'Pong' Inventor Muses on Gaming

Nolan Bushnell, often called the father of electronic games, is still masterminding new ways  to mix technology and entertainment, Electronic Design reports. Fusing his experiences as the inventor of Pong and founder of both Atari and Chuck E. Cheese restaurants, Bushnell has created uWink, a family restaurant where the tables have inset touch-screen monitors featuring social, family-based multiplayer games.

To Bushnell, uWink is an antidote to the trashy "race to the bottom" that consumes the video game industry. "Social games represent something that has been missing," he explains. "We used to have families sit down and play a board game together -- It is this gaming world that can be re-energized." (More Atari stories.)