Technological advances have revolutionised games and the way we play and relate to each other. This revolution began in 1972, when the first home video console for playing the Odyssey game on a television set was launched, with sales of 100,000 units in the first year. The success of this first technogame inspired the fast emergence of new consoles with games like Pong, along with games for arcade and other public establishments like Asteroids or Space Invaders.

In the 1980s, although initially the popularity of arcade games like Pacman continued, the advances in micro-computing drove a new revolution, with mass diffusion leading to what is considered the “golden age” of videogames, with the popularisation and widespread dissemination of home consoles and then PC games. It must be said that during these early stages there appeared companies in Barcelona that commenced the local production of hardware and software, with a number of games that attained considerable popularity. The following decade, thanks to the evolution of IT technology, there emerged more highly-developed console games like Sonic or Super Mario, to be followed later by a dizzying series of ever more powerful generations of consoles, with more sophisticated graphics such as 3D effects or high definition and functions like motion recognition. In addition, the generalisation of Internet from the mid-1990s onwards opened up the possibilities of online gaming and multi-player games. In recent years, these games have displayed a profound evolution in line with the technological changes and the development of diversified contents for new segments of public. In addition, the generalisation and multiplication of new personal multimedia devices have changed our way of playing games.