40 years of computer gaming ...

With the exhibition „From PONG to PING“ die GAMES CONVENTION ONLINE will give you a brief view through 40 years of computer gaming history. And then, there will be two legends of this story be present to open the exhibition.

Ralph Baer is considered to be the inventor of the computer games. With it‘s gaming system „Odyssey“ he created the grandfather of today’s consoles. Baer is 87 years old today - 41 years ago he presented an unimpressive, small brown wooden case with control buttons. With it you could play three white blocks on a TV-monitor - better known as „Pong“. In 2006 Baer was rewarded with the “National Medal of Technology”.

The other legendary person is Richard Bartle. In 1978 he and Roy Thrubshaw programmed the first ancestor of todays Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing Games. With “MUG” they accomplished to get role play games, which you played only on paper up to then into the precurser of todays internet.

Together Baer and Bartle will open up the exhibition on the GAMES CONVENTION ONLINE. The common exhibition of the Leipzig Trade Fair and the Computer Game Museum Berlin deals with the history of online gaming. It shows the development of digital games from their childhood-days to today – once touchable in Leipzig and of course here on the website. From the beginnings in the 60s across the triumphal procession of the internet to todays MMO- and browser games with which most of all German companies celebrate international success today.