October 13, 2025: Not Just (Video) Games: Pong

[Forty years agothis weekend, Nintendo released itsfirst game system, and video gaming and American culture changed significantly.So this week I’ll blog about a handful of other games that likewise changedthings, leading up to a weekend post on Nintendo!]

On twolesser-known and telling moments in the history of the first blockbuster arcadegame.

While I’m surevideo game historians would point to manymoments and games as possible origin points for the genre, some as thathyperlinked timeline indicates from as early as the 1940s, there’s no doubtthat high on any such list would be Atari’s 1972 arcade release Pong.Debuting in late November 1972, Pongwould quickly become a national and worldwide phenomenon, helping establish theviability of video game arcadesin commercial spaces (and then eventually in spaces all their own),contributing (if in a complex way on which more in a moment) to the successfullaunch of the first home gaming system (theMagnavox Odyssey), spawning numerous sequels andcopycat games, and generally changing the landscape of not only gaming andtechnology, but also entertainment, social spaces and interactions, andchildhood. If that seems like an awful lot to attribute to one video game,well, that was the remarkable power of those two white paddles and thatfrustratingly bouncy little white ball. Indeed, I would say that only StarWars measures up to Pong whenit comes to 1970s popular culture landmarks that have influenced the nexthalf-century of American and human life.

That overallinfluence is pretty well-known, but in researching this post I learned about acouple of a lesser-known and equally telling moments in Pong’s early history. For one thing, the game was the subject of a1974 lawsuitfrom Magnavox (and its parent company Sanders Associates). In May 1972Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell had attended a Magnavox event and seen ademonstration of the company’sown table tennis game, and he himself later admitted that seeing the gameprompted him to ask his own employee, engineer Allan Alcorn,to make a table tennis game for Atari; as Bushnell put it, “The fact is that Iabsolutely did see the Odyssey game and I didn't think it was very clever.” Despiteprotesting innocence from any patent infringement, Bushnell and Atari decidedto settle out of court with Magnavox, with the caseconcluding in June 1976. I can’t really weigh in on the merits of thelawsuit; the two games do look pretty similar to me, but I suppose all tabletennis games, especially in that very early era of game design, would likelyseem similar. What I can say, however, is that the subsequent history of videogames has been defined again and again bycompeting games and systems, a trend very much foreshadowed by Pong’scontroversial relationship to Magnavox table tennis.

The othertelling moment is far less weighty than a lawsuit, but just as sociallysignificant I’d say. In describing why and how Pong became such an arcade hit, Bushnellwould later note, “It was very common to have a girl with a quarter in handpull a guy off a bar stool and say, 'I'd like to play Pong and there'snobody to play.' It was a way you could play games, you were sitting shoulderto shoulder, you could talk, you could laugh, you could challenge each other... As you became better friends, you could put down your beer and hug. Youcould put your arm around the person. You could play left-handed if you sodesired. In fact, there are a lot of people who have come up to me over theyears and said, 'I met my wife playing Pong,' and that's kind of a nicething to have achieved.” This is of course another important side to theflexible and interactive qualities of video games that I highlighted inyesterday’s post—while of course many games can be played solo (not Pong, though, at least not in its firstarcade iteration—it was two-player only), there is a fundamentally socialelement to gaming, and perhaps especially to arcade gaming. The art is oftencreated, that is, through a communal experience, and one that, as Bushnell’squote illustrates, links to other communal experiences like socialinteractions, friendship, and romantic relationships. All part of what Pong helped initiate as well!

NextGameStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Video games, past or present, you’d analyze?