To get you started:
1958
William Higinbotham (not joking!) creates the first video game, Tennis for Two, to amuse visitors touring the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He would later dismantle it and never patent it, considering it useless.
c. 1960's
MIT college students develop SpaceWar, the first known computer game. They would never market it.
1963
Ralph Baer creates the “updated” modern version of Pong (with score tracking), playable on a dedicated console at the time.
1967
Atari is founded by Nolan Bushnell, and starts creating video-arcade versions of pinball.
1971
The first video arcade game, Computer Space, is published by Atari.
1972
Atari releases the first arcade version of Ralph Baer’s Pong design.
1976
Adventure, the first true large-scale adventure game of any kind, is released for some sort of big vacuum tube thing.
1980
MUD1, the first Multi-User Dungeon game, is conceived by Roy Trubshaw of Essex University, UK.
1985
The NES comes out in the United States.
...and so on. Just a brief history of gaming's starting points.