That was such a weird take from moms of the era. I remember hearing it all the time as a kid, and I thought it was absolutely stupid. Now that I’m all grown up, I still think it’s absolutely stupid.
Video games took over from pinball machines in arcades, which had been popular and making money for decades.
I am old enough to remember seeing the first space invaders machine arriving in a pinball parlour in 1979. It was a massive hit. By 1982, arcade video games were already making serious money.
Yeah, these days it’s obvious that video games are the next logical step in media consumption. First we had audio. Then we had audio+video. Now we have audio+video+interaction. You can literally watch a movie inside of a video game, if you care to.
But back then, the audio and video qualities of games weren’t yet terribly developed. You could still easily find board games, or heck, sports, that were more complex than Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
I can definitely see that one would think, it’s a novelty and not be able to imagine how cineastic games would become, or that some even contain books worth of history lessons.
I loved my Colecovision. It blew that boring old, one button having Atari out of the water. We played it as a family. The games were fun. New games are lost on me completely. Every one of them is too complicated to be fun.
Honestly, this is not an unreasonable take for 1982.
The most recent home console would’ve been the Colecovision and the most popular arcade game would’ve been Donkey Kong.
The NES was still 3 years away and she likely never heard of any of the more narrative PC games of the time like Adventure or Zork.
The only bad part of this take is the insinuation that the only things that last are educational
That was such a weird take from moms of the era. I remember hearing it all the time as a kid, and I thought it was absolutely stupid. Now that I’m all grown up, I still think it’s absolutely stupid.
Sounds like you learnt something.
Are you saying you didn’t spend hours with your slide rule as a kid?
Also the video game market crashed the next year.
Video games took over from pinball machines in arcades, which had been popular and making money for decades.
I am old enough to remember seeing the first space invaders machine arriving in a pinball parlour in 1979. It was a massive hit. By 1982, arcade video games were already making serious money.
Yeah, these days it’s obvious that video games are the next logical step in media consumption. First we had audio. Then we had audio+video. Now we have audio+video+interaction. You can literally watch a movie inside of a video game, if you care to.
But back then, the audio and video qualities of games weren’t yet terribly developed. You could still easily find board games, or heck, sports, that were more complex than Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
I can definitely see that one would think, it’s a novelty and not be able to imagine how cineastic games would become, or that some even contain books worth of history lessons.
I think everyone is looking at audio + visual + interaction + immersion as the next step but no one’s quite figured it out yet.
I just finished a session of Asgard’s Wrath 2 and we’re definitely getting there.
She was likely to be eaten by a grue.
I loved my Colecovision. It blew that boring old, one button having Atari out of the water. We played it as a family. The games were fun. New games are lost on me completely. Every one of them is too complicated to be fun.