This page has some content about my personal history.
The following transcription derives from a diary entry, April 27, 1984 when I was still an employee at Atari in the coin-op division. I left Atari and the game industry soon after, only to return five years later. The original consists of several handwritten pages, plus a small diagram. Please read the comments at the end. The comments are from 2/21/2021.
1984 was the middle of the big video game crash. It took several years for the video game industry to recover and continue to grow. And grow it did! In 1984 there was no internet, no GDC, no AIAS, no Google, no cell phones, and most people had never touched a computer. Coin-op was king, but that was about to change. When transcribing this I kept most of the bad grammar but made a few cosmetic edits. This text was never revealed to anyone until 2021. It’s a fascinating look at the dreams and aspirations of one of the very early video game developers, me.
Games are here to stay 4/27/84
We are worried about the video game market collapsing. It looks pretty bad right now. Home games don’t sell, coin-op games don’t sell. What do we do next?
I feel it is time to organize our thoughts more clearly. There is too much secrecy and politics, but most of all there is too much ignorance. The people running the game companies know very little about games, the game designers know a little bit more, the game players know more still, and the most knowledgeable are the game addicts. All this knowledge is spread out, there is no encyclopedia, no reliable books, and most game designers are anonymous. If you want to know something about a game ask the good player. The manufacturers give out poor and inaccurate information. The video and game magazines try to be cute, often they are inaccurate also. The game designers can’t be found or the are too busy. Does anybody know who designed Monopoly, Scrabble, or Pac-Man?
Games are here to stay. There is a large number of person-hours devoted to recreational games each year. People have been playing games for centuries, and they will continue. Games span the entire spectrum of age, income, geographical location, you name it. If video games are dying, some other kinds of games (Trivial Pursuit ?) will take their place. It is up to us to find the next fad. Now is the time. The game must be radically new. It also must be a fun game. Ten years from now we will have seen several more game fads of various proportions. What can we do to help our chances? How can we innovate not imitate?
The first step is organization of knowledge about game design. To recognize and reward the innovators. To learn from the past is to know the past. Ignorance is deadly. No longer can a random game design succeed. Chances are it was done before. In the last five years there have been more games invented than in all of history, especially if we count all the games that didn’t make it. Or am I showing my own ignorance of the past here?
Proposals for accomplishing this:
Let us form an academy of game designers. Anyone who designs games can be a member. This includes, for video games, artists, programmers, engineers, Project leaders, etc. I probably excludes people involved with high level management, marketing, packaging. It excludes the general public and also game players, as opposed to game makers. Game testers are included because they are involved in the game making process. Maybe though, anyone who wants to pay the membership fee can join.
Purpose: To study the science of game design. We at Atari are the leaders in our field. But there are other fields to consider: sporting goods manufacturing, toys and consumer games of all kinds, puzzles, card games, gambling games and machines, and games without manufacturers, such as word games, charades, what am I forgetting?
[Below is a Venn diagram, originally drawn as four overlapping circles]
Top circle: Entertainment, Moves, TV, Sports
Left circle: Computers, Home Computers
Right Circle: Science + Math
Middle Circle, overlaps with each of the other circles: Games
In some sense, everything we do can be viewed as a game, especially in our culture.
All of mathematics is a very clear cut game, with real rewards. But we want to focus on selling real products and recreation, not science or art for its own sake. Making a living at it is a prime concern.
What do we do?
One: Lets get together, in local chapters, on a weekly to monthly basis. There can be speakers, panel discussions, exchange of ideas. Secrecy about current projects needs to be maintained, but this is a free country.
Two: Let us study, and publish information about every game ever in existence. This is a truly monumental task, but we can do it. Move over Hoyle. If a game has an extensive literature already (chess, blackjack, etc.) or at least a definitive and accurate treatments (coin-op Centipede) we must duplicate it. But there are many games about which little is known or written down. The rules of every video game ever made should become available eventually.
There should also be extensive indexing, so that it is relatively easy to get a list of all 4 player simultaneous coin-op games (an on-line database somewhere).
Three: Let’s maintain a list of high scores on games at least two years old. Or maybe not. Does anybody care? At least this might give people a chance to organize their high scores, if they care.
Four: Let’s imitate the Oscars. Members vote on the best game designs, whatever. We’ll make a big party, invite the designers, and the press. This is for all games.
COMMENTS from February 21, 2021
Wow, that was 37 years ago, and I was 29 years old. I foresaw the GDC, game award shows, and possibly Wikipedia. I was aware of Twin Galaxies, but didn’t expect them to turn into the keeper of video game world records for the next forty years. I had no idea that the game industry would explode, that AAA console games would dominate, and certainly I did not see Atari collapsing, even though that happened later that year. Even as late as 1996 I didn’t think that real-time 3D graphics would ever look good enough or have sufficient frame rates to be used in most every AAA game.
Of course, some of the thoughts expressed in this long diary entry are ridiculous, and I no longer agree, but that’s what happens when you look back at yourself 37 years later. I certainly don’t think that all games must be radically new, especially since that’s becoming increasingly difficult. Still, novelty combined with fun is a great formula for video game success.