Comments on: Nolan Bushnell: “Games Are Good For You”

By: byronicman

byronicman — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:53:27 +0000

SPAM: Just so you know, One Life Left has the entire session in our latest “special”: http://www.onelifelfeft.com / through iTunes (although the downloads seem to be temporarily offline grrr). Good to see you briefly, Alec!

By: Heliocentric

Heliocentric — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 06:06:30 +0000

I never understood mocking queing. Should people fight like animals over basic services? Is that somehow better? What i’ve seen of queing in some countries amounts to being corraled like cattle. Yes clearly we british are stupid.

By: BooleanBob

BooleanBob — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:49:28 +0000

With all respect, the greatest of all British social graces is our peerless propensity for queueing.

If it is a particularly trying queue, one may keep one’s upper lip stiff and earn a combo multiplier.

By: BoltingTurtle

BoltingTurtle — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:07:33 +0000

Ironically I credit Chuck-E-Cheeses with teaching me that greatest of all British social graces; the stiff upper lip. This was simply THE place to have a birthday party when I was little, and so naturally when I turned seven it was my first choice. My parents wanted to get on the road for the move to Ohio sooner rather than later, and with my dad making about 28K a year (that’s in dollars at the time that would have been 10k in pounds) as a music ed professor at a state university, it was going to be pushing it. When they broke the news, I for some reason that I cannot explain, took it gracefully, which moved my parents so profoundly that they decided to suprise me and take me anyway. Life’s lessons learned through a love of whack-a-mole.

By: heartless_

heartless_ — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:13:05 +0000

I’ll add my vote to the “people who like to play with other people in real life” pool. The physical interaction between two people can not be beat by online interaction, but with that said, online interaction in a game ain’t too shabby :)

By: LionsPhil

LionsPhil — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:45:15 +0000

“The reason the Wii sells so well is because you have to have people in the room with you, and feeding off their reactions, both vocal and physical, is way more fun than talking to faceless personalities over the internet…”

Hot, spicy facts. This is also why I convince people to show up for LAN parties, despite also playing online with them. It’s worth it for the mutual laughter when someone’s “watch this!” Redeemer trick goes horribly, horribly wrong.

By: Skurmedel

Skurmedel — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:40:33 +0000

It’s worth mentioning, for those who doesn’t know, that the Atari he founded, and the Atari of today is not the same thing. Todays Atari is what used to be Infogrames, who changed name to fix their shitty reputation.

By: viper34j

viper34j — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:42:37 +0000

“Sitting in a darkened room in your underwear talking to 1000 strangers”

I don’t think that stereotype is off that much. He is just merely looking at a single facet of online gaming that lends itself to being more about what you can get out of your online comrades instead of really enjoying a mutual, developing relationship like you would IRL, generally speaking.

By: dhex

dhex — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:26:49 +0000

chuck e cheese was pretty ghastly. now they have a lot of fighting issues (beer + madness + screaming children + idiots = rumble)

http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/01/12/pregnant-woman-arrested-for-fighting-at-chuck-e-cheese.aspx

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:05:52 +0000

I went along last night too. Had never heard of Chuck E Cheese, but asked my girlfriend (who’s from the US) about it when I got home. Apparently she used to love it as a kid and said that Bushnell’s assessment (”Do you want to know the number of kids who’ve sat through the entire puppet performance … zero”) was spot on.

I thought uWink looked a bit ghastly, it’s not the kind of thing I could imagine in British pubs or town-centre bars. In the example they showed, the machines were really imposing.

By: Malagate

Malagate — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:16:42 +0000

Hmm, that uWink does seem interesting, but I can only see it being useful as a way to keep punters busy if the service is slow. Restaurants are for the eatings, if interactive tabletops are primarily used for menus with games as something ancillary to that then I could see it working quite well. Chuck-e-cheese works because it’s an arcade attraction with a restaurant attached to it as well as a whole child enthusing atmosphere, uwink though doesn’t seem to have those hooks other than whilst you wait for food you can play, and I’m not sure many adults want to go out to restaurant to play rather than just socialise and eat.

Also I think many Britons are just freaked out by dancing and singing animatronic puppets, or at the very least made deeply uncomfortable by them. I never wanted to hang around the singing animatronic bears at the American Adventure theme park for example, and that talking caterpillar at Alton Towers I’ve never seen properly used (usually just someone pressed the buttons and runs the hell away from its freaky face). It just doesn’t slide over here, although Punch and Judy I hear is still kind of popular.

By: matte_k

matte_k — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 10:31:46 +0000

Alec, it still raises a smile every time I see your avatar-might have to go dig out those comics and re-read… :D