1972.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series

1972.Game - A Gaming Documentary Series - We come at last to the year that changed the world. Gaming went from being something accessible to just a few to a mass market, yearning for something exciting and new. And it came in the form of something basic and easy to understand, that spoke to people at a fundamental level, requiring no explanation or technical knowledge.

In 1972 that bright shining future that seemed just over the horizon at the end of the last decade slid into a dark pit. Humanity took its last step on the Moon, putting an end to dreams of colonies off-world and manned space exploration. The Munich Olympics attack, airport shootings, IRA bombings and many more brought terrorism to the forefront of society, and it hasn’t left since. Earthquakes killed thousands in Iraq, Nicaragua and Turkey. There’s an outbreak of smallpox in Yugoslavia. A million people in the UK are unemployed. The Watergate scandal shakes confidence in the leadership of the US even more than the continually disastrous Vietnam War, and will inevitably lead to everyone adding “gate” to words to denote scandals. Something for which there is still no solution. But not everything was dark and depressing. The Godfather premiered, a marvel of cinema, and HBO, the first subscription based television network, goes live. But without dragons, at least for now.

Even more relevant to our story is the rise of video games. You had classics like Hunt the Wumpus, a text game made by Gregory Yob where you’d blindly walk from room to room, falling into pits, in the hopes of finding and shooting what I imagine is some type of squid, at least according to how it was depicted in Planet Mule. While probably not the most influential game ever made, it was responsible for a lot of references over the next couple of years, and can be seen as a precursor to text exploration games to come. Another adaptation of Star Trek was created, as well as a game called Empire, that would soon be renamed to Civilization. No. Not that one. It would then have its name changed again to Empire Classic, and was a precursor of the 4X turned based game genre where you commanded armies, explored your surroundings and attempted to conquer your opponents. And if the year listing on the mainframe is to be believed, this is when another Empire first came out, not in ‘73. Built on the Plato network and still playable today through the Cyber1 PLATO Terminal Emulator, it let 30 players explore space, using Star Trek themed ships, with the ability to launch photon torpedoes, beam people away, tow ships, orbit planets, all in an attempt to achieve victory. You may think of it as a less depressing Eve Online. Yet these were all games that still needed specialized hardware with special access to that hardware.

And here’s where the world changed.

In 1972, Ralph Baer’s idea for a brown box that you could connect to a television and switch to “Channel Let’s Play” became a reality for all. Magnavox, an electronics maker that coincidentally sold television sets, agreed to manufacture and sell it in its stores under the name Odyssey. It was a refined version of the Brown Box, though not a technological leap, still using very basic and easy to manufacture components, and not the fancy new kind of integrated circuits the Intels of the world were making these days. It was still a simple system where the players could control at most three squares on a screen and relied on plastic overlays that people had to stick to their television screen in order to compensate for the non existent graphics. Rules were enforced by the players, with no internal methods of keeping score or to maintain order. Even so, there were numerous games built in, although the most relevant one remained the table tennis game, which needed no overlays to be fully enjoyed.

The basic version of the Odyssey was released for the price of 100 dollars in the US. And one with a light gun would be sold separately soon. Adjusted for inflation, it would be just shy of 600 dollars. A high price, and yet one that some people did decide to pay. According to Ralph Baer, the Odyssey sold nearly 100 thousand units within a year. And by the end of its run it would sell 350 thousand units. Just enough to make people realize that this could really be a thing. It certainly made one man realize it. A man by the name of Nolan Bushnell.

As legend goes, Bushnell saw a demonstration of the Odyssey at an event and really liked the table tennis game. Though it is quite probable that he had played similar ones in the past, considering he was a veteran of Space War and even tried to bring it to the masses with Computer Space. After splitting from Nutting Associates with the intention of making more arcade games, he changed the name of his own venture from Syzygy Engineering to Atari and hired a man by the name of Allan Alcorn. Bushnell gave Alcorn a task, meant as a training, since he had never developed games before. He was asked to make a ping pong game, with two paddles, a ball and a scoring system, and Alcorn did deliver. The prototype arcade cabinet was put in a bar owned by a friend of Bushnells and, according to legend, it needed servicing soon, because it wasn’t working properly. The problem was it was filled with too many coins. A good kind of problem. By the end of that year, Atari built 2500 units of this game, dubbed Pong. In another year, there were 8000 of them, each earning close to 40 dollars a day. It was the highest grossing coin operated device ever made. It spearheaded video gaming arcades and kickstarted the video games industry. And that’s why it’s the game of 1972.

Certainly, the games built within the Magnavox Odyssey and the console itself was important, for bringing games into the homes of the audience, but people bought it partly because they could play “Pong” in their own home. There was a symbiotic relationship between them, helping them both flourish and bringing in millions of dollars. Where there’s money, there’s interest, and it would soon come in large numbers from large companies. But not before a few lawsuits, because Pong was a bit too much of a copy of Ralph Baer’s patents on electronic games. With time, these would be settled, granting Atari a license to use the patents and access to Mangavox technology, in exchange for a hefty fee of 1.5 million dollars. Still, it wasn’t really much considering what the arcade cabinets were bringing in, and what the next thing would usher forth. But for that, we’ll have to wait a week or two.

We are supporting Steem/Steemit/D.Tube through our Shows !

---

Support Us and Our Work !

Youtube.com/c/GaminGHD | Minds.com/GaminGHD | Gab.ai/GaminGHD | Patreon.com/GaminGHD | Steemit.com/@free999enigma | D.Tube/c/GaminGHD |

- UPVOTE - RESTEEM - COMMENT - FOLLOW -

Gaming-Related Friends you should follow: @StefaNonsense & @ropname & @unacomn & @vladalexan GaminGHD Discord Server https://discord.gg/CZSXJwy