Evolution of Video Games🎮
Gaming for better or worse is a
lifestyle a lot of gamers are deeply
invested and becomes a part of their
identity
we've always played games before
agriculture before the wheel perhaps
even before we were human we played
we wrestled we raced we pretended to
hunt games taught us how to be with
other people, they showed us how to think
differently and how to think the same as
humans evolved so did our games before
we could write we made dice out of
animal bones 5000 years ago the
Egyptians carved board games out of wood
1500 years ago we were playing chess in
India we have invented tens of thousands
of games and over the millennia
virtually all humans have played at
something
but now suddenly the game has changed
more than a part of growing up more than
a way to be social gaming video gaming
is now a way of life 60% of Americans
play a video game every day some play
all day and some of the best are getting
rich very rich by playing for the planet
the industry is less than 50 years old
but video games bring in nearly twice as
much money as the movie industry the NFL
the NBA and baseball combined the real
revolution may be still to come and it
started here in the Bay Area because of
a big white line the little white ball
the very first video games weren't
created to be played
they were meant to show what computers
could do in 1952 AAS Douglass developed
knots and crosses at the University of
Cambridge simulated tic-tac-toe in
1958 American physicist William
Higinbotham developed tennis for two at
a government lab in New York both were
built on early computers that were so
big and complex no one but an engineer
could play then came space war historian
Chris Garcia's space war had been written
at MIT in the early 60s but Digital
Equipment Corporation had sent around
the paper tape of the game all over the
the country as a part of the user's society
yes they called it and what happened was
all sorts of people played in all people
tried to put it onto their new machine
one of the first versions of space war
made it to the Bay Area in 1971 Stanford
graduate bill Pitts and their friend Hugh
tuck loaded the game into one of the new
smaller computers called the PDP-11 mini
computer because of the anti-war
sentiment on campus they changed the
name from space war to the Galaxy game
they added a coin box and it was an
an instant hit so it was only deployed as
far as I've ever heard
is actually in the Tresidder Union at
Stanford and for years it was played and
it was arguably one of the first
coin-operated video games we would sort
of seeing them today they proved a
the coin-operated video game could work but
it was still too expensive for mass
production
that problem could be solved by someone
else
no one bush now in particular was
everywhere he knew everything that was
going on and here's a guy whose
superpower really is taking every input
and realizing what the great idea is at
the heart of it in the 1960s Nolan
Bushnell came to the Bay Area after
graduating from the University of Utah
he worked at Ampex one of the first big
electronic companies in Silicon Valley
Bushnell had seen space war as a student
and it gave him an idea at Ampex he and
a co-worker Ted Dabney created a computer
space computer space was also an
implementation of space war and it was
the game that sort of started the idea
of the sort of the classic arcade games
standing video screen button controls
was pretty hard to play actually but
that was sort of the beginning
Bushnell made a deal with a small
company to build and distribute the game
computer space failed an Alcorn met
Bushnell and Dabney at Hendrix no one in
10th Avenue created this game over at a
little company down the street called
Nutting associates and showed it to us
and but then no one got upset with them
about how to run the company and so I'm
going to do my own that's when the car
got started
in 1972 Atari had two employees Nolan
Bushnell and Ted Dabney the first person
they hired al Alcorn a Berkeley
graduate and engineer I was 24 years old
so I wasn't thinking about anything
beyond where my next meal was coming
from Nolan and Ted came by and took me
to lunch one day and offered me this job
on his first day of work
Alcorn arrived at a small office in
Sunnyvale we were in one of those you
know it down in Silicon Valley down the
Santa Clara kind of a garage space maybe
a couple thousand square feet is this
the three of us there was Ted's brother
and no one had hired his babysitter
Cynthia to answer the phones after she
came back from high school and if
someone was calling for Nolan she was
instructed to make him wait to make it
seem like we had a bigger place and
there were more people that year Atari
still didn't have a game where Schnell
went to a trade show and found his
the inspiration there's the famous story of
him going to a trade show and seeing a
demonstration of a machine called the
Magnavox Odyssey and seeing a version of
ping pong played on that and then going
back and telling all we need a version
of ping pong to motivate Alcorn Bushnell
told him a little lie about a deal to
make a ping pong game they wanted to
challenge me so he told me he had this
contract from General Electric for a
the home game which made it be really cheap
like $15 in parts so I put this thing
together as simply as I could but I had
way too many parts for a home game but
no one didn't seem to mind and I
made the game playable with some of the
speed up and the angles of the ball and
stuff like that it took three months for
Alcorn to design the prototype of the game
he created was pawned
as soon as they had a working game
Bushnell put it into Andy Capps tavern
in Sunnyvale, we just watched people play
it's to see because I just think I hear
God it's the only coin-op game ever made
that required two people there was no
one player version that had to have two
people and there were no instructions
just the word pong two knobs in a coin
the box I mean like what are the chances
that would well it did it really took
off and once that happened the world
changed in a matter of days the bar
the manager called to say the machine was
broken Alcorn wasn't surprised he built
the game so quickly he figured there was
a wiring problem in fact the game was
too popular so I opened up the coin box
to flip the little micro switch because
I didn't want to waste my own quarter
the door opens up and all this money
falls out of the thing
Wow so I split the take with the
bartender and put the rest of my pockets
and next day came to work and I said I
found out the problem what was it too
much money I'm guessing it might have
been a hundred bucks 150 bucks something
like that it's a big pile of quarters in
its first year Atari made $1,000,000 on
pong the company moved to Los Gatos and
Alcorn was now the vice president of
engineering in 1973 the Atari team
traveled to Japan to meet with a
distribution company on a side trip
Alcorn took a boat tour of Hakone Lake
it was there he realized what Atari had
done a cone a lake is a beautiful high
mountain lake in Japan and this was
1973 all the cultures and there were not
many Americans up there at that point I
remember people looking at us I had a
beard and that's unusual anyway on that
the boat we were on a tour boat going across
At the lake there was a pong machine and
I'm thinking oh my god what have I done
here's this beautiful land with this
ancient culture and I said pong machine
pomade Atari the first global video game
company college students wanted to work
there including the very young Steve
Jobs in walks this 18-year old I think
he was 18 about that 17 or 18 old enough
to hire I guess and he's dropped out of
Reed College I said he read a
engineering school even no no it's a
literary kind of a thing okay what's my
the motivation here is well I got this friend
over Hewlett-Packard Steve Wozniak there
well well does that do me you know and
but he was enthused in 1976 Bushnell had
another idea for a game he asked Steve
Jobs to build it Jobs had to keep the
number of chips to a minimum to keep
costs down jobs couldn't do it but he
gets woz to come in and woz does it in
like a week
three days non-stop and I walk in and
Steve says hey look at this and there's
a finished game wasn't even on the
schedule how they helped us get here it
was like unbelievable now I could
schematic and I said you did not do it
Steve Jobs, I can't understand what
happened this had to be woz that game
was a breakout and it was a hit it helped
cement the business relationship between
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976
Wozniak built the Apple computer he
and Jobs started
that same year Bushnell sold Atari in
1977 Atari released a home video game
console called
the Atari 2600 had interchangeable
cartridges and that is super key with
almost all of the other gaming systems
prior to what Atari did and did beautifully
were they got third-party folk to make
games for the 2600 and that was
game-changing and that has defined
success for a console ever since when I
created pong there was no video game
industry
we revolutionized it by really creating
the video game industry making a
profitable desirable business and
because that industry started here the
Bay Area has become a magnet for the
greatest minds in gaming a teenager who
proved you could make a living by
playing video games the beauty queen who
managed professional players and changed
how American gamers compete in one of
America's first shoutcasters who
pioneered play-by-play and started a new
a profession in gaming and the game
a designer who found the secret that keeps
people playing for hours al Alcorn
shares more stories about Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak including what happened
when Jobs came back from India and how
he and Woz opened their first Apple
business account
