Leveling up: Innovation through the lens of video game luminaries

Abstract

Whether it's Pong, Super Mario Bros., or Fortnite, there's something about playing your first video game that captures the imagination. Competition, active participation, and immersion in a new world have been hallmarks of the video game industry since its very beginning. Modern technology has helped create a Rampage-like gorilla of an industry, ringing up more than US$175 billion in sales in 2020. (For children of the 1980s, who furiously pumped coins into arcade cabinets, that's a whopping 700 billion quarters!) However, it was the ingenuity and conviction of the progenitors of video games that got the proverbial trackball rolling.