Nolan Bushnell calls Halo 3, essentially, a “Doom-clone”. But loves the Wii

29 October 2007

Posted by:Josh

Nolan Bushnell Picture You may have heard recently that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and creator of Pong (a game idea he took from the real founder, Ralph Baer who made the first home video game console in 1968) called modern video games “unadulterated trash” . . . quite a statement from a guy who’s been out of the business for some time.

On that note, Gametap interviewed him and got some more quotes out of the guy.

Nolan explained that his scorn on modern games was reserved for a “narrow segment” of gaming, which includes titles like “Halo 3″ and “Grand Theft Auto” (natch), calling them out for their “deification of antisocial behavior,” even going so far as to say that Halo 3 is nothing more than a “Doom-clone” (remember that term), stating that Halo 3 is “Doom 1 in different clothing. The clothing is nicer, but the game is the same.”

So what games are innovative and not just “Doom-clones” in his eyes? He pointed to stuff like Guitar Hero, DDR (which are actually quite similar given they are both music rhythm games) and of course, Nintendo’s ultra-popular back-it-and-people-will-love-you-more Wii console, saying, “Even though the bowling is the same, doing it on the videogame, using the Wii controller, that’s an innovation.” (lots of commas, I know . . . Oops)

Finally, he goes on to give us this bit of wisdom: “There’s a lot of people who think that bigger, faster, better is an innovation. It’s not. It’s just bigger, faster, better.”

Erm, yeah . . . Do I laugh or cry? *laughs* — Via Joystiq

Categories: Interviews, News, PS3 News, Wii News, Xbox 360 News

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Paul

Actually, he’s right. Most games are evolution, not revolution. But it’s not a Doom clone per se- it’s Wolfenstein 3D. MMOs have just taken EQ’s format- text box, 3D window space, etc, and ran with it. GTA is just more of the same thing they did with a game called AUTODUEL back in the 2-color graphics days. Running around in a car, gunning down pedestrians. At least AUTODUEL did it in a mad-max type setting, though the black and white blocks hardly resembled anything.
The guy has a point. You didn’t manage to counter even ONE of his statements, instead simply pointing and laughing. Typical idiot behavior, I would say I’d expect more from even a pseudo journalist, But I was in the grocery aisle yesterday and I lost all faith in journalism.
http://www.videogamesblogger.com supadupagama

Hey Paul, show a little compassion. Astro misunderstood what Nolan meant, it happens. If you place yourself in his shoes, it shows how that assumption could happen when a gamer reads the words, and not the meaning, and in turn defends other gamers right away. What he means is that because games nowadays take so much more effort to create something new and attempt to do so much more than just “shoot people” like some classics would. While you look at it as Nolan meant his words from a technical standpoint, where games are simply extensions of each other. So you can both be right.

Anyway, we’re just blogging here, we never pretend to have the end-all opinion, so your generalisation is pretty shallow in that regard. In fact, if you read around our blog, you’d notice we usually try to stay neutral and welcome debate.