Games that changed the Industry: Pong

The first in a series of articles I'm writing: games that changed the industry:

Finding a place to start in this column was difficult. There are plenty of games out there that should get onto an industry-defining list, but finding where to start left me feeling a certain weight of responsibility. All things must have a beginning, and so it was with games, yet I’m going to skip a couple of games and bring us to the magnificent year that was 1972.

In 1972, the Olympics were held in Munich and Ben Affleck was born but more importantly, the game that would lead to the industry we knew today was released.

Pong was essentially table tennis in an arcade box. Created by Allan Alcorn with a wooden cabinet and a black and white TV, the aim, simply, was to move your paddles vertically to stop your computerized opponent scoring and in return score against them. How did you win you might ask? Score 11.

This though was not the first game ever created, in fact a quick Google search will tell you that a patent was filed for a ‘Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device’ in 1947. In fact it wasn’t the first game even appear in an arcade box for mass production (have a search for Computer Space from the previous year, go on, you want to).

What it was though was a game that lots of people wanted to play. It was exciting with the bonus of also being accessible to the masses and in 1974 a home version of the game was released as a standalone console, with 2500 units on order before release. Atari went onto sell 35000 copies of the game, with many thousands of imitations also sold.

Perhaps most significantly, Pong set the marker for games through the rest of the 1970’s. Though simplistic, it held it still holds it’s appeal now, remaining popular online and through smartphones. Being a game changer doesn’t necessarily mean being timeless, but in Pong’s case it certainly is.