Zapaść rynku gier wideo w 1983, nazywana w Japonii Atari shock – wielkoskalowa recesja przemysłu gier komputerowych, która miała miejsce w latach 1983–1985, przede wszystkim na terenie Stanów Zjednoczonych. Spowodowała bankructwo wielu producentów komputerów domowych i konsol gier wideo w Ameryce Północnej w drugiej połowie 1983 i na początku 1984. Wartość rynku spadła o 97% – z 3,2 mld $ w 1983 do 100 mln $ w 1986. Krach ten jest cezurą wyznaczającą koniec drugiej generacji gier wideo.
Za Wiki
There was a sense of catastrophe. It turns out that it was solely a matter of momentum. That is, all that really happened was that Atari went bust. Atari did a lot of things really wrong, and those are what led to its going bust. It’s just that in going bust, it discredited an entire industry, and so many companies that hadn’t done anything wrong and were perfectly healthy, they went bust too. It was just a matter of an industry collapsing because its lead company was greatly discredited. It was kind of silly in many ways. Everyone just convinced themselves that bust was upon us and everyone decided, “Oh, we’re all going to die, so let’s just die.” The underlying forces had not changed by much.
wywiad z Crawfordem w Game Design: Theory & Practice Richard Rouse III
