with every minicomputer it shipped.
The game became a hit in the following years, and some universities even banned it to force the students to focus on their studies.
