An Indiana University professor is making waves with his new book focused on the everlasting endurance of one the world’s oldest video games.
Raiford Guins is a professor and chair of Cinema and Media Studies at IU Bloomington. His latest book “King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions,” recently featured in The Washington Post, focuses on how Atari’s PONG helped establish a consumer industry for home video games.
“The fact that I can reach into my pocket, pull out a smartphone and play a video game, or that I can sit on my laptop, my desktop, and play games,” he said. “I think we owe a lot to where Atari envisioned gameplay could take place, and that basically the company realized its products knew no borders in that respect.”
Guins has written a few books on the subject, including “Atari Design: Impressions on Coin-Operated Video Game Machines” and “Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife.”
He said his personal interest in researching video games started early in his life when he would spend his lunch money playing arcade games.
“I would get two dollars for lunch each day, that's two dollars for food, or that's eight games. What are you going to do?,” he said. “Well, I'm going to borrow food or steal food from friends so I can play games after school.”
Guins will be at Morgenstern Books discussing King PONG from 6-7 p.m. on March 2.
