In their new book, Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie® (MIT Press), UCI anthropology professor Tom Boellstorff and coauthor Braxton Soderman, UCI film & media studies associate professor, tell the inside story of the rise and fall of Intellivision, Mattel’s late 70s- and early 80s-era gaming system. Taking a platform studies approach, the work encompasses a historical review of the technology, marketing, business and organizational strategies of Mattel’s now defunct gaming system, drawing on firsthand interviews with programmers, executives and engineers and a treasure trove of more than 20,000 original documents – gaming code, marketing research reports and company memos - discovered during the book’s 10-year writing process. Below, Boellstorff shares how the book came together and what the hard lessons Intellivision learned mean for the gaming and toy industry today.

Q: What inspired your deep dive into Intellivision? What aspects of its history and impact made it a compelling subject to study?

A: So, like many research projects, a lot of it comes down to serendipity or random life events. I grew up playing Intellivision. My dad got it for me when I was around 11, and it became a part of my childhood. I played a lot of the different games, and it sparked really a lifelong fascination with video games. I went on to do a Ph.D. - I studied gay and lesbian Indonesians - but about 20 years ago I started studying Second Life and the broader impact of virtual worlds on culture.

There is a strong link between virtual worlds and videogames, from the perspective of the technology, the business models, the cultures. There's actually a brief mention of Intellivision in my book Coming of Age in Second Life from 2008. In the history chapter, I tell personal history of virtual worlds where I talk about video games, and I mention the Intellivision game Utopia, which was one of the earliest Earth simulation games. This game came out in 1982 and in some ways got me interested in virtual worlds. So, Intellivision was already a part of my academic story.

But the real deep dive started about ten years ago. I was introduced to my coauthor, Braxton Soderman, an associate professor of film and media studies in the School of Humanities, who also grew up playing Intellivision. We bonded over it, and that sort of started the journey. Another significant piece was the emerging field of platform studies, which looks at gaming platforms (and other platforms, including media platforms like Facebook) not just in terms of systems and technology but also at their stories and creative approaches. Two key scholars in platform studies, Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, started a “Platform Studies” book series at MIT Press.

We knew there hadn't been a book on Intellivision in the Platform Studies series, so we reached out. They were very interested and thought it would be a perfect fit. What made this all even more interesting was the sheer luck we had in our research. Intellivision was made by Mattel, which was founded and always based in Southern Los Angeles. When Mattel shut down the Mattel Electronics division that had been making Intellivision, a number of programmers, marketers, and other staff were able to save about 20,000 pages of documents showing how they did everything – code, comments within the code that served as a sort of daily task list, instructions, memos, marketing materials, so many things, though a lot has been lost. These documents were in people’s garages and attics, but one programmer, Keith Robinson, collected documents from a bunch of people. Imagine our surprise when we found these were stored at an office in Costa Mesa, just five miles from campus!

In terms of our methods, we came to appreciate the “sweet spot” of studying something about 40 years old. In this case, Mattel Electronics was shut down in 1984, so there weren’t many issues around intellectual property, but many of the people involved with Intellivision are still alive, many still in Southern California, and they wanted to share their stories. So, we had access to a treasure trove of information that allowed us to explore Intellivision in incredible depth.

Q: What cultural and economic factors in the late 1970s and early 1980s influenced the development and success of Intellivision? How did these factors eventually contribute to the industry crash in 1983?

A: There were a number of factors at play during the late 1970s and early 1980s that influenced the development and success of Intellivision. Videogames were on the rise with the arcades and first-generation consoles like Pong, and there was a lot of enthusiasm about bringing to the home a videogame console that could play multiple games. Intellivision, as its name suggests, was marketed as a more “intelligent” alternative to Atari, and this resonated with a public that was becoming increasingly tech-savvy.

Intellivision was a domestic product designed for the home by a toy company that had been doing that for decades. This contrasted with Atari's arcade roots. This approach was significant because it aligned with the cultural shift toward home entertainment. The controllers for Intellivision were inspired by telephones of the day, with a 12-button keypad, and were much more complex than Atari's simple joystick.

Economically, for a time Mattel was heavily invested in making Intellivision a success. Their electronics division, Mattel Electronics, had its first success with “handheld” video games like Football and Auto Race, and Intellivision added so much to this that the division’s revenues outpaced the toy division. For about a year and a half, Intellivision and the handhelds were making more money than iconic products like Barbie and Hot Wheels combined. And during this boom time, which turned out to be pretty brief, many Mattel executives thought video games would be the future.

But things didn’t turn out that way. One of the key difference between second-generation systems like Intellivision or Atari, compared to first-generation systems like Pong, was the ability to swap out game cartridges. The R&D to produce consoles was substantial, with limited profit margins, but game cartridges could be produced for around $5 and sold at a high markup - around $30-35. Competitors took note and without copyright lockouts, “third party” software companies soon began popping up. By 1983, there were more than 30 companies producing video games, which flooded the market. The prices of games started to collapse because there were just too many titles available.

Many historians and researchers identify the oversaturation of games as the number one reason for the great videogame Crash of 1983, which included the closing of Mattel Electronics. But based on our research, we join a number of scholars in seeing the rise of personal computers as likely having had an even greater impact. Personal computers from companies like Apple, Commodore, and IBM were becoming more popular and affordable. These machines offered more than just game play that came with dedicated gaming consoles: they were full-fledged home computers as well. Market research from that time showed a clear trend: consumer interest in video game consoles was declining while interest in home computers was rising.

We found a fascinating piece of market research from Mattel, dated July 1983, showing this, showing that purchase interest in video game consoles was dropping rapidly, while interest in home computers was increasing. We interviewed two of the people who presented this research to Mattel’s senior leadership, and they recalled how they were nearly fired for challenging the belief that video games could only go up. Despite the warning signs, Mattel and other video game companies didn't adapt.

So, as the market became saturated and prices dropped, profits shrank and most of the companies went bankrupt. By 1984, almost no video games were being sold in the U.S. It wasn't until Sega and Nintendo entered the market with new innovations that the industry began to recover.

Q: You mention the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel. Can you discuss how gender roles influenced Intellivision's game development and business strategies?

A: One reason Intellivision is so interesting is that it gives you a really great way to think about the impact of toys on videogame history. Toys have been incredibly gendered in American history. If you go to a toy store now, you can still see the separation: pink stuff for girls and blue stuff for boys.

Mattel was no exception to this pattern. From their earliest toys through Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels, their toys were highly gendered. At Mattel in the 1970s, boys' toys and girls' toys were practically two separate companies. They had different directors, almost completely separate staff, and distinct market research. They knew that girls played with boys' toys and vice versa, but that was considered a minor thing, and for instance there were almost no toys designed for children regardless of gender. For the most part, boys' toys and girls' toys were completely separate worlds.

Intellivision was put in the boys' toys category from the very beginning. It was seen as a toy for young and teenage boys, and that was how it was marketed. For instance, they never made a Barbie video game, which would have been an obvious choice given Mattel's ownership of the Barbie brand. They did make a few games for girls and women, but very few.

In the book, we talk about some of these games designed with women in mind. For example, there was a game called Royal Dealer where you played bridge and other card games, and the characters were female, which suggested it was aimed at women. Intellivision was considered a domestic commodity meant for the home, and the home was traditionally seen as a woman's space. This gave them a way to potentially reach out to women, even though the primary target was boys.

Interestingly, despite the heavy gender segregation, Mattel had a lot of women in leadership positions and female programmers compared to other companies. Mattel was founded by Ruth and Elliot Handler, and Ruth was deeply involved in running the company for many years. Elliot was first and foremost a designer; Ruth was the manager who led the company for decades.

Some of Mattel’s early game programmers were women, and we interviewed several of them. They created or helped create a number of Intellivision games, including Thin Ice (Julie Hoshizaki) and Thunder Castle (Connie Goldman). The programmer Karen Nugent even proposed a game called “Shower to Shower” where you had to scrub mold in the shower to keep it from coming back. That game was never made but is an interesting example of early creative ideas by female programmers. So even though Intellivision was classified primarily as a boy's or young man's product, there was a notable female influence in its development. For instance, the failed Keyboard Component, which aimed to turn Intellivision into a home computer, had significant content, like learning French or cooking recipes, that was presented as appealing to female consumers.

Despite these efforts, video games at the time were still heavily gendered. In our book, we show an image from Vidiot, a videogame magazine from the era, that portrays a family gathered around an Atari console: the dad and son are excited and engaged, while the mom, holding a joystick, looks on disinterestedly, and the daughter and baby are mere spectators. Intellivision and other early video game systems required a TV, which most families only had one of. This meant that playing video games was often a family activity, even if the mom and sister were just spectators.

Q: Your book discusses the relationship between videogames and toys, a somewhat under-analyzed aspect of videogame history. How did Intellivision navigate this relationship, and what lessons can be learned from their approach?

A: Intellivision's connection to toys is really fascinating. Mattel's experience in the toy industry significantly influenced their approach to video games. They saw video games as an extension of toys, which informed their design and marketing strategies. They were early pioneers of putting technology in their toys. Their use of electronic components in things like the talking Chatty Cathy doll – which really was like a sort of platform since you could swap out different records – set a precedent for integrating technology into entertainment.

Richard Chang, a Mattel engineer who got his start in 1962 working on electronic toys, became a Director of Preliminary Design in 1975, was put in charge of new electronic toys. This group, with Chang in charge, became the core group developing the Intellivision project. The original Intellivision console even had a kind of wood veneer to make it look like it belonged in the living room, blending in with other home entertainment devices. This connection to toys influenced not just design, but also how Intellivision was marketed as a sophisticated addition to the home.

Q: With over 150 interviews and a wealth of data from both personal and institutional archives, what was the most surprising or revealing discovery you made during your research, or what do you want readers to take away from your book?

A: It's hard to pinpoint just one discovery because there were so many. As an Intellivision kid, one of the really cool moments for me was getting to meet Bill Fisher, the programmer of one of my favorite childhood games, Space Hawk. I played this as a kid until my fingers were sore, and not only was I able to interview Bill and talk to him about the game; he still had the original code to it and shared that with us. Bill had actually made comments throughout the code that detailed changes he made along the way, the whole design process really, and that was really, really neat.

One particularly revealing aspect we gleaned during this process was the detailed insights original code and memos revealed. For instance, we found many cases where Intellivision's limitations, like the infamous "invisible sandbars" in the game Utopia, were cleverly turned into features through creative marketing. In this game, there was an issue where the boats would accidentally go up on land, which looked unrealistic. The programmer, Don Daglow, tried to fix this by having the game stop the boats a certain distance from the shore, but it resulted in the boats being unable to approach the shore at all. The quality assurance team identified the problem as "invisible sandbars" preventing ships from approaching the shore, and there were several reports explaining how this would frustrate people playing the game.

So what happened? Marketers turned this bug into a feature by mentioning "invisible sandbars" in the instruction manual, making it seem intentional. And what's so interesting is the way the programmers, the marketing team, the quality assurance people all interacted. When Braxton and I found the reports and memos that put all these pieces together, we literally started jumping up and down. We were in a file room piled from floor to ceiling with thousands of pages of stuff, and we found this piece of paper, this one report, that tied it all together, and my hands were shaking. It felt like we’d solved a mystery. So we hope that’s something people will take from the book - this sort of joy of the detective work and the joy of discovery that the platform studies approach afforded us, allowing us to pull all these pieces together to see a full picture, and it making sense in a way never presented before.

-pictured (interior, from book): “The Arcade Goes Home” (Vidot magazine, September/October 1982 issue), page 44.
-Heather Ashbach, UCI Social Sciences

A PDF version of this book is available free for download, courtesy of MIT Press Direct to Open. Access it here.