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Opposable Thumbs / Gaming & Entertainment

Pong creator praises Nintendo for pursuing road not taken

Allan Alcorn helped establish the business of video games with the creation of …

A long time ago in the faraway land of California, well before it began to suffer from a number of problems and undergoing an attempted revival, Atari made Pong a household name when the game came to home consoles in 1975. Allan Alcorn, the man behind Pong, recently sat down and talked with about his history in the business and how it's evolved since its early days.

When discussing what Alcorn calls the console "arms race," he heaps praise on Nintendo for the design route taken via the Wii. "A lot of credit goes to Nintendo for taking another path," Alcorn says during the interview. "Going with mid-quality graphics but innovative controls and a unique style of games. I think there is a danger, when you start making movies or videogames for one group—you know, the young, teenaged men—then you leave out a big piece of the market. And that's the other thing. Games have been decried for appealing to young men and they really can be much wider."

Along with the fact that Alcorn admires Nintendo for its desire to appeal to  gamers outside of the adolescent stereotype, he also makes a point of commending Sony for its efforts to integrate so many different technologies with the PS3 and make things simpler for the users... though, admittedly, he also acknowledges that the current integration is nowhere near perfect.

But Alcorn's biggest praise is for video games in general, based on the role they have played in getting younger generations interested in technology: "That, to me, is one of the most favorable outcomes... Whereas when you pop a tape into a VCR player, [a game] doesn't do that," he told "There's just something about 'How do they do that? How is that done?' and the curiosity involved with games. But I've had more than one person come up to me and say that because of the work I did it got them to think about how to do this stuff. That's really great when you hear that—I took science and mathematics courses because of video games."

Alcorn currently works as the CTO of IMMI, but he still retains a role in the world of video games. Last month, he and Ralph Baer gave a talk at the Game Developers Conference about what it's like to be pioneers of a multibillion dollar industry; it was the highest-rated talk at the conference, too. Even though he hasn't been making games since before many current developers were born, his insights and comments about a number of issues and events in the business shos the thoughtful interest of someone still actively following the industry he helped establish.

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