Atari founder and creator Nolan Bushnell — “often referred to as the father of electronic gaming” — is known as a serial entrepreneur as he has founded and advised numerous tech companies as well as founding Chuck E. Cheese.
(Yeah, that last one got me, too.)
Mashable recently interviewed Bushnell and asked him about his view of gaming from 1972 versus gaming today and he shared some interesting insights.
What About Retro?
Mashable brought up the point to Bushnell that Atari has continued to be popular throughout the decades and if it was only nostalgia that perpetuated its popularity.
What do you think?
Do we love Atari and Super Mario because it was good, well designed gaming or because we all have fond memories of being an 8-bit hero and saving the world by blasting one pixel at a time?
I think there is certainly an element of nostalgia in the mix, but Bushnell really nails it:
“There are two things going on. The first is nostalgia, of course. But what is really happening now is many games have gratuitous complexity. Technology didn’t allow this in those days… and the essence of gameplay in many instances is simply no ambiguity.
If you ever play chess, you play with black and white pieces that are the same as they were in the 1680s. The Atari games were very well-tuned for timing… it was sort of essential gameplay — gameplay with essence. And that’s attractive in its own right.”
So, true!
There is a reason we have seen so much popularity with minimalism. “Gratuitous complexity” certainly sums it up. As fun as the latest Madden football game can be for those who have kept-up with the series, it lacks the same approachability that Tecmo Bowl did. The same could be said when comparing COD vs Contra. The layers of complexity are far deeper, today, and the learning curve is too complex for just anyone to join the fun.
Web Design
A website should function much the same way. Your web design should be intuitively simple, stripping away all those layers of “gratuitous complexity.” The number one enemy for a website is bounce rate. These are the users that visit your website, and before clicking on anything else, immediately leave.
To paraphrase Bushnell’s comments in a cliché, I think we can safely say:
“Less is more.”
What do you think?
[Image via Claudio © via Compfight cc & DeviantArt]
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