A closer look
The genesis of the video game industry relied entirely on the cognitive decline of intoxicated adults. Nolan Bushnell designed Pong with just two knobs and a single sentence of instruction: 'Avoid missing ball for high score.' He deliberately avoided complex controls because he was installing the machines in dimly lit, sticky-floored taverns where the clientele was heavily inebriated. The assumption that drunk people just wanted to slap a paddle up and down launched Atari into a multimillion-dollar empire.
