Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

[As he does occasionally in this space, my friend and colleague Chris Huston offers his take on happenings in the world of video games.]

Nolan Bushnell, inventor of the seminal video game Pong, recently lamented the state and social impact of video games, calling them “unadulterated trash” and “a race to the bottom.”

“Social games represent something that has been missing.…We used to have families sit down and play a game together. A lot of video games today are very isolated. You don’t see mom and dad, sister and brother, sitting down like they used to play, say, Monopoly. That represented good mentoring time for families that just isn’t happening now.”

He says it like it’s a bad thing.

Seriously, “isolated” doesn’t necessarily mean “bad.” That’s point A. And B, what were we learning by playing Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders anyway? Were they really such a great mentoring tool? There is a social aspect about that dynamic that is healthy and valuable, but I don’t think Bushnell gets it here, nor should today’s video games be the scapegoat for its demise.

People have long made the same accusations against movies, and they are just as right and wrong as Bushnell is here. Video games are, as it happens, a social force similar to movies in some striking respects, and they provoke similar dilemmas, but they are also capable of similar contributions. And video games can do a better job at replacing Candy Land than any movie for social interaction. Nintendo is doing a pretty snazzy job of showing that with the Wii.*

My point is not to pit one medium against the other, though that seems to be Bushnell’s. Clearly, he isn’t against the medium of video games, but he seems to be against the “isolated” type of video game, and that, I believe, is a mistake. One could easily decry how board games keep kids and families indoors, inactive, and mentally disengaged compared to going to the park or the zoo or out for a hike.

One can find something to complain about with any pastime, and, like movies, you will always have junk and it will probably be the majority. [Ed.: Sturgeon's Law reigns across all genres.] You will always have movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious and the people who want to go see that instead of Schindler’s List. So, where is the real problem, with the movie or the movie-goer?

Like movies, video games can be an isolated user experience that entertain and, indeed, even inspire and educate. They don’t need to do more to be valid, and we have to accept that they, like movies or any other thing, will often do less.

~

* Case in point: Wii bowling tournaments in nursing homes.