• 14Jan 08

  Honor Thy Father -- A Tribute to Ralph Baer

  

  It can be difficult for many of today's expanding market of gamers to realize just how far we've come. It can also be difficult to know just who the great visionaries were who started the domino effect which led to what we know today as "video gaming".

  For many gamers, one name that has stayed in the forefront as belonging to an innovator is that of the founder of Atari, the individual usually credited with first bringing home video games to the masses in the form of a timeless little c1assic called "Pong". That name is Nolan Bushnell.

  Bushnell definitely deserves a lot of credit - not for "Pong" per se, but for his ability to market home video games to the masses in a way that actually proliferated it into a viable market of its own - one that couldn't be killed, even with a rather large recession in the industry less than a decade after his initial "Pong" consoles hit the market. He contributed not only some of the more polished versions of the "Pong" game, but also a grand console that blew the market wide-open, a console we knew then as the Atari Video Computer System, but which is remembered now more as the Atari 2600. But for all the credit Bushnell deserves, inventing the first home video game console and the titular masterpiece "Pong" aren't really among them.

  In fact, an individual named Ralph Baer first came up with the idea of using the then relatively new device called the "Television Set" for something other than just receiving broadcasts all the way back in 1951. Those ideas eventually blossomed into a proposal in 1955 pitched to the company he then worked for, a manufacturer of television sets called Loral. His proposal, simple but radical for the time, was to include an interactive game built into the television as a way of differentiating the Loral sets from those of their enormous competition.

  The management of Loral didn't really grasp the potential of it, gave it a firm rejection, and the idea clearly proposed before its time went into stasis. A long hybernation ensued, but the core never died in Baer's mind. Eventually in the process of dealing with his engineering duties, his ideas and thoughts resurfaced and motivated him to write a proposal on what he called "Television Games" in 1966. He began developing the idea and testing out models, which eventually led to a functioning unit he called the "Brown Box". The idea was pitched and the model demonstrated to several outlets, including cable companies, but it was not taking root in the minds of executives, who likely saw it as a bit far-fetched, and more costly to produce than could be recovered in the proceeds of the service.

  It was then that Baer and his colleagues decided to try television companies again. They approached many companies with some interest but limited success. That is until 1971, when Magnavox, an established television producer, took interest. Seeking to set itself apart from the increasing competition it was facing at the time, Magnavox chose to license the "Brown Box" and hired Baer to remodel it against their own specifications. Among the many games that Baer had developed for Magnavox's effort were a simple game modeled after "Table Tennis". Most of us will recognize that game today as a more primitive version of what we know as "Pong".

  Thus the first home video game console, and the first real attempt at marketing video games to the masses, was born in 1972 in the form of the Magnavox Odyssey. It was while attending a demonstration of this console that Nolan Bushnell was inspired to design the popular home Pong consoles and ultimately lead his company to develop the mega-popular Atari 2600. And not only did it stimulate the new minds of the burgeoning video game console industry in the West, but also in venerable Japan. In fact, the gaming giant we all know as Nintendo got its start in the important role of home video game console provider by obtaining the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan in 1975, selling it under the Nintendo name. One can easily see that Ralph's magnum opus not only planted the seed for what eventually became the Atari 2600, but for what eventually became the Nintendo Entertainment System as well.

  I won't speak much here on what made the Odyssey so special. You can read about that in my review. What I will say is that despite the fact that it was extremely simple, many concepts we see today are still in use from its meager beginnings, including the light gun and accompanying games that were sold which have been a mainstay to the industry as a whole. This console holds a special place in my heart because it was my first video game experience, and my first home console. I've been a console gamer ever since, and I owe it to Baer's vision. Ideas he hammered out well before I was born are still playing a part in my life thirty-four years later. It may seem primitive today, but as someone who saw it at the time, it generated a lot of enthusiasm from everyone in our household, from my grandparents to my parents and all the way down to me. It was a favorite for many years among my family even after the now-famous "Pong" consoles were released in collaboration between Atari and Sears. It remained active all the way up until the Atari VCS (2600) took hold on the market and happily invaded my home.

  The story of Ralph Baer is not just one of technical achievement, but of survival and triumph. As a Jew caught up in the furor of the Nazi Regime's takeover of his homeland, he and his family escaped to the United Statues only a few years before the infamous Kristallnacht. He kept his ideas alive, even without realizing just how popular they would become. Once implemented, his notion of "television games" became one of the most explosive industries in the country in less than a decade, and for all the worry that it was a dying fad at the end of that run, it still lives on today in ways he probably couldn't have fathomed. It's the reason why we're here on a gaming forum in the first place, reading this. He's more than just a gaming personality to me and I am sure many others -- he's a personal hero.

  For many years his contributions have been shadowed out in many cases, to the point that many gamers simply don't know who he is. Bushnell's place as a legitimate industry star has in some cases unfairly outshined Baer's more foundational contributions. But lately, the tide has been turning. In the last few years, Baer has received a few awards honoring his place in the history of this industry. In 2005, he received a "Legend Award" at G4's G-Phoria video game awards, and in 2006, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Bush for his pioneering work in the video game industry. Just a few days ago on January 12, 2008, Baer received the 2008 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award, and on February 20 of this year, he will be awarded the "Pioneer Award" at the GMP 2008 Developer's Choice Awards.

  It's nice to see the tide is turning. Congratulations Ralph! You deserve it!

  P.S. I am not the only Gamespotter who has written on this industry hero's legacy. Shame-usBlackley wrote about Ralph's contributions in even more detail a few years ago in his blog entry entitled Forgetting the Face of Your Father. It's an interesting read, and for anyone interested in hearing more about this industry veteran, it's well worth checking out.

  • Posted Jan 14, 2008 2:11 pm PT
  • Category: Editorial
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• 4Dec 07

  Plausible Deniability

  I was at the Kane and Lynch website established by Eidos advertising and marketing departments several days ago, and noticed from their blurbs that both Game Informer and Gamespy had given this game perfect scores as well as at least one truly glowing comment. I also seemed to notice the same thing being said on advertisements for the game on another site which I visit regularly. Now, I simply had no reason to investigate this or question it. Gametrailers, after all, gave the game a reasonably high score though obviously no where near perfect, and not being a regular visitor of Gamespy as well as discontinuing my reading of Game Informer more than two years ago, I just assumed that the ad was reporting accurately.

  Then MrCHUP0N pointed me to this article. If you don't want to read it, I'll summarize it for you. Basically, neither Game Informer nor Gamespy gave such scores to Kane and Lynch, and the comments in question were not from reviews but from previews from E3 -- made many many months ago and under a different context.

  It's hard not to take information that is so seemingly false personally, especially when you are the one who has been caught by it unawares. Beyond just taking it personally, it is also bewildering that a company with such a strong record would run such ads at such a sensitive time. There's a lot of controversy regarding both that game and at least one review in particular that we at Gamespot are all very familiar with right now, so this just seems to add to the controversy. So what should we make of all of this. There has to be a bigger picture here. So I talked about this on a few other boards, and something very interesting came up on one of them in particular which I hadn't considered. Armed with this newpossibility generated by those discussions, I went back and took a better look at some of these ads to verify it. It was then that the sad truth of it all hit me.

  It's a marketing ploy.

  That might actually seem like the understatement of the year, since any dishonest reporting of information in an advertisement is a marketing ploy, but this one is particularly pernicious. I actually think what they've done is a little bit of advertising/marketing visual trickery. They aren't using the horizontal star bars as scores per se. They're using them as separators. In other words, the five star bars are being used to separate each "positive" comment.

  It's a common thing in advertising to design an ad in such a way thatit is technically true and yet still misleading. By using the horizontal five-star bars as separators, they know that many readers will read that as a score, and yet they can plausibly deny that this was their intention. At the same time, they aren't calling any of their quotes review quotes, so putting in preview quotes can also be plausibly denied as intentionally misleading as well. Of course, they know all too well that using the star bars as separators only reinforces the illusion that they are quoting reviews.

  It's a flimsy subterfuge. Anyone who is savvy can easily see their strategy here -- especially when it would have been easy to use more suitable separating bars. To use a four or five star bar as a separator when four and five star rating systems are so common from review sources of any type, not just gaming review sources, just piles intention to mislead on top of intention to mislead, all in the convenient name of visual utility. Unfortunately, and here's the kicker, this is a COMMON PRACTICE among advertisers for movies, games, et. al. Eidos' marketing and advertising departments aren't the first to do this sort of thing and won't be the last.

  A lot of my friends both on and off of Gamespot know me as a headstrong Capitalist who unashamedly defends his individualist money-making ideology to its greedy end. That is absolutely true of me. I am guilty as charged! As a result, some of the ones who know me more passively expect me to defend practices like the one we are discussing here as just the acceptable status-quo of doing business. Nothing could be further from the truth, but in order to explain the seeming disparity, I am going to have to wax exceedingly philosophical for a moment.

  First it should be obvious that just because it is common to do things like this doesn't mean that it is RIGHT to do things like this. But there's really more to it than that. Here's the problem I have with this sort of thing from the perspective of a staunch Capitalist -- Capitalism isn't just an economic system to me. It is rather metaphysically tied to the issue of self-ownership and freedom. Capitalism is in fact derivitive of those greater principles. It is dictated to by them. It is the only system that allows the individual to create and enjoy the product of his mind, whatever form that may come in, including profits and property which he earns. A man who cannot do that isn't a free man. To take this a little further, in order for self-ownership and individual sovereignty to be regarded in the world, two things must be completely banished from human relationships. Those two things are the initiation of force and the initiation of fraud, including all threats thereof.

  Initiatory force and fraud (as opposed to the sadly necessary defensive force and even defensive fraud) are both blatant attempts to circumvent the individual's ability to apply the thoughts and conclusions of his rational mind to his daily life. Force seems more obvious as it is a direct circumvention of the individual's control of his own person and property through overwhelming compulsion, but since it isn't the culprit in this case of mal-advertisements, I don't need to discuss it further here. Instead, I'll discuss the much more subtle fraudulent means by which human beings are denied their right to self-determination. Initiatory fraud is basically an attempt to pollute the filters of your rational faculty with faulty information in order to influence the direction of your decision-making to ends it would not be guided to without such faulty information. It is much more common than acts of violence, but can have consequences which are just as dangerous.

  And in my epistemological view, initiatory fraud is just as separated, even opposed, to the metaphysical properties of Capitalism as is any form of forceful compulsion.

  I have no real tolerance for the typical argument that this is just "business as usual". As I rationally define "business" as the honest exchange of value for value, it is pretty obviously not business in the first place. It isn't the selling of a product or service through the passing of clean information, but an attempt to mislead to gain more sales from honest men than they would have made otherwise without passing polluted "facts". This isn't persuasion at the expense of the truth, as true persuasion carries truth as a natural co-requisite. It is a clever deception.

  No, Eidos isn't the only company to blame for this type of thing. And like every other company that has pulled this advertising ploy, they would have likely gotten away with it unscathed with a few more sales to celebrate had it not been for all the attention they've gotten recently. But I can hardly complain that the present situation has helped expose these dirty practices for what they are, and as Eidos is one of the culprits, it's not really all that unfair to single them out in this case as long as the proper context isn't forgotten.

  There isn't much I can do here but just point these things out. My advice? Learn from this experience. "Force" these guys by your own intelligence and through your own sheer will to keep the information they distribute for the purposes of selling their wares clean. Show them that you give meaning to the old adage "Buyer Beware!" Deny them their plausible deniability.

  NOTE: It looks like the Destructoid article I pointed you to at the beginning of this now includes an edit which indeed suggests exactly what I have in terms of the use of the marketing ploy by Eidos in these ads.

  NOTE 2: Looks like Gamespy insisted that Eidos change their listings. And apparently they have.

  • Posted Dec 4, 2007 7:06 pm PT
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• 30Nov 07

  My thoughts on Jeff Gerstmann

  I've been struggling to close all of these constant threads and then take on the menial task of writing one last post in each one telling every upset user to go to the Off-Topic forum where his comments will be more appreciated. Doing this has allowed me to keep busy while I think about this situation, which in turn has kept me fromdoing something stupid in the heat of fury. So I am calmed now and amthinking more clearly, and I think it's safe for me to post some thoughts on this situation with Jeff Gerstmann.

  I'm not going to pretend I was a big fan of Jeff's. I really wasn't. I think he might have been one of my least favorite reviewers here. He's one of the smartest guys here and has a tremendous presence, and I find him to be extremely entertaining to watch and read, I just never really found myself completely able to rely on his opinions ultimately mirroring my own once I actually played any given game he reviewed. Some will probably realize that the Twilight Princess reviews have something to do with that opinion, but in reality they only added to a growing pile of disappointment with his reviews over time. For me, the first review that really began my saga of not being able to identify with Jeff's opinions was another Zelda game, namely "Majora's Mask". But it wasn't just Zelda. There was just something about his opinions that left me unable to rely on any recommendations to buy or to pass. Invariably, when Jeff was the reviewer, it was a flag to me that I would need to try the game myself regardless and see what I thought about it, instead of using his review in the way it was intended.

  I am saying all of this at such a sensitive time because I feel like I have to get that out of the way before I go ahead and say what I am about to say. The bottom-line for me with Jeff Gerstmann is that whatever I felt about his reviews or his opinions, I always knew he was being honest. He never sold out -- not to me -- not to others -- he wrote it like he saw it, and that's that. In other words, he was CREDIBLE.

  It's apparently confirmed that he's gone. I am just not sure why he's gone. I can say though, without reservation, that if what is being reported is really how this went down, then it just throws that hard earned credibility out the window. I can't say that kind of thing lightly. I firmly believe that this valuable asset is what kept people coming back and made the site what it is today, and Jeff was one of the largest contributors to that asset. In the reviewing game, credibility is both the all-powerful Queen you use to your offensive advantage and the King that you defend above all else. It is NEVER the pawn. Gamespot has been my favorite source for objective reviews for many years, and I'd hate to see them checkmated due to a questionable decision for short-term cash at the expense of long-term credibiility.

  If any of this is true, then Gamespot and CNET can only really call their future editorials on the evaluation of games the title of "reviews" in name only. Reviews are by definition objective evaluations, not intended to be colored by other alliances, whether they be emotional or economic. And if they aren't really "reviews", then they won't be on my plate. Again predicating this on the validity of these rumors, I firmly believe that it was unfair to task Jeff with writing a review for K&L, and then expect him to write an Eidos company-line instead.

  I guess what I am saying is that I am with you on this one Jeff. That probably sounds meaningless coming from someone who just said he didn't value you as a reviewer, but I think if this has taught me anything, it's that I should have valued you more than I did.

  • Posted Nov 30, 2007 1:35 am PT
  • Category: People
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