Pong was meant to be a training exercise.
Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell handed engineer Allan Alcorn a tennis game as a warm-up, inventing a fake GE contract to spur him on. The practice job became the first commercially successful arcade game. Alcorn was paid $1,000 a month and given a tenth of the company, a stake he thought worthless until Warner Communications bought Atari in 1976 for around $28 million.
Pong on Brandseum