Atari meets Fine Dining

UWink Bistro Plans to Open First Restaurant in California

By NICK WINGFIELD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 2, 2006 3:25 p.m.

A pioneer in videogames and restaurants, Nolan Bushnell, has taken a step closer to a goal of once again combining those two fields.

Mr. Bushnell, the founder of Atari Inc. and Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurants, has chosen the first location for a new restaurant concept called uWink Bistro, where diners will sit at tables with touch screens for playing games and ordering food. The first bistro is scheduled to open in the Westfield Promenade shopping mall in Woodland Hills, Calif., this summer, with a goal of expanding the franchise with more restaurants after that.

In an interview, Mr. Bushnell, CEO of uWink Inc. of Los Angeles, said his objective with his bistro concept is to blend affordable dining with a high-tech computer system that encourages diners to socialize with each other through games. Diners will be able to play against other diners at the same table, or they will be able to join forces with parties at other tables, which Mr. Bushnell hopes will prompt interaction between strangers.

"The love affair with the video screen, no matter who you're connected to world-wide, is not really a social experience," he says. "I believe we need to bring it back to a social experience."

Mr. Bushnell founded Atari in the early 1970s, introducing hit videogames like Pong into living rooms and kicking off an industry that has become a mainstream form of entertainment. He later created Chuck E. Cheese in an effort to blend dining, animatronic entertainment and coin-operated videogames.

A string of start-ups created by Mr. Bushnell since then haven't taken off. Mr. Bushnell, meanwhile, has become disillusioned with the hyper-realistic, immersive nature of much of modern videogames, which he believes isolate gamers from each other. At the uWink bistros, he plans to feature so-called casual games, such as trivia contests, that are easy for novices to play as they eat food with a group of people.

"We really want the games to be games that increase conversation with other people at your table," Mr. Bushnell says.