{"id":1090,"date":"2015-10-23T15:45:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T20:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2015-11-04T10:25:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T15:25:04","slug":"vcg-interview-what-is-a-video-game-a-conversation-with-nolan-bushnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1090\/vcg-interview-what-is-a-video-game-a-conversation-with-nolan-bushnell","title":{"rendered":"VC&G Anthology Interview:<\/span> What Makes a Video Game? A Short Conversation with Nolan Bushnell (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nolan Bushnell HimselfBack in 2011, I wrote an article about the creation of Nutting Associates’ Computer Space<\/a> on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. If you’ll recall, Computer Space was the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first mass-produced and commercially sold video game. It started the video arcade game industry.<\/p>\n

While researching the piece, I conducted extensive telephone interviews with Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell, the co-creators of the game (who went on to become the co-founders of Atari). During my conversation with Bushnell, we touched upon some other topics too — when you have a guy like Bushnell on the phone, you tend to ask whatever you need when you have the chance.<\/p>\n

\"VC&G<\/a>While looking through the transcript of that 2011 interview again recently, I came across a section near the end where Nolan and I talked about what it really means to be a video game. During our conversation, Nolan hit on something that I think is rather profound, yet completely obvious in hindsight. I thought other folks might find our conversation, and its resulting conclusion, interesting.<\/p>\n

I’ve kept this transcript nearly verbatim because I feel it reflects the spontaneous, free-flowing nature of the conversation. We were talking as he was driving home from a business appointment, so he was slightly distracted at the time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"----------\"<\/p>\n

This interview took place over the phone on November 11, 2011<\/em><\/strong><\/center><\/p>\n

Benj: <\/strong>I have this issue about what is a video game and what isn’t a video game. When I look back through how we commonly classify history, there are computer games and video games, and people tend to segregate them. What do you think about combining them together?<\/p>\n

For example, you said you wrote computer games on a PDP-1 that were essentially video games [We discussed this earlier in the interview — Ed.], because they used a visual display. What’s the fundamental difference between the two — or is there one?<\/p>\n

Nolan: <\/strong>I don’t think there is one. I think a game on a screen..I mean, ’cause if you want to get technical, you can say, “What’s the difference between raster scan and vector graphics?”<\/p>\n

You know, Tempest was a vector graphics game, Lunar Lander was a vector graphics game. But they were clearly all video games, and we just basically learned how to do certain kinds of technologies cheap enough to commercialize them. So I think it’s an arbitrary distinction that doesn’t really matter in the whole scope of things.<\/p>\n

Benj: <\/strong>So you could just call them all “electronic games.”<\/p>\n

Nolan: <\/strong>No, I think you have to have a “video” in there. Because…<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> It has a cathode ray tube of some kind?<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> Right. Even then, all of a sudden, the distinction goes away because of LCD TVs these days.<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> That just makes it more complicated.<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> So I think that the idea that there’s an image that can move and is run by some kind of an electronic construct. That’s really the definition.<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> Would you consider an electronic checkers game that had an image, say, from the 1960s — if you had made it on a visual screen — to be a video game?<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> Oh yeah. Remember, we had a Chess cartridge for the 2600.<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> But what if it were text? What about text-based games for mainframes? Is there a line there, where they’re not video games because they’re not graphical, necessarily?<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> That’s an interesting question. That’s probably a meaningful distinction. ‘Cause clearly, you could use that on a paper output just as effectively.<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> Yeah, that’s true. You’re absolutely right about that — paper. That’s where it got started too. They were using paper teletypes.<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> Oh yeah. Text adventure games were in the old days of when we were doing 300 baud modems and time-sharing. [laughs]<\/p>\n

Benj:<\/strong> [chuckles] The good old days.<\/p>\n

Nolan:<\/strong> [chuckles] Well…not so good.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"----------\"<\/p>\n

So What Is A Video Game, Then?<\/h3>\n

\"ASR-33This conversation may not tell us exactly what a video game is (that’s an ongoing, nebulous definition that I address more below), but we can add to the list of what a video game is not: If an electronic game can be played via a teletype or line printer display (i.e. Zork, TradeWars 2002), it is not a video game. Why? Because the game does not require a video display to function.<\/p>\n

The illustrations for games like that, described in text, are rendered in your mind and not on a screen.<\/p>\n

Video displays are characterized by fast refresh rates and their ability to display dynamic, arbitrary, moving images. While originally referring to a raster-scan CRT display, the term “video” as used in the term “video game” has grown to encompass almost any electronic display that can display arbitrary illustrations.<\/p>\n

But wait \u00e2\u20ac\u201d does a video game display have to be purely electronic? Let’s do a thought experiment.<\/p>\n

What if you had a 128\u00c3\u2014128 grid of tiles, controlled by a computer, that mechanically flipped from black to white, much like computer pixels, depending on game play? On such a screen, if it refreshed quickly enough, you could play an arbitary bitmapped game such as Tetris or Breakout. Would that be a video game?<\/p>\n

MIT Building TetrisNow think about Building Tetris<\/a>, which uses lights turning on and off within skyscraper rooms dynamically in a pseudo-bitmap fashion. Is that a video game?<\/p>\n

By our modern definition, which transcends raster-scan CRTs to include all displays capable of producing arbitrary illustrations, I’d say yes.<\/p>\n

How about Tiger handheld LCD games, which used predefined LCD illustration elements and could not generate arbitrary illustrations? I would say that they were electronic games, but not video games.<\/p>\n

Now let’s revisit the teletype\/printer with another thought experiment. If you had a printer that printed and spit out paper fast enough to create a 30 FPS animated stop-motion effect, could you play a video game on it? Since it could produce arbitrary, moving illustrations, I’d say yes.<\/p>\n

Things are always weird when you think about them hard enough. And perhaps I am overthinking it. But It’s my job to think about these things. I just don’t typically do it out loud.<\/p>\n

So based on that conversation with Bushnell \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and everything I’ve ever learned while writing about video game history over the past decade \u00e2\u20ac\u201d here’s my current working definition of a video game in the modern era:<\/p>\n

video game (n)<\/strong> – A game using electronic logic that must be played through a display capable of generating arbitrary moving images<\/p>\n

(Note that I’m saying “electronic logic” — not necessarily digital or computer logic — so early non-computer arcade games and the Magnavox Odyssey still count.)<\/p>\n

Honestly, you could parse the definition of “video game” forever. For example: What is a game? What consists of an “image” or “illustration”? What does “arbitrary” or “logic” really mean?<\/p>\n

I don’t know why I’m writing all this, because I don’t feel like arguing about it. But I will admit that this definition is still a work in progress. So if you’d like to speculate more about the definition of “video game” in the comments, be my guest. I can’t promise that I will debate anyone about it, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2011, I wrote an article about the creation of Nutting Associates’ Computer Space on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. If you’ll recall, Computer Space was the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first mass-produced and commercially sold video game. It started the video arcade game industry. While researching the piece, I conducted extensive telephone interviews with Ted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,32,27,9,8,49],"tags":[1208,945,122,946,245,1207,1209,1001],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-interviews","category-regular_features","category-retrogaming","category-technology-commentary","category-vcg-anthology","tag-1208","tag-computer-space","tag-interviews","tag-nolan-bushnell","tag-technologizer","tag-vcg-anthology","tag-video-game-definition","tag-video-game-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}