Nolan Bushnell Comments On Casual Games

Posted on April 29, 2008 - Filed Under Casual Gaming, Industry News |

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Pong Multiplayer got a chance to interview Nolan Bushnell, the found of Atari and the co-creator of Pong. Pong was the first video game and has been cloned a number of times. Bushnell had some interesting comments on the state of casual gaming, how the video game industry as a whole use to be and why it went in a different direction than when the industry started.

“The way that games started, they were virtually all casual. If you really think about ‘Breakout,’ ‘Tank‘ and some of those things, games were very, very simple,” he said

“I like to talk about [how] 1983 was sort of the break point where games went from casual to hardcore,” said Bushnell. “They got violent. They went long form. The violence lost the women and the long form lost the casual gamer. I actually sort of stuck to my roots, and the console game market moved away.”

I would have to agree with Bushnell’s comments, for the most part. I was still young in 1983 so I can’t comment on whether that date was the turning point, I am sure it was if he specifically calls that date out. I do agree with the change from easy to play, short games changing to more complicated long games. This change shut out a lot of the original gamers, but it happened because a market existed. Casual gamers were lost in the switch over, but hard core gamers were found and the video game industry got big on the hard core gamers.

Now the industry is starting to incorporate the gamers that got left behind in 1983. Games are starting to come back around to be easier to play and have a shorter time requirement. This doesn’t mean that the hard core gamers are going to left out. The gaming industry is going to focus on both groups of people. There will be a hard core market and a casual market, which is a way it should be. Everyone will be able to play the type of game they like and the companies will profit from all types of gamers.

Thanks MultiPlayer

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