VentureBeat » Pong

Pong, anyone? Philly skyscraper becomes the world’s largest video game

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:59:12 +0000

A Philadelphia skyscraper became the world’s largest video game this weekend when a Drexel University professor used the building’s giant lights to display a working version of Pong.

Source: Drexel University

Pong on a skyscraper? It came from the mind of Drexel professor Frank Lee — and it’s something he’s been planning for five years.

The video game appeared in a playable mode on the side of the 29-story Cira Centre building in Philadelphia. It was part of a kick off for Philly Tech Week coming later this month, and it was the dream of computer science professor Frank Lee.

Lee said in the video below that he had been planning the gigantic version of the 1972 Atari game for the past five years.

“The idea for the project came to me when I was driving down I-76,” said Lee, the cofounder of Drexel’s video game design program. “As the sun was going down, I saw the sparkly lights at the Cira Centre. In my mind, I saw Tetris shapes falling down. That was the genesis of trying to create a game using the Cira Centre lights.”

The building has 20 pixels-by-23 pixels in its matrix of lights. That’s very limited, and Lee figured out how to make Pong work on the 437-feet building. He got in touch with Gerard Sweeney, the chief executive of Brandywine Realty Trust, and he gave Lee the green light. He also got help from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Knight Foundation.

The players controlled the game from a spot across the Schuylkill river from the Cira Center. The weekend display drew hundreds of spectators. Lee and his Drexel colleagues Gaylord Holder, Marc Barrowclift, and Santiago Ontanon wrote the software that works with Cira’s Color Kinectics program. That is how they control the 1,514 light-emitting diodes on the building’s side.

The sponsors are holding a community Pong tournament.

Filed under: Business, Games

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Iconic game company Atari files for bankruptcy protection

Dean Takahashi — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:42:29 +0000

Atari said tonight it has filed for bankruptcy protection as part of a move to separate from its French parent company.

The filing suggests that even the most venerated brands aren’t guaranteed to live forever. Atari’s name stretches back to the dawn of the video game industry with Pong. We’ve heard that Atari has been shopping itself to buyers for months.

The move is an attempt to carve out a separate existence for the U.S. company. The filing includes companies operating under the names Atari Inc., Atari Interactive Inc., Humongous, Inc., and California US Holdings, Inc. The papers were filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The company, founded by Nolan Bushnell in 1972, expects to continue operations during the bankruptcy proceedings.

“With this move, the U.S.-based Atari operations seek to separate from the structural financial encumbrances of their French parent holding company, Atari S.A. (formerly Infogrames S.A.) and secure independent capital for future growth, primarily in the areas of digital and mobile games,” the company said in a press release.

Atari has been in dire straits before and it has changed hands a few times. The company split into an arcade division and a consumer electronics division in 1984. Jack Tramiel’s Tramel Technology bought the consumer division, renamed Atari Corp. In 1998, Hasbro Interactive acquired the Atari Corp. business, renaming it Atari Interactive. Infogrames bought Hasbro’s video game business in 2001 and renamed the entire company as Atari Interactive in 2003.

Within the next three to four months, Atari expects to sell all of its assets in a ”sale free and clear” under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. The assets include the Atari brand logo, which is familiar to 90 percent of Americans, but also the legendary game titles including Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Battlezone and Tempest. Other recognized brands include Test Drive, Backyard Sports, and Humongous.

Atari has shifted from retail games to digital games and licensing. It has focused on developing mobile games based on some of Atari’s franchises. Altogether, Atari has more than 200 game properties. Atari says it is producing profits for its French parent, Atari S.A.

Atari’s newest mobile games include Atari Greatest Hits, Outlaw, Breakout, and Asteroids Gunner.

The U.S. entities want the court to approve $5.25 million in debtor-in-possession financing from one or more funds managed by Tenor Capital Management, a firm specializing in convertible arbitrage and special situations.

Peter S. Partee, Sr. and Michael P. Richman of Hunton & Williams LLP will serve as lead counsel in the bankruptcy filing.

Filed under: Games

New history of Atari commemorates the 40th anniversary of Pong

Jason Lomberg — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 19:28:24 +0000

Industry vets Martin Goldberg and Curt Vendel have penned a comprehensive history of the retro gaming juggernaut, Atari, in time for the 40th anniversary of the interactive, table-tennis classic, Pong. The book is called “Atari Inc. — Business is Fun.”

Previous accounts associate Atari with its laid-back culture – the lax dress codes, hot tub meetings, and copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. And you’re probably familiar with the company’s seminal contributions to the early histories of video gaming … Pong, Asteroids, Breakout, Tempest, Centipede, etc.

You’re probably also aware of Atari’s principle responsibility for the great video game crash of 1983 via an adorable alien named E.T. 3.5 million unsold units, a $1.3 billion loss in market valuation, and a New Mexico landfill later, and one of the great video game cautionary tales was born.

But the book goes beyond all the facts and figures to focus on the people who made this early ‘70s zeitgeist such a success. Basically – what was it like to work for a company “whose sole intent was to create FUN for a living”?

According to Vendel, “This book will dispel … and maybe also ‘confirm’ numerous rumors by giving readers that front row, first person experience.”

This 800-page tome – over seven years in the writing – contains 300 pages (yes, 300 pages) of previously unseen photos and is available from Amazon right now.

Filed under: Games

5 good reasons games are not art

Hilary Goldstein — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:56:29 +0000

Are games art? Let’s hope not.

Gamers have fits of Internet rage when non-gamers attack the video game industry. Roger Ebert has spoken out against the idea that games can be an art form. Most gamers will tell you that Ebert doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But what if he does? What if he’s right? What if games actually aren’t “art” at all? Don’t panic. Back away from the ledge. Here are five good reasons why it doesn’t matter whether or not games are art.

1. Art is bullshit
Recently I was at the MOMA in New York, viewing highly touted modern art. Most of it was crap. The only thing that made it “art” was that a museum hung it on a wall and said, “This means something.” I started watching the people more than the art itself and seeing the confused looks on their faces that said, “I don’t get it.” Yet, they nodded, showed mild appreciation with a smile, and leaned in as if a closer look would provide clarity. The truth is that most people want to be told what is and what is not art rather than make that determination for themselves. Art of this nature is often defined for the consumer, not by the consumer. Which means most art is manufactured as art. It’s not organic. It’s bullshit.

I don't get it.

It doesn’t stop at art in a museum. I enjoyed the Oscar-winning movie The Artist, but many people spoke highly of it only because it was a movie you were supposed to speak highly of (it’s a silent film released in 2011 — how daring!). “I guess I’m just not smart enough for this movie,” someone told me after seeing it. The movie itself isn’t questioned — it’s already been deemed an artistic endeavor, after all — so the viewer questions herself. If you don’t get it, well, you must be stupid.

The idea of “art” itself is corrupted, because the public — the consumer — isn’t determining what is and is not artistic. It’s the industries themselves and the media making those decisions for the populace. We risk that same level of corruption of integrity if we stress that games must meet similar artistic standards that we see in museums, in theaters, and in novels.

2. Games go beyond “art”
The hang-up on games being labeled as art (or even potentially being art) is foolish. It attempts to tie games to a standard similar to other mediums. But games aren’t like those other forms of entertainment. Games are interactive. You don’t just read or watch a role played out for you; you become that role. In a game, you have constant influence on what’s happening. Even the most linear of games is still altered by when you choose to jump. Fall and die, and the narrative evolves, even if that evolution is merely restarting at a previous checkpoint.

Gamers worry that if what they play isn’t recognized as an art form, it loses validity. That’s a very limited view of what video games offer. Games are something new, something that can’t be so easily defined as “art” or even as pure entertainment. Emotions are elicited in a whole new way with games so that even something as basic as Pong can cause a more visceral reaction than just about anything shown in the New York MOMA. Don’t confine a whole new way to experience and think about the world to old concepts. Games are something new, something different.

3. Sports don’t need to be art
Fourth quarter, time winding down, fourth and long with one last shot at the end zone — this is about as tense a moment as you get in football. It’s not art, though, is it? And yet millions watch football each Sunday, unconcerned with what Roger Ebert or anyone else thinks of what they enjoy. Sports thrill us, engage us, dominate our lives, and connect us as a society. It’s not art by any traditional definition, but that doesn’t make it any less valid of a way to spend a Sunday.

I’d argue that sports bring a unique narrative. The drama isn’t just about who wins, but who has a grudge against whom. Doesn’t it matter a little more when Peyton Manning faces Eli Manning on the gridiron? Sports fans know who talked smack about whom, who has a history of blowing it at the end of games, who is overpaid, who’s a cheap player, etc. That’s part of the drama of sports. In the proper context, it’s as intriguing as a Hollywood plot, but no one worries about whether or not it’s art. It’s sports. It’s different, right? Well, so are games. They entertain, inform, move us in unique ways — but they are something different than what we’ve usually labeled as works of art.

True gaming art.

4. For the people

Games are for the working class. Yes, fat cats can enjoy games, too, but the core of gaming is designed for people who work hard, don’t make a ton of cash, and need to disappear from the world for a little while at the end of the day. Though it takes hundreds of people and millions of dollars to make some of the top titles in the industry, it’s the average Jane and Joe struggling to make a living who keep the games biz thriving.

The “games as art” debate is merely a cry for legitimacy. It’s as if we need non-gamers to see games as some evolved form of entertainment in order for it to be OK for us to enjoy them. Let snobs be snobs and have their lives of snobbery. Games are for us — the common person. We don’t need validation to make video games “legitimate” in any way. Heck, we should despise such accreditation from people who seriously don’t have a clue about this form of entertainment. Games are ours, not theirs. We need to keep it that way. Being labeled as “art” takes away some of the subculture of gaming that is still vital to its long-term survival.

5. Who cares?

Does it matter if games are art? If games were recognized as being equal to an Oscar winner or the National Book of the Year, would you experience them differently? It shouldn’t even matter if other people love a game you love. If you think Limbo’s dark dream world is the most incredible thing you’ve ever seen in a game, it shouldn’t matter if your friend thought it was dumb. It certainly shouldn’t matter what a bunch of non-gamers think about anything in gaming. Pity them for not being able to enjoy the things games have to offer — true immersion, social connection, and emotional gratification.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about games. It doesn’t matter how others categorize games. What matters is how you experience, enjoy, and share games with others in the gaming community.

5 Good Reasons is a GamesBeat opinion series from Hilary Goldstein. Each month, he takes a controversial stance on a topic important to gamers.

Goldstein writes about video games for a living. The former editor-in-chief of IGN.com, he is currently a freelance writer and games consultant. His work has appeared in OXM, GamesRadar, IGN, and GameSpot among others. Even Swamp Creatures Get the Blues collects his short fiction work and is available on Amazon.com. Follow Goldstein on Twitter @hilgoldstein.

Filed under: Games

John Robertson on The Dark Room, his merciless and hilarious YouTube game (interview)

Dan Crawley — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:25:48 +0000

John Robertson has created a monster. The Australian stand-up comedian’s YouTube adventure game The Dark Room has been played over 220,000 times in less than three weeks. While many have entered The Dark Room, few have found their way out, and the comments on YouTube are filled with cries of despair, from players trapped in Robertson’s devilishly clever puzzle-box adventure.

Channeling the spirit of classic text adventure games, Robertson’s Floating Head character mocks and chastises players as they fail to so much as switch on a light. I spent nearly an hour being berated by The Floating Head yesterday and came nowhere near discovering the near-mythical “good ending.” Resisting the urge to unplug my computer, I instead got in touch with Robertson, to ask about his inspiration and to find out if he will ever reveal the solution to The Dark Room.

GB: It is fascinating reading the comments on YouTube, as people are playing The Dark Room but hating it at the same time. Did you realize how much of a visceral reaction the game would inspire when you made it?

JR: Well, I “playtested” it by doing it as a stand-up bit in front of 1,400 people at Wai-Con, the best anime convention in Western Australia, and I nearly started a riot…so I kinda knew it’d get some kind of response!

It makes me happy — I wanted to make a game that could entertain and frustrate and delight and mystify, and the comments let me see that in action. Some folks love the humor, some hate the puzzles, some hate the abuse, some love the abuse! It’s an emotional journey. The thing that gets me is how delighted people are when they hit the screen where I burst out of the room and beat them to death. It’s surprisingly popular!

GB: Are you getting a different reaction from your live crowd, or the man in the street, since the game came out?

JR: Not yet, but then, thank God, I don’t look too much like The Floating Head. I mean, I’ve got a body.

GB: Things are very different from the days of the classic text adventure, where getting stuck with no Internet guides was pretty much game over. How much of The Dark Room is deliberately recreating that feeling?

JR: Heh, I wanted to bring back that unforgiving feeling of old-school gaming. Old games were limited by your imagination — and whatever the makers of the game wanted you to imagine. The fun was finding the odd stuff, writing things like, “F*** you” and getting a message like, “Not in a million years, kid.” It was magical!

I mean, it used to be an accomplishment if you could make anything happen in a game, but God, you felt good once you did! So I made a game where nothing appears to happen — or does it? — and there’s a ton of weird stuff to find on the way.

Hell, on the comments again, the folks who’ve hit the good ending are so happy that it makes me happy — and I’m a tremendously cynical person.

GB: Is it true that 700 or so players have actually found the “good” ending to the game? Any plans to release a guide or put the rest out of their misery?

JR: Yep, completely true! At this point I think it’s 890. My favorite comment is from the fellow who wrote, “220,000 have come, 890 have escaped. We are the .0044%” I’m not sure about the math but what a lovely thing to say!

There will be a user guide added on a particular date, but getting a copy will be its own adventure for whoever wants it.

GB: How did the idea of transferring the game to YouTube come about? Are there any other experimental YouTube videos you took inspiration from?

JR: Heh, it came about incredibly quickly. I was getting e-mails about The Dark Room as a stand-up bit. I looked at my camera and laptop and lava lamp and knew I’d use YouTube, because that’s where I’ve placed my work in the past — and I’d seen annotations used around the site and thought, “Well, I could expand on that idea infinitely.”

GB: Can I ask how many parts there are in total? How did you physically map it all out?

JR: I can’t give you either of those answers, because I keep adding to it!

GB: Do you have any plans to add further sections or Easter Eggs to the game?

JR: Oh, yes. And Christ, there will be a lot of them.

GB: Will we be seeing any further creations of this nature? Maybe an iOS version?!

JR: Yes and yes. The next unrelated adventure will be called “Are You Polite?” More Dark Room is coming — a lot, lot, lot more — and I’m working on the iOS. First thing anyone said to me was, “I can’t make it go on my iPad!” I’ll fix that, don’t you worry.

GB: Your comedy takes a lot of inspiration from classic video games such as Pong, Street Fighter, and Final Fight. Are you still a gamer? What are you playing at the moment?

JR: I’m definitely still a gamer, but I love the old stuff. Most nights I fire up the Xbox 360 and tear apart long narrative games like Red Dead Redemption, whatever fighting games I can find, and every single THQ wrestling game that’s ever been released. My girlfriend and I may also have been known to spend many an hour on the various Lego games. And that is not even remotely embarrassing.

GB: Have you performed in the U.S. before? Any plans to go there, or go back, soon?

JR: I haven’t, actually! Would be grand to pop over. I’d really like to film some stuff in the U.S. — I mean, The Dark Room’s been filmed on a trampoline in Australia, in a cupboard in Singapore, and a toilet in London. What have you got, America? Who wants me to come to their house? I can promise screaming and fear!

You can play The Dark Room by clicking on the video below. Go on. You know you want to.

You can also check out what John Robertson is up to on his official website. Heck, maybe you could offer him a place to crash, to try and persuade him to come to the U.S. Just pray he leaves The Floating Head behind.

Filed under: Games

Father of video games Nolan Bushnell to keynote GamesBeat 2011

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:00:14 +0000

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and father of the modern video game industry, will be the keynote speaker at VentureBeat’s GamesBeat 2011 conference at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco on July 12 and 13.

Bushnell will give a talk about the continuum of games through history and where they are headed next as we transition into a world of many new platforms such as tablets and smartphones.

Bushnell founded the original Atari Inc. with Ted Dabney in 1972, launching a revolution in home and arcade video games. He sold the company in 1977 to Warner Communications and left in 1978. During that time, Bushnell was always a colorful figure.

He has been named to the Video Game Hall of Fame, the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, and was named one of Newsweek’s “50 Men who changed America.”

He went on to found Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater restaurants and a total of 20 other startups. He is co-founder and chief game designer of Anti-Aging Games, which is working on games that stimulate the brain. He also operates uWink.

Bushnell rejoined the board of Atari a year ago. He’s one of the most active entrepreneurs in the history of games and technology, and we’re excited to hear him speak.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011 conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. To enter the Who’s Got Game? contest for the best game startup, click here.

Filed under: Business, Games

Atari game creator Al Alcorn talks about creating Pong and modern game industry

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 14:00:59 +0000

Allan Alcorn is a one of the wizards of Atari and one of the fathers of the video game industry. Back in the early 1970s, he got together with Nolan Bushnell to create coin-operated video games, such as an arcade version of the early game Spacewar! Bushnell asked Alcorn to make a simple ping pong game, a version of the Magnavox Odyssey’s tennis game, under a contract from General Electric.

The contract didn’t actually exist, as it was just a training exercise. But Alcorn was convinced he had to do a good job on the game. He started in June, 1972, and it took him three months. He had to figure out how to get the score digits to work. When it was done, Bushnell thought it played well. They decided to put it in a cabinet and mount a coin box on it. They put it into Andy Capps’ Tavern in Sunnyvale, Calif. The game’s coin box filled up over and over again, and they knew they had a big hit.

Now that video games are a $21 billion industry in the U.S., Alcorn said, “It wasn’t my intention. I’m just as surprised as the next guy.”

Back then, Atari was able to take a lot of risks. With 200-person teams, it’s too risky to try to experiment. Alcorn says that when you have a big team, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to play it safe. That eliminates a lot of experimentation. Still, Alcorn says that if developers focus on creating a new kind of game, they might get lucky.

We caught up with him at the opening of the Revolution exhibit at the Computer History Museum today. Check out our video interview with Alcorn below. Revolution opens in Mountain View, Calif., on Jan. 13.

Filed under: Business, Games

In danger of being an also-ran, Atari names a new CEO

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:18:57 +0000

Atari has named a new chief executive today, promoting Jim Wilson from within to the top job as part of a plan to resuscitate the company’s struggling video game business.

Atari is the oldest brand in video games, but it has not been the most successful. The company has changed hands a few times and is now based in Paris, France. Wilson, who was deputy CEO, replaces Jeff Lapin, who is leaving the company.

For the first half of the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the company reported revenues of $38 million, down 57 percent from $89.9 million a year ago. The company reported a net loss of $12 million, compared to a loss of $37.9 million a year earlier. That’s pretty sad for a company with a brand that goes back to the beginning of video games. Atari’s Pong ignited the video game revolution in 1972.

Wilson joined Atari’s U.S. division as CEO in 2008. He helped turn around that business and has been focused on getting things right in Europe. The company has shifted more emphasis to its digital, online, and mobile businesses. But it suffered a huge setback when Star Trek Online, made by the Cryptic Studios division of Atari, was poorly received. Atari has taken the Cryptic resources and focused them on social casual online games. Smaller games such as Faeries vs. Darklings (pictured) are the focus for the future.

“Jim has the board’s full support as he continues to drive new goals of growth and success. At the end of Jeff’s mandates, Atari is better positioned as we enter the next strategic phase of our plan,” said Frank Dangeard, Atari chairman, in a statement.

But Atari is a small fish in a pond full of piranhas. Rivals such as Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft are far bigger and have proven more adept at making hit games. Wilson will run the company’s operations from Los Angeles.

Filed under: Business, Games

Atari launches platform for mobile and casual online games

Dean Takahashi — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:24:12 +0000

Game maker Atari is launching a new initiative today that has created a platform to host mobile and online games created by third-party developers.

The Atari Go initiative will take games created by others and publish them using the company’s existing online games infrastructure. Thom Kozik, head of the business-to-business initative, said in an interview that the company is tapping the infrastructure it inherited when it bought Cryptic Studios at the end of 2008. Cryptic makes and publishes massively multiplayer online games such as Star Trek Online and Champions Online.

Over the years, Cryptic has built infrastructure such as billing systems and customer service. The team of experts in that part of Cryptic’s business amounts to more than 100 people. Now the company can leverage that expertise as it publishes games through Atari Go. Atari is the legendary brand that created games such as Breakout and Pong. But it has gone through ownership changes over the years and is now a relatively small company surrounding by a bunch of larger game companies such as Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.

But with the Cryptic talent, Atari figures it has assets that give it an advantage.

“We already know how to take a game online and scale it up,” Kozik (pictured) said.

One of the first new games that Atari has published is Fairies vs. Darklings, a social casual online game. Kozik said Atari is talking to more than a dozen parties about publishing online games. Some of those will be original works, such as Faeries vs. Darklings, and others will use Atari’s classic brands.

There are already a lot of imitation Atari games posted around the web, and those games draw audiences by the tens of millions. Kozik said his company will work on “re-imagined” classic titles and try to lure those gamers away from imitations to the real thing. Atari’s platform will help developers reach new audiences via various friend networks, since the discovery of content is a key problem in the mobile world, Kozik said. Atari will also provide analytics information in addition to marketing and distribution.

Kozik, who joined Atari as executive vice president of online and mobile in March, has more than 25 years of experience in games. He has played leadership roles at Microsoft, Yahoo, Bigpoint and K2 Network. His goal is to work with talented independent developers to build games that can reach a wider audience through Atari. You can imagine the sales pitch: We know you like Asteroids, so you should try this new game.

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Filed under: Business, Games, Mobile