Get On the Party Line: Parties, Games, and Work at Mattel Electronics in the Early 1980s

In the early 1980s, parties shaped both the work and the design culture of Mattel Electronics' Applications Software group, and this study uses the origin of the "Party Line" videogame concept, pitched at a February 1983 party-style meeting, as its central case. Drawing on more than 150 interviews and roughly 20,000 archival pages, the analysis treats "party" as a radial, polysemous category rather than simply a festive gathering. It argues that party practices both nurtured creativity and structured labor, producing what might be called "playbor," in which work and leisure blended together and bridged organizational divides between marketing and programming. The authors contrast this relatively inclusive, gender-balanced culture at Mattel with the frat-like atmosphere they attribute to Atari.

The work's most concrete findings concern the Party Line games themselves. Motivated by widespread perceptions of videogames as antisocial and by Intellivision's shrinking market share, the concept proposed that party games could broaden the audience through shared, simplified play. Its designers articulated four principles: simplification, short-term play, stimulation, and socialization. Prototypes such as Space Cadet, Blow Out, and Hard Hat received management approval, and Space Cadet came close to completion, with its automatic firing eliminating the need for a manual. Compared with the single-player games paired with party suggestions in Intellivision News, these designs represent a more emergent and inclusive approach to party play.

The collapse of Mattel Electronics in 1984 ended the project, and the games remained unreleased until 2021. The study nonetheless emphasizes that parties outlasted the company, as shown by the Blue Sky Rangers' "Waiting for the End of Mattel" party in January 1984 and their continuing annual reunions. Ultimately, the authors argue that party studies merits a place within game studies, since party games expand understanding of diverse players and can help legitimize videogames to skeptical publics.