Amusement VS Gaming. Video games and their ancestors.

Abstract

In their fifty years of life, video games became a relevant part of the cultural life in the world, recognized as one of the so called Cultural and Creative Industries and are gaining a constantly increasing success both of audience and of global revenues. When it comes to talk about gaming these days it looks that this entire sector is represented by video games alone, while products such as table-top games, that registered a significant growth during the last twenty years, look to be forgotten and of no interest within audience and scholars. Nevertheless, where do video games come from? And why do video games had such success in the last fifty years? The attempt of the present thesis project is to find answers to those questions, trough the analyses of cultural, social and economic backgrounds, retracing an industry of gaming before video games, and the definition of some of the reasons for their success after their birth in 1972. In the end, the present thesis project tries to define the role of Italy in video games industry.