Atari founder Nolan Bushnell says he always envisioned video games in casinos because they’re fun – and predicts that the nascent skill-based industry is close to taking off.
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Sometimes referred to as the father of the video game industry, Bushnell, appearing at a press conference Tuesday morning at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas with Synergy Blue CEO Georg Washington, said he’s a “great believer” in skill gaming. And, though it wouldn’t be under his old Atari brand – he sold that years ago – Bushnell, who’s now working as a consultant for Synergy, hinted he’s about to put his stamp on skill-based games.
“Skill games’ time is now,” Bushnell said. “We have so many people that have grown up on video games and are (now) used to having a phone in their pocket and playing games all of the time. We have a good opportunity to reinvent what the casino experience is and drive a whole new generation of players and fun seekers.”
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The key for the industry, he said, is to develop games people can play immediately, with no instruction manual. Getting up to speed on gameplay quickly makes for a short entertainment cycle; when that cycle gets longer, games need to charge more to make the economics work for casinos and game makers, which has been one of the biggest concerns about the fledgling industry.
“In this world, you have to have one foot in the creative design side, and one foot in the economics,” said Bushnell.
“In the early stages of the computer-game business, we had games that were slot-like, but you couldn’t win anything. I always thought that someday we would be able to create a whole new set of games with payouts.”
Bushnell downplayed some of the current concerns about the industry, saying that, if a skill game appeals to someone who hates slot machines, there’s added revenue for the casino from that person, even if the cycle time on a skill game is longer. It’s important to satisfy micro niches of population groups because there are so many options for entertainment, he said.
“If you don’t satisfy them, they won’t come to Las Vegas and have a casino experience because there’s nothing there for them,” Bushnell said. “Now we bring up this new panoply of things to do… in some ways that will go into hyperdrive (when) we have 20 skill-based games in their own section (on the floor).”
Bushnell said he still loves to design games and lamented that, as a CEO, his career has involved spending too much time with attorneys and accountants and not enough with engineers and artists. He said he’s enjoying spending time with Synergy Blue’s engineers and artists.
“I’ve been in the innovation business my whole life,” Bushnell said. “It can start out spotty. Pong wasn’t the first Atari game, Computer Space was. But Pong electrified the whole damn world. In the next couple of years, we’re going to have a game that will be the skill-gaming equivalent of Pong. We might have it already. In the innovation game, things explode. Can we predict? No, but when it happens you feel really good.”
He emphasized the potential of skill gaming because of the social aspect.
He said that much of video gaming today involves people sitting alone and playing with a million other people online, which might feel social but isn’t. Bushnell contrasted that with casino play, saying that casinos are “social mecca(s) where people can come play and have fun” and indicating that he envisioned people forging friendships through playing together.
“Skill gaming, unlike regular slot machines, involves strategies, and people like to talk about those strategies,” he said. “(It’s a) whole new palate. Whenever you have these expanded possibilities you have this whole new way of things that (can be) fun and novel. We are looking for the next best thing.”
