Play Meter

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UP FRONT
Imagination is our product
"/got a headful of ideas that are driving me insane. It's a
shame the way she makes me scrub the floor."
- From Maggie's Farm by Bob Dylan
Remember a few years ago when the motion
picture and record industries were blaming their demise
on the popularity of video games. Everybody was
spending their money on Poe -Man and Donkey Kong,
they said ; and nobody had anthing left to buy a record or
to go to the movies , they said.
Overnight, the coin-operated amusement indus-
try became a formidable competitor in the entertainment
industry. The record industry was flattened. The motion
picture moguls were worried .
Ah , yes , those were the good ol' days .
Today, we're still part of the entertainment busi-
ness , whether we like it or not. With or without private
pay phones, we 're still in competition with Motown and
Universal Pictures. And , like the record and motion
picture companies , we depend not so much on product
as on ideas for our livelihood . A good game idea is worth
millions , possibly billions. Creativity, therefore , is an
integral part of the coin-operated amusement industry,
in the same way it's vital to the success of the recording
and motion picture industries.
Now , in truth , we realize the real reason the
recording and motion picture industries were flattened
during the video game boom years didn't have so much
to do with the strength of video games as it did with the
lack of good c reative product coming from those two
industr ies. In the same way large manufacturers
found it easier to blame ou tside forces than to look
inward and find the true reason for their company's
failure , the recording and motion picture industries
were unwilling to look inward and see that the reason
they were fail ing wasn't because videos were going
great but because they were turning out lousy product.
Quick! Name a hit song from the period of 1977-
1981. You can't? Neither can I. But I can name songs
from earlier, more fertile periods of recording history
when creativity abounded . And , no doubt, so can you .
The point is we must recognize that , as an enter-
tainment industry, we are dependent upon our creators
for our continued success . But this industry has made a
weak accounting of itself in this regard.
Another quick qui z: Name the creator of Space
Invaders . No, not the licensor , but the man who actually
invented the game . Give up? Want another? How about
the creator of Asteroids? or Poe-Man?
But is there a starving soul even in Ethiopia who
doesn't know that Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie
wrote "We Are the World"?
Could it be we're ignoring our creative source?
Or, even worse, don't even know from whom or what
that creative fount flows?
We hear time and again that this industry is
rehashing old games, that if anybody comes up with a
new game concept everybody instantly copies it. It's
called a bankruptcy of ideas, this inability to create new
game concepts .
First , we must recognize we have a problem with
stimulating new creative product. And, second, do
something about it; so we can be sure the wellspring of
ideas doesn't run dry again .
It 's one thing to maintain a positive attitude about
this business. It's another entirely to rectify problems
which may be inhibiting our future success. For that
reason , Play Meter is departing from its usual interview
format and is presenting a special three-part interview
with a man who has a very singular view of the industry's
creativity crisis. The interviewee, Steve Kirk, contends
we're capable of creating better games, not marginally
better games, not even much better games, but great
games which would once again rally players around our
machines.
The three-part interview is called "Coin-Op's
Creative Crisis." We hope this series will begin to focus
attention on the industry's need to open lines of
creativity . After all, we don't just rely on imagination.
We're in the entertainment business, and that means
imagination is our product. It's all we got, short of pool
tables , jukeboxes, and private pay phones.
New marketing approaches, like kits and
systems, may sell games to operators. But only new
ideas will sell players on the games.
9cw~J ~~
David Pierson
Associate Editor
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PLAY METER, May 1, 1985
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