A family tree of video game monetisation, 1950–2026
This is a family tree of how video games have made — and increasingly extracted — money, from 1950 to 2026. Time runs downward through eight eras, and every card carries a small chip naming the medium it lived on — arcade, console, PC, online, or web & mobile. Follow the colours — each card is tinted by its monetisation family, and a curved line traces every model back to the ones it grew out of. Read it literally: branches accumulate rather than replace, so a free download in 2026 still carries the arcade's pay-per-play instincts and the golden age's pay-once ones underneath. Click a card's header, or its "＋ The story" toggle, for the full story; click any cover to watch a minute of it being played.