From PONG to the Metaverse: Game Design & Creative Technology Careers
Urban Arts graduate Giselle Muriel interviews PONG inventor Al Alcorn and Tilt Five founder Jeri Ellsworth about the game design industry and where students can find opportunity today.
At 24, fresh out of college, Al Alcorn took a job at a tiny startup called ATARI for $100 a month less than he was already earning. The company had three engineers, no roadmap, and no industry to join, because video games didn’t exist yet. As Al put it during the webinar, “We didn’t know much about how you’re supposed to do this, and we kind of made things up as we went along.”
His boss Nolan Bushnell, a Video Game Hall of Famer, handed him what was supposed to be a training exercise: build a simple electronic version of table tennis, learn from it, and apply it to the next project. But Al kept improving it instead. He sped up the ball to make the game more fun. He figured out how to add sound. ATARI released the prototype to see if anyone would play it. Millions did, first in arcades and then at home.
Fifty years later, Al joined Jeri Ellsworth, founder and CEO of Tilt Five, and Giselle Muriel, a 2023 Game Academy graduate now in her senior year studying computer science at Barnard College, for the webinar, From PONG and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators. The conversation spanned three generations of game creators, from PONG in 1972, to the technology being built right now, to a student who learned to code by making games.
From PONG to the Metaverse: Urban Arts and Tilt Five Bring Together Gaming’s Pioneers and Its Next Builders
Back-to-school webinar connects the origins of video games with the skills and career pathways available to students creating games today
As students head back to school this fall, national non-profit Urban Arts and independent studio Tilt Five are highlighting something that captures the attention of millions of young people: video games. But this webinar is about more than playing games. It is about what students can learn by creating them, and how game design can open doors to careers in computer science, engineering, art, design, and creative technology.
On September 10, Urban Arts and Tilt Five will host “From Pong and Atari to Today’s Generation of Game Creators 👾,” bringing together two generations of game creators: Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer who created the original PONG, and an Urban Arts graduate who designs, builds, and teaches games.
For teachers and schools, the webinar will provide a look at how game design can engage students in computer science while connecting classroom learning to real-world careers. For students, it will offer a chance to hear how one of the earliest commercial video games was created, see projects from Urban Arts alumni, and learn what it takes to turn an idea into something people can actually play.