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IPFS News Link • Entertainment: Games

Why Esports Are Poised to Overtake the Entertainment World

• https://fee.org, Jon Miltimore

On October 19, 1972, about two dozen people crammed into a poorly lit room at Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to watch a handful of students play video games.

Some came for the free beer. Others came to catch a glimpse of history—the first-ever "Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics"—which was being recorded by Rolling Stone reporter Stewart Brand and photojournalist Annie Leibovitz.

The students were playing Spacewar!, a video game created a decade earlier by MIT student Steve Russell, which features two ships, "the needle" and "the wedge," locked in a dogfight as they circle a gravity well.

When it was all over, Bruce Baumgart was declared the winner of the free-for-all competition. Two other students claimed the team competition. The prize? A year-long subscription to Rolling Stone.

The Spacewar! showdown at Stanford is considered the first-ever video game competition.


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