Some teachers may have cause to hate computer games, but there’s a lot to love, too. Janet Murray finds our virtual lives laid bare

It’s 1962. The world is on the brink of nuclear war. John Glenn has become the first US astronaut in space and the first live transatlantic television programmes are being broadcast by satellite. Meanwhile, Steve Russell, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also making technological history by developing the first computer game, Spacewar.

Unknown to Russell, this rudimentary two-player game was to create a global phenomenon. Spacewar gave birth to coin-operated amusement arcade games such as Pong and Asteroids. As a result, Atari - responsible for the world’s first games console - was set up in 1972 for $500 (pound;200). In 1976, the company was sold to Warner Communications for $28 million (pound;19 million). Computer games had arrived.

Forty years on, the computer game industry is worth $20 billion (pound;13.7 billion). According to the University of Manchester, almost three-quarters of people under 30 have played a computer game; half this number play on a regular basis. Love them or hate them - whether you think they stop children reading, or enhance their creativity - these games are a significant part of contemporary culture.

Acknowledging this, the Barbican is hosting the first major UK exhibition of computer games, which will explore their vibrant history and culture, explore design processes from conceptual drawing through to the finished product, and identify key figures in the development of gaming. It will explain the evolution of hardware technology from the colossal computers of the early 1960s, to recent multimedia consoles such as X-Box, Game Cube and PlayStation 2 which also double as DVDCD players and connect to the internet. The influence of games on European, North American and Japanese culture will also be explored. Contemporary artists, architects and designers have been commissioned to create new works inspired by games, which will also be on show.

Game On was conceived in 1998 when guest curator Lucien King, who worked for the gaming division of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann and later Rockstar Games, teamed up with Mark Jones, then director of the National Museum of Scotland. Jones was keen to attract younger visitors and a gaming exhibition seemed the solution. When it became clear that the exhibition was too big for Jones’s venue, they enlisted the help of Conrad Bodman, a curator at the Barbican Art Galleries, fresh from the success of the Art of Star Wars exhibition.

King hopes to attract a diverse audience. “Computer gaming has moved away from being a minority activity,” he says. “Increasingly, both the academic and commercial worlds are recognising that gaming is big business. And it’s getting bigger all the time.”

Ian Livingstone, creative director for Eidos - the company that conceived Tomb Raider - agrees. “There’s still a sense that games are viewed as kids’

things, and gaming is perceived as a craze that will fade. But as graphics get more and more sophisticated, interest can only grow.”

Livingstone is thrilled about the exhibition. “I think it’s brilliant,” he says. “Computer gaming is the second largest industry in the world. Bigger than Hollywood.”

And he would know. The phenomenal success of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft marked a turning point in gaming history, inspiring a box office hit. “It used to be that video games were based on films,” he says. “Now, movies are based on computer games.”

To complement the exhibition, Barbican Education has created a web-based schools project aimed at key stages 2 and 3 to encourage use of computer games as a stimulus for learning. It is the first nationwide project of its kind. An accompanying video charts the making of the award-winning fantasy game Black amp; White. Also featured are a series of themed lessons that take pupils through the creative and imaginative processes involved in planning a computer game. Schools close to the Barbican will take part in workshops run by leading games designers.

“Gaming wasn’t always big business,” King points out. “The games of the Seventies and Eighties were very much home-grown. This exhibition rewards those who’ve made video gaming what it is today.”

So what does the future hold? As graphics improve and become more realistic, so interactivity between user and machine will increase. Livingstone believes that computer games will eventually become so lifelike that players will be able to “star in their own movie”. Previously, this was the stuff of science fiction. In 1981, the sci-fi movie Tron brought virtual reality to life with a computer hacker who gets sucked into his own screen and is forced to play video games for real. Twenty years later, Star Trek maintains the quest for virtual reality with its “holodeck” - a technology that can artificially recreate any chosen environment.

For now, perhaps, this is idle fantasy. But technology is heading that way: the University of Warwick has combined with VR Systems in the UK to develop Cybersphere, a system that allows users to move around inside a virtual environment.

The leaps in computer gaming covered by this exhibition are testament to the gaming industry’s powers of innovation, and as Livingstone says: “You just can’t stop technology.”

For more information visit www.gameonweb.co.uk