Kotaku
"That slide's not right. It shouldn't read 100 megabytes," Nolan Bushnell says. "We didn't have 100 megabytes back then."
He should know. Hailed as "The Father of Video Games," Bushnell is responsible for taking Pong to the masses. And unlike today, he didn't have the luxury of endless memory and oodles of polygons that young game developers take as a given.
"The first element of design is timing."
Timing seems to be something he knows well. Bushnell helped spearhead the gaming boom of the 1970s and early '80s, making a mint and getting out right before business got bad. Bushnell instead got into the restaurant business, creating Chuck E. Cheese, cashing in on pizza and arcade games.
"The second element is clear objectives."
He comes off more as a businessman than a "pure" designer or developer. He even brings graphs and charts to show which market segments could be exploited today. In 1982, he tells us, there were 44 million gamers. Today, there are 18 million. Where'd they all go? "Complexity lost the casual gamer," he says. "Violence lost the woman gamer." He ventures into Nintendo territory, even slamming the PS2 controller.
"The 3D controller that Nintendo is on to is a very good idea," he says. "If you look at today's controller with triangles, Xs, squares and circles, it's scary. It's like a keyboard. People are interface phobic."
"The third element is predictability."
All I could read was "machinma." Bushnell skips the slide before I even have a chance to register the rest of it. "This isn't very interesting," he says. Instead, he finishes up his speech with a slide of his latest business venture: uWink. The Father of Gaming is getting in the dating industry. He's planned a series of pizzerias that have simple tabletop games, which supposedly open up communication between the sexes. The idea itself is intriguing, but I fear that it's a case of something looking better on paper than in practice. "I guarantee you if I can help guys meet girls, I will make a lot of money," he says. He wraps up his speech and exits the stage to thunderous applause, while I check my watch to see if he's gone over his allotted speech time. It seems he has.
DIEC 2005 [Ritsumeikan University]
Comments
"In 1982, he tells us, there were 44 million gamers. Today, there are 18 million. Where'd they all go? 'Complexity lost the casual gamer'" Thats very interesting. I wonder if he's right and that Nintendo's simple, but powerful new controller might tap into a group that has stayed away from the complex gaming world of today.
"I guarantee you if I can help guys meet girls, I will make a lot of money," Priceless!
the tabletop dating thing could be really interesting and futuristic if it was done in the right atmosphere. at laundromats and arcades it would be terrible. however, at special parlors that combine "mystical" elements such as those that might be found at a yoga clinic, psychic advisor's office, oxygen bar or opium den, it could be interesting. dark lighting, pillows, ambient music, holograms - - yeah i can see that *idea* working, but it'd have to be expensive and might be totally insane (at this point in time, not 20 years from now). it would only work if females were interested in showing up. a better concept would be a device that a couple can enjoy in their own home, or something bachelors can use to attract the attention of visiting females.
I remember as a kid playing Atari with my parents. They'd play Pac-Man and Moon Patrol. I'm sure they would have played Mario on the NES if we had one (other parents did). However once I got a Genesis they stopped playing. The complexity and types of games just werent appealing and were too demanding. My dad used to play Joe Montana football with me but I started to get too good and it just wasn't fun for him anymore. Aside from the occasional Sonic attempt 16 bit was the end of the casual gamer. They went from zero or one button puzzle games to 8 button + fully involved violent interactive "movies."
An interesting and truthful perspective. While I am not one to naysay the "Father Of Videogames", let me lay capitalism aside for one moment and play devil's advocate here. Should the point of a game's existence be to "make more money"? I realize that money is what drives our industry, and without it, there would be no more industry, BUT, is money the reason our industry exists? Or is it something more? Seymour Papert said that games teach us how to learn. Why is it that so many of our parents stopped playing when games got more complex? Because the complexity required them to learn new things. Learning new things is something that typical American adult culture demonizes as "difficult, not worth the effort, and too much hard work for your leisure time." But why did we, as children, keep playing? Maybe it was because we thought that being the best at a game or beating that game was worth taking the time to learn how to play it better. Maybe playing the game was just plain fun, ergo, the practice of learning new things became fun. Therefore, we as gamers have now become a people that are not afraid of learning, and how much will that benefit our children? A lot, I think. I do think that the growing complexity of games has alienated some, but it has, in my opinion, created a new people group that is capable of great things.
blackhand, children learn more easily than adults. childrens' minds = sponges. unrelated: i went to a chuck e. cheese the other day and was bombasted with american nationalism from the animatronic band. it appears chuck e. cheese is basically telling kids to worship the USA.
I think they game that started this trend was Street fighter 2 since this was the first popular game that required complex moves in other to at least be able to compete against other players let alone the AI. It all came down from there until those Tony Hawk megamaniac moves that need at least 12 fingers to pull off. Even I won't get near that game. It's not a matter of how complex you can make the game but a matter of how complex you can make a set of moves to play it nowadays.
If there are 18 million gamers today, then why did sony sell 100 million PS2's, and MS and Microsoft both sell about 18 million of their respective consoles? The math is fuzzy there. I do agree with his point about complexity though. PD:Z is a good example of a game that is complex for complezities sake. Three Different triggers, all guns have aiming mode, roles, cover, jumps, hacking, laptop guns, fly by wire rockets, shields, the online interface, goals in single player. It's all complex to the point where it buries an otherwise great game under an avalanche of functionality. Char
"then why did sony sell 100 million PS2's" DRE
When the PS2 was released in Japan, it immediately became one of the cheapest DVD players around, so many were buying it without ever intending to play games with it.
Ah, but Windsor b, is that because most adults have trained themselves that it is too difficult to learn new things? I think learning is a choice, no matter what the age of the learner.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?