Word Play: The Evolution of Game Journalism
6/23/2008 5:56 PM | 2 Comments | Page 3 of 10
Steve Kent
Status: Thank you Mario, but the status message is in another castle!
To people like Adlum, videogames represent a major turn in the evolution of amusement machines rather than a phenomenon onto itself. When the phase was red-hot, Adlum gave it more space in the pages of his magazine. As the trend died down, so did the space he dedicated to it.
The American arcade business began its long fall in 1982.
"I would have to say that during the period of 1980 to 1990, that decade, 40 to 50 percent of the magazine had to do with video. After that, I would have to say that it took its more rightful place at 20 to 25 percent at the very max. Other than that, it's jukeboxes, pinball machines, pool tables... redemption equipment has become a very important product in the industry."
With very few exceptions, modern arcades have large sections of machines that pay out tickets -- redemption machines. Players "redeem" those tickets for plush animals, toys and other prizes. In the continuing evolution of the arcade business, videogames have fallen from the top of the arc and they are unlikely to regain the dominant place they held between 1979 and 1981.
Dedicated to Games
With the advent of home game systems like the Atari 2600 and the explosion in popularity of arcade games, a few pioneers began to explore writing about videogames for consumers.
By this time videogames had caught the eye of the mainstream media. The home version of
Pong became the best-selling item in the history of the Sears Catalog catching the attention of toy makers, consumer electronics companies, and retailers alike. When Exidy released a game called
Death Race in which players drove cars over human-shaped stick figures, the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes" produced a segment about that game.
Roger Sharpe, editor of Video Games Magazine, came to the industry via pinball.
"When I was a managing editor at GQ, we were the first mass-market publication to feature the game machines/computers," says Roger Sharpe, who started working at GQ in 1975. "We were the first publication to recognize these new technologies. I started a column called Visual Effects about the new world of videogames and all that."
By all accounts, the pioneers who blazed the way in videogame journalism were a trio of writers from New York. Their names were Arnie Katz, Bill "The Game Doctor" Kunkel and Joyce Worley (who is married to Katz). Collectively, they were known as KKW, short for Katz, Kunkel, Worley.
"I started writing professionally about videogames in 1978," says Katz. "I had been playing them in arcades and at home, but the introduction of the Atari 2600 and the Odyssey 2 galvanized me into action. What I did was pitch a column to Video Magazine which was edited by Bruce Apar at the time. He hired me to do both a general television column and a column of videogame reviews."
Katz co-authored the column with long-time friend and fellow writer Bill Kunkel.
"We wrote the reviews regularly at first," says Katz. "At first, the problem was having enough videogames to review. The only company in the field was Atari, and they weren't exactly blowing those new titles out.
