Pong creator Nolan Bushnell to enter MMO space
by Akela Talamasca 
Feb 29th 2008 at 11:00AM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Historical, Culture, Events, real-world, Interviews, MMO industry, Making money, News items, Opinion, Consoles, Casual
The man many call 'the Father of Videogames' -- as he is responsible for founding Atari and creating Pong -- Nolan Bushnell was recently interviewed by GameSpot at this year's GDC. The piece reads along smoothly enough, with Bushnell offering up his opinion on the marginalization of game arcades since the 80s, how to monetize casual games, and the importance of socialization.On this line of questioning, GameSpot asks 'Do you have anything in massively multiplayer games?' After a long pause, Bushnell confirms he does with a single 'yes', but reveals no further details, saying intriguingly ' ... as compelling as World of Warcraft is, it too shall find that there are other ways to play a game.'
It's a given that he knows a lot about the industry, but that's not necessarily a quality guaranteed to create a fun game. However, he does know quite a bit about creating social spaces, which could be a big advantage in designing an MMO. What do you think, could something interesting come from Nolan Bushnell?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Annyka Bekkers said on 2:10PM 2-29-2008
You left out that he is also the founder of Chuck E. Cheese. So, yeah, I'd say he knows a little bit about creating social spaces.
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akela.talamasca said on 1:30PM 2-29-2008
Look again, Annyka; there's a link in the article: 'However, he does know quite a bit about creating social spaces...' that points to the Wikipedia entry on Chuck E. Cheese.
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