http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10206438-235.html

Atari 2600 still schooling game designers

SAN FRANCISCO--If you draw a straight line representing the evolution of video games from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Wii, one thing is clear: if you don't know your past, you can't know your future.

That was the central lesson of Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost's Friday talk at the Game Developers Conference here, "Learning from the Atari 2600." Essentially, Bogost argued, it's not always necessary to reinvent the wheel; sometimes, instead of being discarded as so much arcane, the discoveries of the past are best adapted for the future.

Bogost and MIT assistant professor Nick Monfort recently published Racing the Beam, a book about the iconic Atari VCS, popularly known as the 2600. So Bogost's talk Friday was clearly drawn from the research for that project. And while his fondness for the 1970s-era video game console was evident, the point he was really trying to make was that the seeds of successful games--especially those enjoyed by large groups of diverse people--have very little to do with the latest and greatest technology and much more to do with mechanics that make for enjoyable shared experiences.

For Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, a former carnival barker, the bloodlines that led to the 2600 were three things, Bogost argued: the fun-for-the-whole-family excitement of a midway, the shared competition of a game of darts played in a tavern, and the gather-around-the-TV sense of family time afforded by the den. At the same time, Bushnell wanted to repeat the success he'd had with coin-op arcade games like "Pong," but for the home.

What he was after was what Nintendo has also tried to build into its Wii: a feeling that people can have fun doing something together. That's why going to the movies is so much fun, or going out with friends to a bar: because it's something people can do together, in a social space, whether they're competing or not.

And it's about context, Bogost said. You can drink at home, but it's not as fun as doing it in a bar. Or you play pool in your house, but it's not the same thing as doing it with friends at the local tavern. And while no video game system can replicate being out in public, the right mix of game mechanics and tools can allow people to feel like they're in the middle of a social scene, even if they're in their living room.

"That's why Wii Bowling is the best game in the Wii Sports collection," Bogost said. "It really re-creates the experience and context" of real bowling.

"So what we see, I think in the (2600)," Bogost said, "is the adaptation of familiar subjects for familiar spaces."

He talked about the successes and failures of some of the games designed for the 2600, explaining that, for example, the original 2600 Pac-Man game didn't work because its designers didn't do a good job of adapting many of the atmospheric elements of the original arcade version. For example, it was missing the familiar music, as well as the animation of Pac-Man chomping and turning as he made his way around the maze.

A successful adaptation, however, was the 2600 version of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. In that game, players were tasked mainly with attacking Imperial walkers, blasting away at them again and again until victory was achieved or defeat assured. So rather than trying to re-create the entire storyline of the movie, The Empire Strikes Back, the game's designers cleverly focused on the one, most memorable, scene from the movie.

Contrast that with the infamous E.T. game for the 2600--which Bogost said tried to faithfully re-create the film's sense of alienation, and which was a terrific failure--and you can see that successful games don't require complexity. Instead, they require adaptation that fits the format at hand. Shooting Imperial walkers conjures the best parts of Empire Strikes Back and thrills players with quick, simple action, while the E.T. game tried to hard to do too much with a beloved franchise.

Bogost's lessons drawn from the 2600 for modern game designers, then, revolve around the idea that innovation is less important than adaptation. The best Atari 2600 games were adaptations of games that had come before--Pong, Spacewars, Star Castle--that did a great job of porting the player's enjoyable experience into the living room. The worst--Pac-Man, E.T.--tried too hard to break new ground.

Further, he said that while there's always the temptation to try to re-create, or modernize, properties from the past, what really works is updating the experience that people had with them.

In addition, he said, it's important when trying to update those experiences, to keep in mind the limitations, or virtues, of the machine for which the new game is being created. Knowing that the PlayStation 3 supports terrific graphics doesn't mean that a game is going to be good just because it has big explosions or incredible realism. But build a game like Flower, which depends on beautiful images, and the PS3 is the perfect platform.

And lastly, Bogost said, timing matters less than it may seem.

In other words, while it may seem crucial to get a title out as fast as possible to, say, leverage interest in the movie it is based on, that's not always necessary. He explained that the Empire Strikes Back game for the 2600 came out two full years after the film.

"These things linger, especially for kids," Bogost said, adding that his son had once told him, "'You really only go to the movies to see if you want to get the DVD.'"

To be sure, Bogost's talk was somewhat abstract and he wasn't drawing direct game design conclusions. Rather, he was trying to explore the ideas that simplicity is often a better approach than trying to do too much, and that as a platform, the Atari 2600 proved that it was possible to make people happy and to have commercial success, without starting from scratch each time, or shooting for the stars.

Instead, by carefully thinking about the experiences that people enjoyed in the past and applying them to the 2600, game designers in the 1970s and '80s were able to make titles that combined the best aspects of social environments and bring them into the home.

And now, years later, even in the era of machines like the Xbox 360 and PS3, which are more powerful than anything that could have been envisioned in the era of the 2600, Nintendo has found a way to apply some of the lessons learned in the past and adapt them for the present.

"The Atari is a living, breathing relic," Bogost said. "It's a strong aspect of (the video game industry's) history, and we should know about it for those reasons alone."

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Basically, this says to me that everything old is new again.

It also explains why the Wii is selling to a lot of people who have not gamed in years. 

The great irony is that Nintendo wanted Atari to distribute the NES in the US/NA.  So now, it is making a machine that recreates the feel of the Atari 2600 -- and the NES.

 

Mike from Morgantown

 

 

 

 

TBH I just like gaming and enjoy my 360 experience.
I mean the end product is what is important and not the spec.

It all comes full circle.

Still, people cannot believe the Wii can be an enjoyable system without HD specs.

Interesting read and I totally agree, this is why the Wii is selling extremely well. The funny part is that I play alone most of the times :p

That's not an analogy I would actually try to make seeing how the success of the Atari2600 heralded the video game crash of the 80s.....

This is an interesting article, but to be honest, I think a better parallel is the NES: a console that rebuilt the market after a crash by using broad appeal to build a new base of gamers.

I believe that the Wii was built along similar lines: Nintendo predicted a crash among the fratcore, and sought to rebuild the market as early as they could. Nintendo must, after all, have a market; Sony and Microsoft have other divisions, but gaming is all Nintendo does, so if the gaming market goes down Nintendo goes with it.

And to be honest, I think the crash has come. The HD market is having a lot of trouble sustaining console exclusives, thus the rash of cross-platform games we've seen this generation. Porting costs money, but not as much as new games, and the HD console markets are so small (the PS3, for example, has only just barely outsold the Gamecube) that it's the only way a lot of these expensive games can make any profit at all.

The PS3 and 360 cling to their precious "hardcore" segment, because they didn't see this coming, but it was inevitable. The fratcore are growing up, getting a taste of what maturity really is, and therefore growing disillusioned with the M-rated games they were once so obsessed with. They've been trained so hard to reject "kiddy" games that they see nothing left in gaming for them, and so they leave a market they themselves took pains to ensure people didn't get into quickly enough to replace them via the whole pwn-the-n00bs domination mentality. This was inevitable, and it is too late to stop it. Sony and Microsoft will be forced to adapt if they want to survive.

In two generations, the 'hardcore' will be very different from what they are today. What will they prove to be? I don't know. But I don't think they'll resemble the hardcore we currently know, and given what that demographic did for gaming, that's probably a Good Thing. Maybe the heirs to the title of 'hardcore' will prove more worthy stewards of the market than their predecessors were: more focused on the things that matter in gaming, more willing to experiment with deviations from the formulas that will no doubt be established, and less focused on dominating their peers.

Except the huge majority of gamers purchased a NES and the majority of Wii owners are not people that used to be gamers ( at least that's what Nintendo is selling with Blue Ocean right ?)..
So I don't really see what the analogy is there....

RolStoppable said: Ail said: Except the huge majority of gamers purchased a NES and the majority of Wii owners are not people that used to be gamers ( at least that's what Nintendo is selling with Blue Ocean right ?).. So I don't really see what the analogy is there.... The majority of Wii owners owned a console before. At the very most 20 % of Wii owners didn't own a console before. This logically means that a lot of PS2 owners now have a Wii and that number is increasing. Most of Nintendo's growth this generation (so far) comes at the expense of Sony which isn't surprising since the PS2 had the biggest marketshare by far, so by default most people who owned a console before the Wii, were PS2 owners. The NES beat the competition (home computers of that era) due to accessible games and ease of use. The Wii is doing much the same this generation.

 

Where did you get those stats from ?

That does not seem to match Blue Ocean or the people that you usually see purchasing Wiis...( I might give you the households purchasing Wii used to have another console in the last 20 years , but 80% of Wii owners having a console last gen I somehow don't believe it...).

Wii Fit has sold to over 20% of the Wii user base for example, do you really believe most of the people purchasing Wii Fit had a console last gen ?

 

PS : I'm not the one claiming Nintendo is expanding the market like crazy, they are, and you seem to say no they are not and the majority of Wii owners had a console last gen ( 80%to quote you)

SaviorX said: It all comes full circle. Still, people cannot believe the Wii can be an enjoyable system without HD specs.

Still some people cannot believe the PS3 can be an enjoyable system WITH HD. I think people don't understand that an HD console, like the PS3, can produce ANYTHING the Wii can produce. The opposite isn't true. For instance, the bowling game in Wii Sports and High Velocity Bowling on the PS3 both use motion controls. They are both open to the entire family. Only the PS3 bowling game covers a wider range on people (people that LOVE graphics and audio AND those that have a SDTV with mono audio). It's just that a lot of people don't know about that on the PS3, are just spellbound by the Wii fad, and/or just caught up with the extra money for the system. Actually, the PS3 has a lot more potential in interactivity games than the Wii. There are interactive games on the PS3 that are out of the reach of the Wii's capabilities. I expect this to be tapped into more as time goes on. I expect the nation to come around as the price falls in the future. Trials of Topoq, Operation Creature Feature, etc. to find more exposure with families later on. I, also, expect EyePet to stimulate interest as well in the fall of this year. I agree with the spirit of the GDC presentation in the OP. The general public is about general access to games. However, I don't agree that this is something that can't be carried out with much better tech. A high-tech product is a LOT more versatile and generally has a longer lifespan.

^ Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?