Atari Design: Impressions on Coin-Operated Video Game Machines
Raiford Guins
Nov 2020 · Bloomsbury Publishing
Ebook
280
Pages
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About this ebook
Drawing from deep archival research and extensive interviews, Atari Design is a rich, historical study of how Atari's industrial and graphic designers contributed to the development of the video game machine.
Innovative game design played a key role in the growth of Atari – from Pong to Asteroids and beyond – but fun, challenging and exciting game play was not unique to the famous Silicon Valley company. What set it apart from its competitors was innovation in the coin-op machine's cabinet. Atari did not just make games, it designed products for environments.
With “tasteful packaging”, Atari exceeded traditional locations like bars, amusement parks and arcades, developing the look and feel of their game cabinets for new locations such as fast food restaurants, department stores, country clubs, university unions, and airports, making game-play a ubiquitous social and cultural experience. By actively shaping the interaction between user and machine, overcoming styling limitations and generating a distinct corporate identity, Atari designed products that impacted the everyday visual and material culture of the late 20th century.
Design was never an afterthought at Atari.
Innovative game design played a key role in the growth of Atari – from Pong to Asteroids and beyond – but fun, challenging and exciting game play was not unique to the famous Silicon Valley company. What set it apart from its competitors was innovation in the coin-op machine's cabinet. Atari did not just make games, it designed products for environments.
With “tasteful packaging”, Atari exceeded traditional locations like bars, amusement parks and arcades, developing the look and feel of their game cabinets for new locations such as fast food restaurants, department stores, country clubs, university unions, and airports, making game-play a ubiquitous social and cultural experience. By actively shaping the interaction between user and machine, overcoming styling limitations and generating a distinct corporate identity, Atari designed products that impacted the everyday visual and material culture of the late 20th century.
Design was never an afterthought at Atari.
About the author
Raiford Guins is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School and Adjunct Professor of Informatics at Indiana University, USA. He has authored Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (2014) and Edited Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control (2009) and co-edited several collections including The Object Reader with Fiona Candlin (2009) and Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon with Henry Lowood (2016). Guins serves as co-editor of MIT Press's Game Histories book series with Lowood and is a founding editor of ROMchip: A Journal of Game Histories also with Lowood and Laine Nooney. His writings on game history appear in the following journals and magazines: American Journal of Play, The Atlantic, Cabinet, Design and Culture, Design Issues, Digital Culture & Education, Game Studies, Journal of Design History, Journal of Visual Culture, and Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture.
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