Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my phone

Video games pioneer Nolan Bushnell is planning to revive the 'hardcore fundamental game design' of arcades to make mobile titles worth playing

The video game arcade is the cathedral of the games industry. Veteran players see these increasingly endangered places as shrines to design purity, difficulty and player skill, bathed in the glow of flickering monitors. They were, after all, the places where the conventions of the medium were forged, and their gradual disappearance has only served to make them more alluring.

Mobile gaming, meanwhile, receives a great deal less reverence, thanks in part to its vast popularity. Despite design masterpieces like Monument Valley, The Room and Hearthstone, smartphone titles are collectively seen as casual time-killers, lacking cultural clout. Term's like "free-to-play" and "microtransaction" are used with derision, and viewed as evidence of capitalism muscling out creativity.