Bushnell's Law or Nolan's Law is an

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tra ...

often attributed to

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...

founder

Nolan Bushnell Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consu ...

, on the subject of

video game design Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...

All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth.

Bushnell came up with the concept based on his experience with his first game ''

Computer Space ''Computer Space'' is a 1971 space combat arcade video game. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game. ''Computer S ...

'' in 1971. Its controls were based on four otherwise equivalent-looking buttons but with different functions, and Bushnell found that this had confused players that were trying to learn the game due to their lack of familiarity with these types of controls. Bushnell kept this in mind in designing their future games, such as in ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but B ...

'' and ''

Asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

'', to keep the controls simple and easy to grasp while maintaining a challenging gameplay. The concept is also similar to a philosophy developed by George Parker, the founder of board game publisher

Parker Brothers Parker Brothers (known as Parker outside of North America) was an American toy and game manufacturer which in 1991 became a brand of Hasbro. More than 1,800 games were published under the Parker Brothers name since 1883. It remained family owne ...

. Parker had said that "Each game must have an exciting, relevant theme and be easy enough for most people to understand. Finally, each game should be so sturdy that it could be played time and again, without wearing out." This principle is also referred to with the sentence "easy to learn, hard r ''almost impossible''to master", which has been adopted by

Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Irvine, California, and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. Originally founded in 1991, the company is best known for producing the h ...

as a motto and design principle.

References

{{Videogame-culture-stub Video game culture Video game design Adages

See also

References