After getting a bachelor degree in electric engineering, Nolan Bushnell was hired by Ampex, an electronic audio-visual manufacturer.
One day, he saw an advertisement of a newly released computer and was astonished at its price, because it cost less than a tenth of a PDP-1. Although it was still too expensive to use as a coin-operated amusement machine, he thought he could make an even more affordable computer by himself.
After carrying out research and simulation of its profitability, he decided to jump on the opportunity to create his own business. But he was not too stupid to quit his job immediately to become a self-employed entrepreneur. Rather, he took advantage of that.
As an engineer in the company, he was able to buy electronic parts he needed at wholesale prices using his business connections. Moreover, the company used to provide generous benefits for its employees - they could get various kinds of electronic part for almost free when they needed one for their hobby.
But, to enjoy those benefits he had to fulfill his duty as an employee, which meant only limited free time after work was available for the development. So, he invited one of his senior colleagues named Ted Dabney (later became a co-founder of Atari) to do the development works together.
After doing their work in the office, they would gather at their second office - Bushnell's house - to develop the machine and a Spacewar clone for it.
They had worked extremely hard for months and a working prototype of their first product was developed. To make the game named "Computer Space" a commercial product, Bushnell made a contract with Nutting Associates, a coin-operated amusement machine manufacturer.
Although the finished version of the game lacked some features of Spacewar including gravitational effects and didn't have a multi-player mode, its graphical quality was not far from its original. To make it more attractive, Bushnell designed a futuristic-looking upright cabinet. Until this point, he must have been sure of its success.
In fact, when he carried out a location test at a bar called Dutch Goose, many people gathered around the machine and enjoyed playing it. But, at most of the other bars he used as test locations, almost no one touched the machine, why?
That's because it was a too complex and difficult game for ordinary people. It inherited both good parts and bad parts from Spacewar. Among them, the most problematic one was its control system.
You had to use three buttons (thrust, rotate-right, rotate-left) to control your spaceship and another button to fire missiles. And since there was no brake button, you had to carefully control its speed.
I know it doesn't sound so difficult for you. But when the game was released in 1971, there were no commercial mobile phones and not all people used TV remotes or ATM machines in their daily lives. So, ordinary people back then wouldn't have used more complex machines than cars. Although the machine came with several pages of instruction guides, they wouldn't bother to read it since they were gathering there not to learn something new, but to enjoy some alcohol.
The test at Dutch Goose was an exception because it was located close to Stanford University. For students at Stanford, the game should have been much easier than their daily academic activities. Besides, some of them might have already played Spacewar or its ported versions.
In short, it was a fun game, but just a few people was able to enjoy it.
Eventually, the game took its place in history as the world's first arcade video game. But for its publisher, Nutting Associates, it ended up as just a commercial failure.
However, it became the springboard for Bushnell's later success. He received a handsome amount of license fee and learned that "Fun" is an important element of video games, but not everything.
It was not long before he found the second element of successful video games and became a millionaire.