Gaming Through the Ages: An Interactive Timeline

To quote Theodore Roosevelt, “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” We don’t know what the landscape of role-playing games will look like in the next ten, twenty, or fifty years; we may be rolling D20s in 13^th Edition Dungeons & Dragons or assuming the forms of characters in a totally immersive game.  But what about what came before? Computer gaming – role-playing games included – is enjoying immense popularity, but how did we get to this point?

Shortcut, a blog provided by InternetProviders.com, has posted a nifty timeline – in the form of Tron, no less! – highlighting some of the developments over the past half century that have made both role-playing games and online gaming the ubiquitous experiences they are today as well as offering some brief prognostications on where we may be heading in the future, particularly in the realm of virtual reality:

Virtual reality tech could make gaming a richer experience than ever before, by placing gamers inside the worlds they’re exploring.

Could virtual reality headsets disrupt the freemium mobile gaming trend? Maybe – and they could bolster console sales, too, if partnerships like the Rift’s with Xbox succeed.

So while we may not be heading toward D&D games on the holodeck à la Star Trek anytime soon, if the past fifty years is any indication, then the future is sure to be interesting.