The arcade has drifted off into history. In its slumber, face-to-face socializing has faded as well. Have today’s video games, played mostly inside the rec room, lost their social ambiance?
I joined Atari Coin-Op in 1982 during the height of its reign and spent 14 years learning at this great university. My first job was to create music and audio for arcade games. I also managed the audio group. Later I ran the engineering group. Besides learning to squeeze everything you could from the hardware of those days, what I learned behind the scenes will stay with me the rest of my life.
Much has been written about video games and I’m no historian. But, I do want to explain what Nolan Bushnell, and others at Atari like Rick Moncrief, Dave Ralston, John Salwitz and Ed Logg (among many, many other great video game makers) understood to be fundamental to great games and which seems to be lost today. To be successful, an arcade game must include three important ingredients:
- It must promote a Social atmosphere
- It must provide Novelty
- It must be Fun
Video games must encourage socializing. For instance: cabinets that allow a boy to show off to his girlfriend – or games that include competitive head-to-head play (like Indy 800 or Gaunlet’s 4 player cabinet) help bring people together.
It must include some form of novelty. The arcade business was highly competitive and game companies understood that there was just so many quarters in a players’ pocket. Providing novelty helped pull players to your game and away from your competitors. All kinds of ideas were employed – unique, cool controllers (like Paperboy’s bicycle handles, or Street Fighter’s unique buttons); amazing graphics; “add a quarter to continue game” concept; and cool music, voice and sound effects.
It must be Fun! This sounds simple, but it is oh so hard to accomplish. Believe it or not, some teams are so busy trying to get the game out they just miss this! And, despite what some game executives believe, you can’t schedule when it’ll be fun.
Games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Tempest, Pacman, and Marble Madness, all capitalized on the essence of this magic formula. In those days, the coin box was king and you understood within a week’s test if you had a hit by checking how many quarters dropped in the box. Today’s arcade is dismal, but I was happy to learn that Nolan is gearing up to resuscitate it. Check out the Wired article: The Player for more. It’s a good read about revitalizing an important social institution.
video games
