Games as social facilitators

The new Wired has an article on Nolan Bushnell, video game pioneer. He has an interesting take on what (video) games should be all about:

"These days when you say videogame, people think of immersive games that take over your life and require three thumbs to control," Bushnell says ... "My goal is to create games that almost retreat into the background. I'm interested in bringing them back to their role as a social facilitator, the way party games help people to interact. The game should be secondary to the social interaction between the players."

Bushnell is creating a chain of restaurant/arcades with the following in mind:

The big idea behind uWink Media Bistros is to counter all these negative trends [video games emphasizing sex, violence, complexity requiring significant individual investments of time] at once. Bushnell hopes to create a social oasis where customers leave their anxieties at the door and join together in a childlike spirit of play. The games will be simple and wholesome, giving customers an easy way to meet and interact, thereby diminishing the anomie of insulated modern existence.

The social interaction piece is certainly important for educational games, too ...