#008: Pong

Release Date: 29 November, 1972

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Sports

Developer(s): Atari (Al Alcorn)

Publisher(s): Atari

What can be said that hasn't already been said about Pong? Commonly misidentified as the first video game - it's not even the first arcade video game ever made - due to its overwhelming status as the game that truly launched the arcade industry, if not the entire video game industry (I know Ralph Baer had a word or two to say about that...) Pong is simply legendary, and a defining part of the legacy of a company that would dominate the much of the arcade and home console space all the way up till the infamous video game crash of 1983.

Much of the story of Atari's founding I've already covered in my Computer Space article. The short version is, Atari was originally founded as Syzygy Engineering by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, after Bushnell got the idea to make a commercially sellable version of Spacewar!, which would eventually turn out as Computer Space, developed in partnership with amusement manufacturer Nutting Associates.

Computer Space didn't do terribly well with the public, and was considered too complicated for drunk bar patrons and the like to understand - a hilarious statement to make nowadays considering Computer Space only had 4 buttons. Regardless, Bushnell was forced back to the drawing board. He needed a simpler game.

The idea he needed came in May of 1972, although maybe not quite as he thought it might. Bushnell was attending a demonstration of an innovative new device that could play games through a TV set - the Magnavox Odyssey. He observed, and played the Table Tennis game. He was not impressed by what he played. Bushnell is quoted by Ralph Baer (creator of the Odyssey) as saying,

"..it had no scoring... [or] sound effects... the motion was erratic and difficult to control. I felt that it was not a satisfactory game playing device."

Regardless of what Bushnell thought, it's clear that what he saw at that demo stuck with him. Atari had recently hired a young, talented engineer in Al Alcorn. While Bushnell had a contract to create a driving game for arcade manufacturer Bally, he thought that would be too much for the greenhorn engineer who'd never seen a video game in his life. Instead, Bushnell wisely wanted him to get his feet wet with game design, and so set him a test project - replicate the Odyssey's Table Tennis with arcade hardware.

Bushnell had a few different ideas in mind for this test project. Initially he wanted the two paddles to be more akin to two people holding racquets with a button press making them swing the racquet (more akin to later tennis games.) He also wanted sound - he wanted to hear something akin to the cheers and roars of a tennis crowd. Ted Dabney asked for boos and hisses when you missed the ball. What Alcorn came up with - in a week-and-a-half - was much simpler than that. He had two paddles, controlled with rotating dials, a score counter, and little beeps and boops for when the ball hit the paddle and for when you missed. Crucially, the game also had a mechanic that sped up the ball every so often. The circuit board was connected to a black & white TV set, with Dabney constructing a small wooden cabinet around it.

Bushnell was happy with this, and Atari employees found it quite fun to play. However, it was still a test project, and Bushnell stated that it wasn't seen as a viable product. Atari had contracts for more complex games (like that driving game.) Still, it had piqued Bushnell's interest, and so he decided to give it a public test run anyway. This first test was done at Andy Capp's Tavern, an establishment Bushnell had already built a solid friendship with - Computer Space was first tested here. The Pong box was placed on a barrel, with a rudimentary coin box glued to the side.

The first Pong prototype.

There's this legendary story about this first Pong cabinet that's akin to a prophetic utterance for the future of the video game industry. The story goes that, after two weeks, Atari gets called up by Andy Capp's owner saying that the game is broken. It was stuck on attract mode, and a game couldn't be started. The tavern owner was getting rather frustrated, by all accounts. What happened, in actual fact, was that the game wasn't broken - it was, rather, so popular that the coin box mounted to the side of the game was full to overflowing with quarters!

Another story from Pong's can be summed up in the meme "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" There was an issue in the way Al Alcorn designed the game, resulting in the paddles not being able to reach the very top of the screen. This meant that, if you were skilled enough, you could get the ball into this gap and always score a point, preventing an endless rally between equally skilled players. While testing the game, it was decided that this little error actually enhanced the gameplay, and so the choice was made to keep it in the game. Al Alcorn recalled in one interview that he learned from this that, "if you can't fix it, call it a feature." I'm sure that's happened a countless number of times to many a game developer.

From here it's actually a bit difficult to piece together a timeline of what happened. Unlike Ralph Bear, who meticulously documented everything, Bushnell did not. He was a more spontaneous, haphazard individual (which would have consequences later in dealing with copycats.) There's plenty of information about the time between the Andy Capp test in August 1972 and Pong's official debut on November 29, 1972. It's just that there are no dates attached to anything, so putting the information in order is a tough task.

In one interview, Bushnell recalls that the incident at Andy Capp's convinced him to invest into Pong. He marketed the game to big name arcade companies Midway and Bally, who where interested initially. Bushnell tricked them into pulling out by telling the respective companies that the other one was interested in making a licensing deal. Bushnell had decided Atari could make more profit out of Pong if they manufactured the game themselves. Atari at first could afford to produce eleven cabinets of Pong. Bushnell searched for financial backing, but no banks were willing to invest, as they viewed Pong in the same way they viewed pinball - a game associated with the Mafia. Eventually, they found Wells Fargo willing to give them $50k. This money, from what I gather, was used to expand Atari's business offices, and to purchase an abandoned roller skating rink to set up as an assembly plant. On November 29, 1972, Pong was officially unveiled. Early on, production of cabinets was slow and of substandard quality, as they had hired unskilled workers who often stole parts and were involved in heavy drug use.

Meanwhile, Atari had an established contract for pinball machine maintenance in the Sunnyvale area. There was already an established "Atari pinball route," and Bushnell utilised that route to advertise Pong to their existing clientele. Orders began coming in. Ten units here, ten units there. The snowball had begun. By the end of 1973, they had 2,500 units of Pong on order. 1974, it was 8,000. These kinds of numbers were unheard of at the time, and Pong was raking in thousands upon thousands of quarters. Atari even began exporting Pong internationally, most notably to Japan, where the imports would be first handled by Atari Japan, and later by a little company called Nakamura Manufacturing Co., otherwise known as Namco. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about them later on.

Now, one of the consequences of Bushnell's haphazard management style is that he didn't really get around to patenting anything. What this resulted in is only what I can describe as complete anarchy. Everyone took notice of Pong's success, and they wanted in on that sweet, sweet coin. So, what did they do? Well, they stole, of course! Every electronics and arcade manufacturer (both in the US and overseas) known to man copied, copied copies and copied copies of copies of Pong over the course of just a couple of years. These weren't just loosely-based versions of Pong - no - they were exact replicas, only in different garb. Every company out there had their own reskin of Pong.

Without patents, Atari couldn't to a thing to stop all the chaos. Even just a cursory glance at Wikipedia's best-selling video games charts for 1973 and 1974 will show that Pong clones were not only rampant, but dominated sales. The insanity of the Pong clones was even more extreme in the first home console generation. For reference, the first generation of home consoles, according to Wikipedia, had 997 consoles. Almost a thousand consoles. And, I'd say maybe at least 75% of those were Pong clones. Such was the money-making machine Pong was perceived to be. In the end, Atari only manufactured roughly a third of all "Pong-like" games in circulation.

As for what Atari could do, it could capitalise on its new found success by expanding on the Pong brand. Sequels were created for Pong, such as Pong Doubles and Quadrapong. A home console version was made. Some of the more unusual ideas they came up with were Puppy Pong and Dr. Pong. These were just Pong, but with redesigned cabinets for business use. Puppy Pong had a more childlike design, and was meant to be placed in the waiting rooms of pediatric offices to help kids pass the time while waiting for appointments, and was free to play. Dr. Pong was the same concept, only for adult waiting rooms. It had a sleek, wood-grain finish design, and could also be purchased with a specially designed bookcase. It could also play a Volleyball game. Neither of these products gained much traction, and sales were very limited. There was also the humorous Barrel-Pong, which is exactly what you think it is. Predictably, this one was an Aussie creation.

Beer Pong taken to its logical conclusion.

Naturally, Pong has seen about as many re-releases as Sonic the Hedgehog over the years. The many Atari compilations, as well as flashback consoles, other anniversary-or-otherwise collections. There's even web browser and mobile ports. You could probably play Pong on a toaster these days, such is its ubiquity.

One more notable incident in Pong's legacy is, of course, the infamous lawsuit between Magnavox and Atari. I've already gone into the details of the lawsuit in the Odyssey console overview, so I'll keep it short. Magnavox took notice of Pong and the various clones on the market, and sued Atari for infringing on several patents. It appears Bushnell originally attempted to hide his attendance of the May 24 Odyssey demonstration at deposition hearings, however Magnavox lawyers had evidence proving his attendance. Bushnell, seeing that Atari could not afford the legal expenses of the case, settled with Magnavox. The terms were very light, with Atari paying a small, upfront license fee, becoming the sole licensee of Magnavox. Magnavox would then zealously go after other competitors, forcing them to pay royalties to Magnavox. 

While Magnavox were in the right to sue - Atari had directly recreated the Odyssey's Table Tennis - the settlement worked out very well for Atari in the long run. Atari were able to maintain their position as one of the most dominant video game developers / publishers until the 1983 crash. Magnavox, on the other hand, were relegated to only a minor player on the scene that cashed in on all those sweet, sweet royalties.

There's an interesting little footnote to add here; another layer to the already twisted and fractured dynamic between Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey. Fans of Pong saw the Odyssey as a means to play a Pong-like game at home. The success of Pong, therefore, had resulted in an upsurge of sales for the Odyssey. Funny how that worked out, considering that Atari would make their own home Pong version later on... but that's a story for another day.

I did actually opt to play Pong for this article, in spite of it being a multiplayer game. I might as well, seeing as it's very simple to play, and I've played both sides on my own before. As I just mentioned, there are several means available to play Pong, including trusty old emulation. I also had a proper play of it with my girlfriend through my Switch copy of Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. As a side, that is how you honour a company's legacy.  

Sometimes you get stuck in a back-and-forth loop.

And I must say, it was nice to play a game that's not text-based for a change. Even if it's not exactly in an optimal form. Paddle controls don't translate particularly well to a keyboard or analog sticks. Nor does playing against yourself. Fortunately, the rounds with my girlfriend were more enjoyable, and she - not a gamer - also rather enjoyed herself. Nolan Bushnell noted in one interview that women tended to be quite good at Pong, and that it broke a few social barriers. He claims several marriages were started from a man asking a woman to play Pong with him.

No score for Pong, as it's a multiplayer game. Part of me is also thinking that there wouldn't be much point to critiquing Pong in my usual style anyway. It's just so foundational to the very core of video games that I wouldn't know how to score it. Maybe I'm just making excuses, I don't know. 

What I can say that this is an essential video game everyone must play at least once in their life. If I were to compile a "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" type of list, this would probably be the very first game on that list. If I wasn't doing it chronologically.