Arnie Katz was a pioneer of video game journalism. In the late
1970s he, along with Bill Kunkel, started Arcade Alley in Video Magazine, the
first column about video games in a major publication. Then, in 1981, Katz -- along
with his wife Joyce Worley and Kunkel -- started Electronic Games magazine, the
first ever magazine dedicated entirely to video games.
Inside the pages of Electronic Games, Katz, Kunkel [also interviewed by Gamasutra in recent years], and Worley
invented video game journalism. The format of the magazine, letters, reviews,
previews, features and many other types of content, while frequently borrowed
from established traditions of magazine publishing, were molded to the subject
of video games for the first time.
Arnie Katz was the editor of Electronic Games, and many fans saw
the world of Golden Age video games through the eye of his editorials, which
began each issue of Electronic Games. Words such as "playfield", "shoot-em-up"
and many others entered the lexicon of video game fans after being invented or
popularized in the pages of Electronic Games Magazine.
While there were other
sources, at no other time in the history of video games has a single fountain
of ideas and knowledge like Electronic Games led the charge in hearts of minds of
so many people.
After Electronic Games ended in 1985, Katz, Kunkel, and Worley
continued as consultants to the video game industry, and worked on later
publications such as Video Games & Computer Entertainment and the '90s revival
of Electronic Games.
By the 21st century, however, the pioneering mind of
Arnie Katz had left the video game world completely. His partner, Bill Kunkel,
has continued to consult for game companies, teach game design classes, and
write about new and old games on the internet. He also wrote a book, Confessions
of the Game Doctor, which is required reading for anyone who fancies themselves
a student of video game history.
However, Arnie Katz -- ostensibly the inventor of the medium of
video game criticism -- has remained relatively quiet in the same time. Gamasutra
caught-up with him a few months ago, and he agreed to talk about the past,
present, and future of the video game industry.
I have not read very
many interviews with you in the past. I'm wondering if you shied away from it,
or if people have not approached you... or have I just missed them?
Arnie Katz: It's a little of both. I've had so many good things
happen to me in my life, I think it's a little vain of me to go out and say "you
should interview me, because I'm hot shit." I know I'm hot shit. No,
seriously, I like being interviewed, because I enjoy interviewing people.
Have you read Bill
Kunkel's book?
AK: I've read some parts and skimmed others. I lived a lot of it
with Bill. I'm sure Bill remembers it his way. We are still very good
friends.
Bill includes you in
most everything he wrote about.
AK: Joyce, Bill, and I -- and Bill's then-wife Charlene -- were
all very good friends. We met through science fiction fandom. I met my wife through
science fiction fandom. After Joyce and I got together, we heard from this
couple in Queens that wanted to come over and get to know
us.
One night, they wanted to visit relatives in Chicago, and we all went into
the city. We'd gone to see them off, and after we saw them off we went to one
of the Times Square arcades. We were playing Pong, a new game at the time.
After a little while, Bill and
Charlene walked in! Something had gone wrong with their train, and they were
not going to Chicago. They wanted to play Pong, too. This was the first time we realized that we
shared that interest.
Through the '70s, we played the various home games and went to the
arcades. In 1978, a couple of things happened. One was, Atari and Magnavox put
out programmable machines. There had been a couple of attempts to do such
devices. One was the Fairchild, which was terrible...
Those plunger
controllers...
AK: Yeah, you just could not play it. The other was the Bally Arcade,
which was priced at about $400 at the time. It had very bad distribution and no
third-party games. It was not really that attractive.
When the 2600 and the Odyssey 2 came out, that was a new era. At
just about the same time, a guy a I worked with -- a fellow staff editor on a
trade magazine I worked on -- got a job with Reese Communications to start a
new magazine named Video. I pitched the editor, Bruce Apar, two different
columns. I did a column about television and a column named Arcade Alley on
behalf of Bill and I. The idea was to write it together.
Did you write it
together?
AK: Oh yeah, absolutely. Bill was in every way my partner on
Arcade Alley, on the magazine, along with Joyce Worley-Katz. I was, let us say,
somewhat more advanced as an editor and writer when the opportunity came, but
that does not mean that Bill did not do his full share, because he certainly
did. We would sit around and swap ideas. Bill was somebody who came over to our
house three times or more a week.
Was that all through
the writing of Electronic Games and afterward?
AK: Oh, before, during and afterward. Bill and I are still
friends. Unfortunately for me, Bill now lives in lovely Michigan instead of Las Vegas. He moved to Michigan with his wife two
years ago. Joyce, Bill and I moved out to Las Vegas together. We decided
we no longer had to live in New York, and we all moved out
to Vegas. Until Bill's Michigan move, we lived about
a mile from each other.
You guys wrote Arcade Alley
for a couple years, right?
AK: Yes, Bruce Apar accepted both columns. The column about
television was something I wrote on my own, and the Arcade Alley column Bill
and I wrote together.
Frankly, the biggest problem we had writing that column at first
was there were not enough games. We had to review every single game that Atari
made because that was all there were. If Atari did not put out enough games...
We aimed to have three games per column. We didn't always achieve that.
In '78 and '79 Atari
maybe put out a dozen of games a year. In '79 they even held back.
AK: I know, it was amazing. When third-party publishing came in,
there was nobody happier than Bill and I.