WOW passes "the Bushnell Threshold"

By Oli Welsh Published 8 July, 2008

Atari founder's son gives up; it's all over.

As well as knocking Atari in his interview with Gamasutra, Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and creator of Pong, has declared that MMO mega-hit World of Warcraft has just passed "the Bushnell Threshold".

The Bushnell Threshold, he explained, is passed when his sons lose interest in a videogame - something his eldest has just done with WOW. Bushnell was saying that he thinks WOW will leave a vacuum in mass-market gaming when it eventually runs out of steam.

"I don't see anything being worked on to replace that when it burns itself out, which it ultimately will," said the entrepreneur, soon to be played by Leonardo DiCaprio in a film. "In fact, World of Warcraft just passed what I call the Bushnell Threshold.

"The Bushnell Threshold is... I watch my sons, and because they're my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning, or sometimes a little bit before," Bushnell clarified. "So they play and play and play and play, and all of a sudden, they don't play any more. They stayed with World of Warcraft for a long time.

"My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is and quit. All at once. Cold turkey. I didn't think it was going to happen. And my 14-year-old is getting close to there, which is surprising."

Bushnell is often called the Father of Videogames, which presumably would make his sons the Brothers of Videogames, perhaps explaining the prophetic importance attached to their playing habits.

"Who's going to take [Blizzard's] place?" Bushnell mused. "I don't see any intelligence out there that is looking to do anything other than another 'level up your character by cutting and slashing,' which I believe is the metric that's over," he said.

Perhaps he hasn't heard of Lego Universe, Free Realms, APB or The Agency yet.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (35) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Leolian #1 4 years ago

    When are blizzard gonna anounce WOW 2?

  • anomagnus #2 4 years ago

    in fairness, and i've done some bitching about wow, his sons have just 'hit the wall'

    the problem with wow is that you wind up playing it and nothing else. It doesn't matter how good something is, eventually you'll get bored with it (unless you're a compulsive personality type)

    what i'm hoping for, is that i will have WAR (if its good) and WoW on cycle, as i tire of one, i'll hit the other again

    as it is, i generally play wow non stop for three months, stop for about four, then dive in again

  • Xerx3s #3 4 years ago

    "The Bushnell Threshold, he explained, is passed when his sons lose interest in a videogame - something his eldest has just done with WOW. Bushnell was saying that he thinks WOW will leave a vacuum in mass-market gaming when it eventually runs out of steam."

    This may very well be true. We saw that same with UT'99. To this day there is no online shooter that can even get close to matching the experience.

  • AtomicBanana #4 4 years ago

    'This may very well be true. We saw that same with UT'99. To this day there is no online shooter that can even get close to matching the experience.'

    Except for Quake 3, and Quake 3 Rocket arena ;) haha nah I'm only joking they are both excellent games, this is hardly the time or place to bring back *that* fanboy debate!

  • kangarootoo #5 4 years ago

    Hmmm. Slightly tongue in cheek I guess. I don't quite see his sons' activities as the prophetic source that he does. In general he has a point, which is that EVENTUALLY poeople will get bored with WoW, however...

    1. Just 'cos one of his sonds has got bored is no real guide to anything.
    2. Blizzard are proooooobably also aware of the fact, and have a plan or two up their wizards sleeve.

  • Danbojones Verified Senior Staff Writer, GamesIndustry.biz #6 4 years ago

    "have a plan or two up their wizards sleeve. " Eeeeeww.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 11:51

  • jaxon58 #7 4 years ago

    "because they're my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning"

    His sons are so unique.

  • megurushi Verified Consultant, 2e2 #8 4 years ago

    How good were his sons at the game? Nubs who couldn't get past the lower tier raiding content, or had they progressed all the way through the game where the elite guilds are? Or did they just fail with a face full of keyboard?
    I say his sons are weak! Quitters...

  • kestral #9 4 years ago

    I agree with him. There's no advancement in the MMORPG genre it's just more of the same. Wow the combat bit now has combo's and wow the guild list is now combined with the friendslist. That's about as different as it's getting. Perhaps the games just cost too much to develop to take bigger risks? So hopefully the free to play micropayments games get some success and it will be easier to launch something different or people will get bored of the next FPS / MMORPG within weeks instead of within years.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 12:05

  • Hive #10 4 years ago

    Wouldnt be surprised if the rumoured Starcraft MMO became the next 'big thing' in a couple of years.

  • rudedudejude #11 4 years ago

    I did this lasy year for 8 months - picked it up a month ago, carried on and am loving it.

    I'm sure they'll be back - it's good to break for the summer or a few months a year to check other games out.

  • Moz #12 4 years ago

    Thing is I don't think people get board of a game system as such, just look at FPS games. However you do get board of a setting, give people a new setting and story line to follow and they'll carry on. WOW's problem is that as much as they add new expansions the setting is still the same and it's still dragging all the items and characters classes that people are all too familiar with.

    If WAR or any other MMO is as good game play wise as WOW they could destroy WOW as people will move over for the change of scenery and character classes.

  • Gaol #13 4 years ago

    Some good points but I diagree on the levelling 'metric' being over.

    The fact is there isn't a single working imitation of WoW that's even nearly as good, when there is a huge market for 'more of the same' from another publisher. Tabula Rasa and AoC both tried combat with a twist, when frankly just getting a working copy of the WoW formula would reap huge rewards.

    This is why the Edge review on Conan is completely wrong when it states that there is a problem with MMORPGs because of 'Blizzards shadow' causing too much imitation of WoW - the fact is the EQ formula has only one fully working and polished product in the market. I reckon devs are tinkering too much with the formula, not too little.

    EDIT: Just read Moz's post, think we are saying very similar things.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 12:25

  • Rirekon #14 4 years ago

    Point of note with regard to MMOs, they very rarely nose dive. You usually see a gradual decline over the course of a few years, even if WoW started to hit this decline today Blizzard would probably have enough time to get another MMO in place before WoW fell off the map.
    Personally I foresee a Diablo III expansion followed by a Diablo MMO as the next moves for Blizzard after the release of Diablo III

  • Xerx3s #15 4 years ago

    "Except for Quake 3, and Quake 3 Rocket arena ;) haha nah I'm only joking they are both excellent games, this is hardly the time or place to bring back *that* fanboy debate!"

    Q3 is shit compared to UT'99 and you know it is. One of the reasons that UT sequels are tripe is because they imitated q3 weapons.

    \0/

    /0\

  • anomagnus #16 4 years ago

    MMOrpgs offer the illusion of freedom, but sooner or later you hit the walls in that freedom.

    At the end game, you are funnelled into PVE or PVP, and content being what it is, sooner or later you’re running the same content over and over again, and your interest wanes.

    The first MMO to truly dominate, and by dominate I mean hold players and retain them, will be one that offers you dynamic dungeons that retain scripted events, new zones to explore very month, world pvp with consequences, new quest content every month, and towns and cities that don’t break the illusion, where players could create towns and cities.

    Imagine a MMO were there will always be new zones and new quest hubs, where you’ll never run the same dungeon twice, and different combinations of scripted events occur, where world PVP actually meant something. Imagine player owned citys and towns, where guild leaders set the rules, lawless pvp town, sure. Strictly controlled non combat towns, great.

    Why would you leave a game like that? There’d always be something new.

    The tech just isn’t there yet

  • anomagnus #17 4 years ago

    @Rirekon

    a diablo 3 mmo would be a pointless duplication of effort.

    THey already have a fantasy themed mmo out there, with all the same classes already in play.

    Diablo also doesnt have the background of Warcraft or Starcraft.

    We all know what the next mmo is. Its the most poorly kept secret in the business. It'll be World of Starcraft, probably launching before or close to the 40K mmo from THQ.

  • mikeck #18 4 years ago

    "because they're my sons, they tend to start things at the beginning"

    "His sons are so unique".

    I thought has was trying to put across that his sons have access to play code for games far before most other people, but I probably took the wrong meaning from what he was saying.

  • Krelle #19 4 years ago

    Gaming companies sends Bushnell early code?

    Im going for the "my sons are better than your sons"-argument.

  • Kami #20 4 years ago

    "I reckon devs are tinkering too much with the formula, not too little."

    Gaol, I hate to say this but you are talking absolute...

    sense.

    WoW may be basic in terms of some mechanics to start with but it introduces complexities later on. It's accessible but the further you get, the more depth there is and the more the game opens up for a player. There's more than one place to go to, so you can explore multiple areas and find differing rewards in each place, and end-game is a far more polished experience.

    The problem with games like AoC, Vanguard and Tabula Rasa is that it throws far too much far too early. The difficulty curve is a lot more vertical. The systems at work need a player to read up on the subject. Crafting systems are either too basic or too complex.

    WoW may burn out. By the time the next expansion happens and you get a 90 lvl cap, that's a hell of a fucking road for new players or returning players doing the same stuff at a higher level. But you get this in a lot of games - console RPG's sometimes have a wall where you wander off for a few weeks or in one case for me, several months. But you generally get back to it.

    The secret to a long and happy MMO experience in my mind is to not exclusively play it day in, day out. Have something else on the side, have another game you can use to distract your attention and you generally start to appreciate the social and technical aspects of the MMO far more.

    People get bored in WoW because that's all they do. They get back from work in the afternoon, log on and it's several hours of standing around for most.

    It's a cheap comment perhaps, but if you have two games on the go and you share time between them, both games will appear to be longer.

  • Gaol #21 4 years ago

    @anomagnus

    You're describing a sandbox set-up, which has been tried to varying degrees by Eve Online, and even pre-CU SWG, which had a lot of the features you mention. I'd love a new game along those lines, but the problem is the further you move into a player controlled toolset, the more you lose casual players who require direction and prompting. I'd love to see a traditional 'on-rails' mmorpg with a good sandbox set-up at endgame.

    The tech is there, just not the product.
    Edited by 1 at 08/07/08 @ 13:04

  • Dizzy #22 4 years ago

    When WoW gets boring.. Blizzard bring out an expansion pack. Case close. Addiction re-kindled ;)

  • MBar #23 4 years ago

    People get bored in WoW because that's all they do. They get back from work in the afternoon, log on and it's several hours of standing around for most.

    This, with bells on.

    One of the big reasons why I quit was that to progress further, I needed to do the 25-man raids.

    And after doing a couple, I could see that getting 25 people together at the same time with stable connections and with the right frame of mind required far too much, as you say, standing around. You eventually ask yourself, "What the fuck am I doing with this?".

  • Kropotkin #24 4 years ago

    @ Kami

    You are spot on there. The logging on and playing 2-3 hours after work every day summed up my experience towards the end of my time on WoW. After 3.5 years of playing it I was really experiencing the end of the game. I only raided and did daily quests to fund my raiding. I had to stop playing as it had become a second job. I have nothing against the game at all, it's just that I had to stop for the sake of my own sanity.

  • penhalion #25 4 years ago

    Actually gotta agree with ol' bushy! I never saw the appeal of WOW simply because I can't stand all the running about to level up crap. It's especially painful when you get to the highest level and there simply isn't any reward. It's a what now moment that I had with my sorceress in Diablo 2 and my sorcerer in Diablo 1. Even if you still have skills you want to get, you can't because you get no more levels and hence no more skill points to distribute.

    Even the social aspect of WOW is a little dry, with everyone running about chasing mobs.

  • hahayou #26 4 years ago

    In other news: John Carmack's father joins golf club, Bioware gets new coffee machine, Erik Wolpaw beats level 4 in Gradius...

  • otto #27 4 years ago

    "My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is"

    And we should pay attention this person's views on WoW why?

    FFS

  • Sildur #28 4 years ago

    I have my ups and downs with WoW, but for the time being, I'll keep coming back to it. It's an absolutely incredible game and he's right - I don't see anything coming to replace it.

    Warhammer Online sounds incredible on paper - I've read a lot about it, but everything I've seen in video suggests to me that they won't be able to pull it off effectively. I think there will be a fantastic amount of hype surrounding it and when people play it, they'll find it's just not quite as good as WoW and certainly not any kind of leap forward (which it should be, but won't).

    That's not necessarily the developer of WAR's fault, as Blizzard have been perfecting WoW ever since it's release, but still, while the Warhammer folks can talk the talk, I have serious doubts as to whether they're going to be able to walk the walk.

  • loopy #29 4 years ago

    "If WAR or any other MMO is as good game play wise as WOW they could destroy WOW as people will move over for the change of scenery and character classes."

    Destroy? Nah. Take a substantial chunk of their player base? Quite possibly, but it'll have to be something really special.

  • FortysixterUK #30 4 years ago

    They'll go back...they always go back...I know I'll go back...one day....once I've stopped playing Age of Conan....and run out of full stops......

  • FortysixterUK #31 4 years ago

    Kami's post at 13.00 08/07/08 hits the nail on the head.

    I wish I had the willpower to leave my MMO of the month alone more often and play something else, but my problem is, I keep thinking...

    "I'm paying money for this I'd best get back to it"

    I'm thinking that now about AOC as I type this

    But his comments and idea of playing another game at the same time are excellent. I Just lack willpower. A Good ,well observed post.

  • pyroxian #32 4 years ago

    As one person stops playing ,another will start. WoW will carry on until something better comes along - that may be WoW II or World of Starcraft, or possibly something else.

  • NegativeZero #33 4 years ago

    They'll be back. WotLK will come out and they'll be like 'maybe just one more go' and then a year down the track we'll be hearing from the Bushnell family about how WoW's passed the threshold again, just as Blizzard gear up for the release of the next expansion.

  • dingo75 #34 4 years ago

    Seriously who dug that guy out recently?
    He is everywhere in the last few months after being MIA for years.

    As someone already said: "Mage 72".
    Sure mate. Go and talk about the good old "Atari" times but not about things you have no clue about.

    And yes his sons will be back in line for WoTLK like all the other suckers (including me) that "burned out".

  • ZuluHero #35 4 years ago

    "My older son all of a sudden got Mage 72 or whatever it is"

    And we should pay attention this person's views on WoW why?

    FFS

    Way to pick up on the wrong part of the article. He was just being playfully facetious…