Atari founder Nolan Bushnell wants to bring hardcore fundamental game designing to mobile titles

Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari who created Pong and called the father of the modern gaming industry, is bringing his experience and expertise in creating arcade titles to mobile, according to a report in The Guardian .

Bushnell is famous for the phrase “easy to learn, difficult to master,” which is known as Bushnell’s law. This is literally the mantra for many touschscreen titles. Chicken Boy, Uno & Friends, Jewel Mania and Yahtzee are just some mobile titles that use this phrase in their app descriptions.

Bushnell wants to bring to mobiles, the hardcore fundamental game design that was the reason for the popularity of arcade titles. As the resources were limited for these titles, it was not possible to create graphically intense titles. Instead, the focus was on just the gameplay, the timing, and the scoring mechanics. The ancient technology with horrible graphics, made Atari engineers focus on the most fun aspects of actually playing the game.

Bushnell feels that the current generation of games are poorly designed, loosing focus of the fundamental things that make gaming fun. One weak point is the inordinate focus on the graphics. Bushnell wants to take social gaming and asynchronous multiplayer titles further.