Video games are a form of interactive media which has rapidly grown in popularity over the last 30 years. They take many forms, ranging from purely puzzle-based titles such as Tetris to cinematic games such as the Call of Duty series.
Modern gaming devices vary from standard PCs, to consoles such as the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, portables such as the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS, and even to mobile devices such as Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone.
Video games all share one purpose - entertainment. However, different types of video game provide their entertainment in different ways, which can be broadly categorised based on the number of intended players in a game. Many games include both single-player and multi-player components.
Games designed to entertain an individual, referred to as ‘single-player games’, can be played on a single PC, console or handheld device. They may challenge the player’s reflexes, give them puzzles to solve, tell a story, provide an environment to explore, allow them to do something out of the ordinary, or any combination of these. These games vary from casual titles such as Peggle to blockbuster titles such as the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
Games which involve a small number of players sharing a single device, often called 'split screen' or 'party games', allow a small number of players to participate in a game together, much as they would a board game.
This is generally attributed to more casual titles such as Nintendo’s Mario Party games.
Larger groups of people can compete or cooperate in networked multi-player games, typically with up to 32 players divided into teams who compete against one another. These games may be played at social events known as 'Local Area Network (LAN) parties', or via the Internet. This form of play is often highly competitive, and involves games such as Valve’s Team Fortress 2 and Electronic Arts’ Battlefield franchise.
In so-called 'massively multiplayer' games, such as the wildly popular World of Warcraft, thousands of players share a single game world simultaneously via the Internet. This allows groups of people from different parts of the world to cooperatively explore and overcome challenges, or to compete with other groups of players.
The development of a video game generally revolves entirely around providing an entertaining activity that a player can repeatedly enjoy. Typical development starts with designing the activity that players will participate in, and then the presentation of the gameplay.