Videogame Journalism Pioneer Bill "The Game Doctor" Kunkel ...

Bill Kunkel, also know as "the Game Doctor" and "the Grandfather of Videogame Journalism," passed away on Sunday, September 4. He was a pioneer in the field of videogame journalism, having been a co-founder of Electronic Games magazine in 1981 along with Arnold Katz.

Kunkel served as the Executive Editor for Electronic Games until it was shut down in 1985. (It would reemerge, for a time, in the early 1990s with him on board.) It was the first magazine of its kind to be found in the United States, and Kunkel made a name for himself with his "Game Doctor" columns that would later make it into a number of other publications, including Electronic Gaming Monthly and Computer Gaming World.

Even if you aren't old enough to have read his original work, you've surely felt his influence. He and the others Electronic Games invented terms like "Easter egg" and "screenshot," and he was a proponent of the term "videogame." (Although he acknowledges that "video game" is the more search engine-friendly of the two.)

Speaking with Gamasutra in 2005, he recalled the closure of Electronic Games came as the arcade industry collapsed and people began to think of games as a thing of the past.

"I think a lot of people believed that video games had served their purpose, that they had been the foot in the door that enabled us to get on the computer and do really serious, important things," he said. "We went through a period near the end of our run where we were told by the publisher and the last saleswoman we had that we should avoid using terms like 'games' and 'fun' in our copy. It wasn't a game, it was a simulation."

Although he'll likely be best remembered for his editorial contributions over the years, which included serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Tips & Tricks in 2006-07 and roles at various other magazines, he did a great variety of things in his professional life. He was a wrestling enthusiast, having written for several newsletters including Pro Wrestling Torch and Wrestling Perspective, as well as a newsletter and radio show he did with Katz in New York in the '70s. He also wrote comic books in the '70s.

Kunkel not only wrote about games, he directly worked on them a period of time. He formed Katz Kunkel Worley, Inc. (KKW) with Katz and his wife, Joyce Worley. Through a side business in Subway Software, he worked as a designer or consultant on numerous games including Batman Returns, Blood Bowl, Star Trek: First Contact. Subway is also credited with designing games like Superman: The Man of Steel and MicroLeague Wrestling, the first game to use the license for what was, at the time, known as the the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE).

He contributed to strategy guides (from Prima and others) in the '90s, something that he and and others at Fog Studios (which he joined after KKW disbanded in 1994) were quite good at putting together. However, game companies were making no money off the guides, and as a result they'd word things so as to make the games take more time to complete.

"The only problem we ever had was that the game developers never wanted to talk to us, because they weren't making any money off of it," he told Gamasutra. "They'd send us a game, and the game would play twice as fast as it was supposed to. So the book would say something like, 'you have to execute this move very carefully,' when it might be the simplest thing in the world at normal speed. I'm sure some people wondered what the hell we were talking about."

He spent another chunk of the '90s working on quite a few websites before being awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the 1999 Classic Gaming Expo. He began teaching a class on game design at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2003, and then wrote a book -- Confessions of the Game Doctor -- which was published in 2005. He's been called into court to testify as an expert a number of times.

You could say he was ahead of the curve when it came to discussing the future of the games industry. In the Gamasutra interview -- from 2005, mind you -- he spoke about extending the length of console cycles (which are now longer) and putting an end to the Tony Hawk series (which has been put on the back burner, at least for the time being).

"I say, let these system have ten years, let developers find all the little tricks," he said. "It's like if you're a painter, and they give you a million more colors to paint with every three years. 'But I need time to experiment with all these colors!' you might say. No. The canvas keeps getting bigger, and ideas are getting smaller. There are so many sequels, and so few new ideas."

"No more Tony Hawk games, okay? We've had enough goddam[n] Tony Hawk games. I don't care how much you love Tony Hawk games, you don't need any more. Just stop it."

Kunkel leaves behind his wife Laurie, three sisters, and two brothers, according to Running with Scissors (where he had been Editor-in-Chief). Our best wishes go out to his family and friends.

Sources: Gamasutra, Classic Gaming Expo, Wrestling Observer, Running with Scissors

[Images courtesy of Digital Press, GameSetWatch, Running with Scissors.]

Source: http://www.1up.com/news/videogame-journalism-pioneer-game-doctor-bill-kunkel-passes-away

vietnam ghana gop debate republican debate hair hair geisha