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Atari founder details future of video games, discusses former employee Steve Jobs
As part of a packed morning session at the Game Developers Conference Online, Bushnell pointed to existing trends in games and, while it’s admirable to look so far ahead, he acknowledged that some of these ideas will probably be in gamers hands (and pockets) in the next two to five years.
For instance, he doesn’t believe that there’ll be a high-profile new generation of game consoles after the current Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have run their course because of high costs and plateauing graphics technology.
What about Nintendo’s upcoming Wii U?
“Nintendo’s pretty crappy,” he joked, adding that the company’s next home console offering doesn’t count.
Did we mention that Bushnell, a game industry veteran, is pretty loose and off the cuff in front of an audience?
Some of the future trends Bushnell pointed out include a further move to gaming on mobile devices like iPhones and Android handsets with improved network performance and more elaborate location data available to games via vector space aided by gyroscopes. Once the X, Y and Z vectors for a player’s location are available, especially indoors, he said, game designers will be able to create more virtual reality-like games.
He also pointed to “Near-Field Communication,” more gesture-based controls and haptics as other emerging gaming trends. He also believes that content is getting better; he predicted we’d see the gaming equivalent of “Seinfeld” in the next five years.
The presentation may have been an offshoot of a novel he’s been working on that he hopes to release by December. He promises it’ll feature cool gaming ideas and “Hot chicks.” The novel writing, he said, was a way to challenge himself to try something new, which he said is vital for creative people.
“I couldn’t wait to wake up every morning to see what happened,” he said of writing the book.
He also advised up-and-coming game designers to attend conferences for subjects they’re unfamiliar with (a carpeting expo in Vegas, for instance) to expose themselves to new ideas. He says the idea for Chuck E. Cheese’s came when he attended a manufacturing convention. Even then, an idea won’t get you all the way to fame and riches.
“Everybody who’s had a shower has had a good idea,” Bushnell said, “the question is what do you do when you get out of the shower.”
Bushnell still works with Atari to update vintage games for a new generation of gamers (he joked that the company’s reputation is still “Even better than EA, ha ha ha”) and is also working in education with Speed To Learn.
During the question-and-answer portion of the presentation, Bushnell was asked about former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died last week. Jobs worked for Bushnell when he was 19.
“Steve was a very, very smart and difficult person,” Bushnell said. “Steve has always been a good friend. A great visionary. Actually a really nice man.”
Bushnell brought on Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak to program the video game “Breakout,” which ended up being a huge hit. When there was a company problem in Germany, Jobs offered to fly there and asked if he could then fly to India, where he would end up spending several months. “Steve wanted to go to India to spend some time with an Indian swami of some sort,” Bushnell said. “Atari actually paid his way to India,” he said.
When Jobs returned, he and Wozniak started Apple Computer and offered Bushnell the change to buy into a third of the company for $50,000.
“To which I brilliantly said no,” Bushnell laughed, “I’ve actually regretted that a few times.”
(Photo via Creative Commons by “pescatello” / Mike Lewis.)
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