Robert Smith

And one thing about Bushnell is he really understands games because they're just not that fun to play.

But there is one game that has some spark of promise to him.

And it's essentially like a simple tennis or ping pong game where there's like two rectangular sort of paddles or rackets and then like a square ball and it goes back and forth and there's two players.

But there's no score in the game.

There's no music.

Like, it's just a weak version, but that shows some promise to him.

So Bushnell goes back to the office, and there's this engineer who's just started that day, and he's like, you know, make this kind of ping pong game, but make it fun.

Make it do all these fun things.

And the engineer does a great job, and, you know, a few weeks later, they have this prototype of an arcade-style game that they call Pong.

They just want to see how it does, right?

It's a prototype.

So there's this bar nearby.

It's called Andy Capp's Tavern.

Who is basically what we would call today an alcoholic.

He had a problem, yes.

And they say, can we just put this machine in the corner here at Andy Capp's Tavern?

Like, you know, like a pinball machine.

And the guy at the bar says, sure.

And so they put the machine there.

And it's, you know, it's really simple.