Gaming itself is as old as history. Artifacts from ancient Sumeria and Egypt have shown that our ancestors enjoyed playing board games thousands of years ago. But electronic games required the invention of electronic computers. The earliest computers were slow, failure-prone monsters that took over entire rooms and had less power than a modern pocket calculator. Still, early programmers on these machines felt compelled to waste time by making these computers do things like playing tic-tac-toe. After World War II, electronic computers moved out of the realm of cutting-edge laboratories and into universities and large corporations. Many university students became the first game programmers, transforming their fantasy and sci-fi imaginations into digital adventures.