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Nolan Bushnell Condemns Grand Theft Auto
Thanks to Newsweek for their extremely short, but somewhat illuminating mini-interview with Nolan Bushnell, timed to coincide with this weekend's Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. The founder of Atari and creator of the RoboCat briefly summarizes Atari's glory days: "Since we were so limited with graphics then, we had to focus on gameplay", but is dismissive of today's violent titles, saying: "I don't like the ones that glorify antisocial behavior, like Grand Theft Auto and Vice City. We actually had a rule at Atari, which seems kind of quaint now, that you could blow up a tank, a plane, a car - but you couldn't do violence against a human." There are more complete interviews with Bushnell archived at the San Jose Tech Museum site and at Joystick101.org.
There is usually a human in the tank, plane and car. So I do not see the reason for this double standards. In a free society you should be able to manufacture and play whatever games you like. Anything else is a serious limitation of the basic human rights.
Entertainment is often controversial. Whether one is speaking of stage productions, film, television, novels, or computer games, one often runs the risk that certain individuals will leap to the conclusion that the existence of negative behavior, self-destructive actions, and antisocial characters proves the approval of such behavior or characters. If there is to be conflict in a story, film, or game, there have to be bad guys. Bad guys make the art forms more interesting and the victory more satisfying.
In computer games, the gamer wants to experience and cause the results, not merely watch or hear. The easiest way to allow the gamer to cause the results is to build in cause and effect contingencies. Unfortunately, portraying violence and its reprehensible aftermath is the easiest and most commonly used means to give the gamer this opportunity to directly cause something to happen on the screen.
How long before we can see skins for Vice City with his face?
Bushnell-" Violence against humans is something we never would have tolerated in our games.. but violence against Dots that was openly supported.
Every day we had a new way to torment that dot from being smacked around by other dots or being eat by a big yellow duck."
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
But what about all those aliens coming to Earth that only wanted to share their knowledge and love of flying in formation with us? Huh? Insensitive bastard...
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
What about Custer's Revenge? Doesn't that inflict pain on people. I haven't played it but it seems to be against the "but you couldn't do violence against a human" rule. That rule doesn't seem to apply to aliens and monsters as well. Does Atari have some bias against them? I do agree that modern games have less gameplay and more graphics especially violence than earlier in games' life.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I guess Gunfighter was an exception to that rule, then (A game where two cowboys try to shoot at each other). And don't get me started on the violence of Human Cannonball. :)
After all the Degenatron is way cooler than any old Atari piece of junk. :-)
The Atari.. right the system that has a texas chainsaw massacre game(where you where you play leatherface) Custers Revenge (where you raped a indian woman who was tied up) and E.T. (where your childhood memories of the Spielberg classic where turned into a neverending nightmare of open pits.)
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
That's seems like some really relaxed rules you had. Where I work in the UK, the health and safety guy has banned us from blowing up anything.
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
I worked for Nolan Bushnell at uWink, very quickly I heard his complaints about the excessive violence of first person shooters. His opinion never strayed. He praised non-violent games, and was disgusted with violent ones.
A quick look at the games uWink has should show his outlook. All the games uWink has are non-violent. The only games which could be an exception was Scarab and Baloon Popper, and they were:
A) Not in the least bit bloody.
B) Part of the Software aquired from Playnet. While Playnet technically had Nolan's name on it, it didn't have his active involvment like uWink.
All the games created by uWink don't even have a hint of meanness in them. They are all like Pong in spirit, in that they deal with falling blocks, cards, or mental puzzles. These are the types of games that Nolan wanted to create. If there was a bloody Atari game, it was probably created after the point where Nolan lost control.
Sangloth
I'd appreciate any comment with a logical basis...it doesn't even have to agree with me.
That was the game of Outlaw. It was manufactured by Atari and mimicked arcade games of the same theme. I had to make sure there was nothing in the manual about robot gunslingers, and there isn't. It's definitely human murdering human.
Various other people-killing games were not by Atari. It's commented further down about Custer's Revenge and such. They don't count. However, the Circus Atari and Sky Diver games had the people go splat if they hit the ground.
I guess violence against people is a sliding scale, after all. However, in a game where human peril is part of the action, isn't it appropriate to show the consequences? If not, you get the Tom & Jerry effect (spoofed on Simpsons by Itchy and Scratchy) where people complain about examples of violence with no consequences. I think all this proves is that people will complain about games for the sake of complaining.
Lemonade? Please!
Makes ME feel safe leaving my kids there.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
It was also a bootleg - not made by Atari.
Suuuuure...no violence against humans. But criminy...how many of you had nightmares of being eaten by a blocky aligator like in "Pitfall"? I shudder to rehash those memories!
Or of being a frog and trying to hop across the street. I'm afraid to cross highways now for fear of being squashed. Wait...now that I think about it...there were scary aligators in that too.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Why can't the same standard be held for games? Someone doesn't like violent games... well OK. Let them develop non-violent ones like they enjoy. I can still play Silent Hill and Splinter Cell if I want to.