Nolan Bushnell is an interactive innovator. His most successful foray, Pong, was the first publicly-available computer game (preceded only by MIT's Space War). He's also responsible for the animatronics antics of US entertainment chain Chuck E Cheese, which married robots with pizza to critical and cultural success.
Now, as we've written before, he's trying his dab hand at turning the 21-35 year old female set on to gaming. A challenge indeed.
Bushnell's uWink restaurant has now officially opened, promising the sleek interiors and food experiences expected by high-class bistros in Los Angeles, plus the added benefit of high tech interaction which aims to break the ice between strangers.
From Cnet:
Each table at uWink has a pair of touchscreens for ordering food and playing conversation-fueling trivia games covering everything from entertainment to politics and sports. ... But Bushnell wants mingling to be the name of the game at uWink, which hosts "room games" where every table in the restaurant can compete simultaneously. The next level of play, to be introduced soon, is table-to-table competition.
Players can stand at so-called party tables and play a fast-paced, six-player game called "Ping"--a tribute to "Pong."
Bushnell said one of his goals is to take the social risk out of buying a stranger a drink.
The casual game aesthetic should ensure that fanboys don't take over, but will this gimmick bring more women into the gaming fold or is this venture nothing more than a technological update to the telephone-laden tables of Cabaret-era Berlin? Give us the scoop, any Angelenos out there!
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