 The creation of general programming languages like BASIC , which could be run on different hardware types , allowed for programs to be written for more than one specific computer , in turn letting games written in them to spread to more end players in the programming community than before . These games included a baseball simulation game written in BASIC by John Kemeny in 1965 ; a BASIC bingo game by Larry Bethurum in 1966 ; a basketball simulation game written in BASIC by Charles R. Bacheller in May 1967 ; another baseball game that simulates the 1967 World Series written in BASIC by Jacob Bergmann in August 1967 ; Space Travel , written by Ken Thompson for a Multics system in 1969 and which led in part to the development of the Unix operating system ; and Hamurabi , a text @-@ based FOCAL game written by Doug Dyment in 1968 and converted to BASIC by David H. Ahl in 1969 , and one of the first strategy video games ever made . Hamurabi and Space Travel were among several early mainframe games that were written during the time , and spread beyond their initial mainframe computers to general @-@ purpose languages like BASIC . 
