One of the true pioneers of the gaming industry is returning.  Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and creator of PONG, is getting back into the industry on the development side, and has announced that he will be bringing us Battleswarm: Field of Honor, an online hybrid FPS/RTS for PCs.

It’s been literally decades since Bushnell has been a force in the gaming world, so why is the father of console gaming jumping back in?  So he could play with his kids;

“They're all avid gamers and like first-person shooters. The problem is, as you get older, you lose some reaction time, and as a result, I'm getting slaughtered by them. A real-time strategy [RTS] game, however, is more my [preference], a good resource game is what I love."

Bushnell's interview with USAToday continued, "Battleswarm is both an RTS and a shooter, a mash-up between StarCraft and Starship Troopers, if you will. You can switch sides, too, if you feel like an RTS instead of a shooter, or vice-versa...In first-person shooter mode, you're a human soldier out to destroy alien bugs, while the commander view in the RTS mode lets you control your bugs, such as swarming, move them around on the terrain, to take on the humans. Up to six players can be on each side. There's not a lot of resource mining on the RTS side, but lots of upgrades, which is where our currency MetaTIX comes in."

Despite being the ultimate “old-school” gaming personality, Bushnell seems to have a very cool, modern idea for a game. The FPS/RTS hybrid thing been done before; most notably in 2003’s Savage: The Battle for Newerth, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything like it.  Southpeak’s Raven Squad seems like it may feature a similar gameplay mechanic, but Nolan’s plan involves space bugs and laser rifles instead of commandoes and frag grenades.

I’m hoping that Bushnell’s project succeeds.  A visionary like him could inject some much-needed creativity and, well, vision, into the industry.  Of course, that all depends on how up-to-date he has stayed with the industry.