As video games become more and more intertwined with the Internet, they are becoming less ‘video games’ and more becoming ‘ego games’. But is this any different than in the past? Single player games revolve very much on the player fluffing his ego. In a game like Civilization, everyone believes he or she is the emperor regardless of the difficulty setting. It is perhaps one of the reasons why a game like Civilization doesn’t exactly succeed when put to multiplayer. With most single player games, when we beat it we feel like we are awesome and that is it.

With online multiplayer, it becomes an ego versus ego type thing. Gamers are not playing games with other people. It is all about their own ego. A good example of this is a game like World of Warcraft where people literally throw years of their lives going through pointless dungeons just to get a shiny digital object (to create envy in others). It is so ridiculous that a stigma has grown around it.

In online multiplayer, no one ever loses. If someone loses, it is because of “lag” or because of “imbalance” or because the opponent is a “no-life loser who only plays the game all day”. All these responses are from someone trying to protect the ego.

One of the most amazing things is that local multiplayer wasn’t played for ego purposes. No one played Wii Sports to buff up their ego. They played it because it was fun. If they lost, oh well. When I think of other great multiplayer games of the past such as Archon, M.U.L.E., Doom, Super Mario Kart, Bomberman, co-op shmups, etc. that people played because it was a social experience, because it was fun. When multiplayer went to local network, it was the same thing. People had LAN parties because they were fun, not because they believed they were performing an achievement or trying to puff up their ego.

Jay Cotton brilliantly tricked network gaming to be used over the Internet so he could play Doom online. He began selling this program which was called Kali. With Kali, you could play all sorts of networked games online. This was a very big deal because while some games had Internet play, it was only 1 vs 1 in RTS games. I had the pleasure of hosting some of the first online 4 vs 4 RTS games (since I had a T1 line).

Warcraft 2 was so well received with using Kali that Blizzard began shipping Kali with Warcraft 2. There were many other successful games as well such as Red Alert, Descent, and the FPS games like Quake. The behavior of gamers was that they would huddle around the dedicated server for that game to find a game in the lobby, but then they would splinter to other servers with their own private group or clan. Everyone played for fun. However, there was much whining about the ‘tank rush’ and many people would declare ‘harvestor treaties’ where no one would attack for the first fifteen minutes (I would attack anyway and laugh as the player would cry on the screen). The tank rush complainers or grunt rush complainers were the first indication of people using online multiplayer as their ego. Clearly, they didn’t lose. The game was just “broken”.

The design and basis of the original Battle.Net was from Kali. Battle.Net was pretty bad when it first went up. When it went to a loading screen, there was no cancel button. So if connection got stuck or something, you were trapped. It was amateurish design no doubt about it. But this is to point out how small Blizzard was back then.

When Starcraft came out, I hated Battle Net and preferred Kali just as Starcraft 1 veterans hate BNET 2.0 and prefer 1.0. One of the things was as PCs became more and more accessible, there was a correlation in the increase of lamers. Kali was a really cool place. Then came Windows 95 and Kali 95. Lamers were occurring all over the place. What is a lamer? It is someone who uses ‘leetspeak’, someone who makes stupid faces using the keyboard (not the happy face), someone who says ‘lol’ all the time, and generally someone who acts like a 14 year old kid (but they could be a 45 year old man). With Kali 95, the lamers would congregate on the official game servers. Smart gamers would tend to avoid them. The problem with Battlenet was that everywhere was an official game server. And since Battlenet was free and came with Starcraft, unlike Kali which cost $15 for a lifetime membership, there was a huge surge in the number of lamers. And unlike Kali, you could not escape the lamers. They were everywhere.

One of the things that Starcraft 1 did was that it recorded every win, every loss, and every disconnect. This single element radically changed the behavior of gamers. Gamers suddenly began comparing their ‘records’ to someone else. Someone had a worse record? Why, they were inferior to you. More than ever, the ‘online gaming as ego’ began fermenting. But the wildest change was seeing seven players join a game to beat up against a lone and meager AI. And they would do it, over and over again, just so ‘wins’ would go up on their silly record. This made their ego feel good. And if they got too many losses, they would create a new account so they would have a record that ‘properly’ showed their “skill”.

When Starcraft came out, I thought Blizzard had largely failed to follow up on the awesomeness of Warcraft 2. Warcraft 2 was such a fantastic game. The game, alone, had a satisfying single player, you could play the computer, you could play via LAN, via modem, and of course Kali. Since CDs were new, I loved it when games used Redbook Audio so your Warcraft 2 game also was a soundtrack disc. And the music to Warcraft 2 was literally divine. The sound effects were very well done. The voice acting was well done. Even the cinematics were very imaginative.

Above: How an epic introduction is done. Not to tell a story but to immerse you into the game world.

Above: When video game music used to be good.

When Starcraft came out was the peak of the RTS genre. There were so many RTS games and many were extremely well made from Age of Empires to Dark Reign to Total Annihilation. Starcraft was panned from game reviewers because the game was not using 3d (which people expected after Total Annihilation). This is why Warcraft 3 ended up being 3d even though technology didn’t exist to make many units run around in 3d (which is why armies are small in Warcraft 3 and why there was upkeep so players were pressured to stick to small armies).

While kids who grew up with the game won’t realize it, Starcraft had a ton of problems. It was a smorgasbord of a universe with cliches all over the place. It was a little piece of this, a little piece of that. For example, the “Battleship reporting” of the battlecruiser was from Robotech’s Admiral Gloval (complete with pipe). The storyline of Starcraft was pretty bad especially the Protoss campaign (oh no, Conclave don’t like Dark Templar. Oh noes, Conclave is being ‘prejudiced’. Oh yay, Tassadar does the cliched ‘Ultimate Sacrifice’ and even rams his space ship into the big blob alien creature. Yawn.).

When Starcraft came out, it succeeded in its mission of making three distinct and different races. It also succeeded highly on the audio. On graphics, Starcraft was dismissed even on the day it came out. One review I remember reading laughed at the siege tanks as how painfully they looked as if they needed more frames of animation. What ended up fixing Starcraft was Brood War which added some badly needed units (such as the lurker) and a single player campaign that was actually entertaining (Duran plays a huge part which was impossible to miss). And bad Kerrigan was always fun. The atrocious holier-than-thou Tassadar character was gone as well which improved things.

Now let us fast forward to Starcraft 2. I am only going to refer to the multiplayer behavior of the gamers and leave other elements to future posts.

Sadly, gamer behavior concerning Starcraft 2 is sliding more and more into the ‘I play this game for my daily dose of ego’ or ‘illusion of achievement’ just like World of Warcraft. Let me make a disclaimer. I have over 3000 points in achievements or whatever you call them, I played only Zerg in beta, switched to Terran in retail, diamond, etc. etc. Most of my points came from doing the single player as friends dared me that I couldn’t do them.

Let’s look at the achievements, first of all. I thought gamers just wasting their time beating up a defenseless computer was atrocious back in 1998. Today, it is worse as gamers are cannon rushing or 6 pool poor insane computers just to get ‘their achievement’. There is an achievement that is called ‘raid night’ which requires you to beat the single player campaign in less than 8 hours. Sure, it is easy enough to do, but who the hell is going to spend half a dozen hours just to get ten extra achievement points? Do you hate life that much? When I see someone have that achievement, I become greatly concerned for them. The single player achievements were somewhat more interesting because they were more like challenges within the mission (such as the Yippe-kay-yay one for The Dig).

However, the big issue is the stupid league system. If there is any rule for Starcraft 2, it is that anyone who thinks they are good tend not to be that good at all. Also, you will note only the low level Diamond players brag about being in Diamond. All a league means is that you are ranked with a certain percentage for match making purposes (which only looks at wins and losses). To illustrate this absurdity, I took a screenshot in a 4v4 of a guy bragging how he was in diamond, that he was special, that his socks didn’t stink when he took them off, and when you go to his record he is diamond in 4v4 but is in Bronze League in 1v1!

Video games are never an accomplishment. If you are not having fun playing them, do not play them. But if your ‘fun’ of a video game is some imaginary sense of accomplishment, you are playing for the wrong reason. I am more annoyed than ever at the ‘league system’, which is nonsensical as it is not even a real ladder, because it has dramatically altered gamers’ behavior to play multiplayer Starcraft 2 for purposes of ego. It is so ridiculous that some people are scared to even play 1v1 because, oh no, it will put them in a record of some sort and they will be judged by others because of what league they are placed. The fault of this has more to do with the way how multiplayer was envisioned by Blizzard and not of the player.

Blizzard admitted that 50% of their customers do not play multiplayer. I expect that percentage to rise. The ‘playing for ego’ from players is a huge turn off. However, I do like how you get a new portrait after so many wins (but you could be in Bronze League and still get a Kerrigan icon if you have 1000 wins as Zerg). In Warcraft 3, having a new icon was also very much a motivator. However, I do not remember anyone trying to think their icon was a pedestal for achievement and trying to ‘show it off’ (because no one cared). Also, the Warcraft 3 ladder reset as did all the icons. I do not think the Starcraft 2 achievements will ever reset.

While it may sound I’m complaining, I am becoming more and more concerned how people are looking to cyberspace as an ‘illusion of achievement’. They do these repetitive things which only waste away their life (ask any former WoW player). These people are not only going to end up hating gaming, they are also going to create a stigma about it because of the deleterious effects the ‘illusion of achievement’ brings. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if Wii players had a special icon that said they beat Bowser back in 1988? People frown at Nintendo not doing system wide achievements, but I don’t think these people have fully thought through the after-effects. If you want to expand gaming, you want people to play games because they are fun, not because they are an E-penis.

I have much to say about Starcraft 2, but I’ll wait for other posts to do that. But in the spirit of removing the ‘illusion of achievement’, I will tell you how to get really good at Starcraft 2. It is not that hard.

The reason why there is so much cheese on the lower end of the “ladder” is because of the players trying to find a win through the least possible resistance and the least possible time. The mistake many players make is to aim for the ‘least possible resistance’ route (which leads to cheese) or to emulate “strategies” from replays of “pro gamers” where they do cutesy things.

The problem with emulating the strategy from the ‘pro-gamers’ part is because strategy isn’t what a player needs. What ends up happening is that a player will begin harassing, doing drops, and ends up losing their units. Losing harassment units can easily cost you the game.

Think back as to the motivating factor that causes cheese: playing that requires the least amount of work. It is the opposite that will catapult a player into the higher leagues. Instead of working on strategies, work on making more harvestors within a short amount of time or see how you can get an expansion up faster. It is these things that will win games, not ‘strategies’ or ‘techniques’. You could just spam one type of unit and still win.

When you watch a replay, just watch your nexus or command center or hatcheries and see if you are always making harvesters. Most players stop making harvesters when they are attacked or they are attacking, and then they might come back and remember to make harvesters. This is bad. Harvesters should always be made, all the time. If you have trouble with this, queue it up before you attack. 50 or 100 minerals stuck in the queue is worth it to ensure constant harvesters (just don’t do this at the beginning of the game).

Making constant harvesters is something everyone thinks they are doing, but they are not doing it. For fun, in a 4v4 game put up the Income Tab in the replay, and you will see who is making constant harvesters and who is not. The dominant player almost always has the most harvesters. Just something as simple as making constant harvesters will make you the dominant player, so whatever you do, keep making harvesters. There should never be a time where you are not making harvesters during a game (except if you are reaching the supply cap). And even then, you are better to err on the side of too many harvesters than too few. Not making a harvester early in the game will snowball later in all the minerals you lost out on. Failing to make a harvester when you could will lose you the game.

After constantly making harvesters, the next thing is to keep using your unit making buildings. If you have gateways or barracks, they should always be making things. (Zerg might be different, but I don’t think so. Stockpiling larva is risky because you will likely get supply blocked because you didn’t make ten overlords in order to use your eighty larva.) What will happen is that even though your production buildings keep pumping out units, your money will grow and grow (because you keep making harvestors which keep increasing the income). Your response is to put down more production buildings and have them keep pumping stuff out. The big challenge here is to not be supply blocked.

And the third most important thing is to expand early and do it cleanly and smoothly. You should know where you want to expand and have plans for the next few expansions. This will transition you into later macro games easily. And, of course, you are doing all this while you constantly have your production buildings in use and keep making harvesters.

Does this sound hard? Not really. It isn’t hard once you get used to the pattern.

The reason why many players linger in the lower leagues is because they keep thinking, logically, that if they improve their strategy that they will win more games. What cheese is is an ‘unorthodox’ technique, so the reason why there is so much cheese is because players are trying to improve their strategy (and cheese in the result).

Starcraft 2 has very little to do about strategy. It has everything to do about doing things at the same time. The better the player is someone doing things at the same time. And these things are making harvestors, making combat units, and teching all while doing things like attacking the enemy or defending against an enemy attack.

Clearly, there is a limit where other players will be making harvestors all the time, that they will be utilizing their production buildings all the time, and they will expand as soon and as much as they can. Then, and only then, does any “strategy” come into play. And this point occurs in Diamond or high Platinum.

Starcraft 2 is not a real-time strategy game so much as a real-time juggling game. Don’t even approach the game from a ‘strategy’ standpoint. Instead, approach it from a juggling standpoint. Realizing this, not only will you skyrocket to Diamond, you will realize how stupid it is to think it is an achievement. Once people realize this, hopefully they will stop acting like clowns and play the game because they have fun with it instead of trying to ‘prove something’ to the world (because the world won’t give a damn).

On a typical gaming message forum, people say lots of junk. What would happen if a major figure of the game industry decided to log on to a gaming message forum and put the forum dweller in his place?

On Atari Age, a writer was peddling his own book where it says how characters like Nolan Bushnell were a demi-devil who cheated on everyone, backstabbed everyone, to be a rich, grubby, soulless business success (since all business success is soulless). Never did he imagine that an enraged Nolan Bushnell would appear to respond to him directly. While no one believed it was Bushnell at first (because anyone can be anyone on the Internet), the writer, in his ‘classy’ style, demanded that Bushnell prove who he is by telling us the name of the woman he cheated his wife on. Once Bushnell’s identity was proven, the writer immediately went back and edited all his posts.

For the reader’s pleasure:

Regular text is Bushnell.

Italics is the narrator, i.e. Malstrom.

Bold is a Forum Dweller asking a question.

_________________________________________

Bushnell on being angry…

I THINK THAT IT WOULD BE A FUN TIME TO HAVE A ONE ON ONE CHAT WITH CURT. HIS RANT WAS NOT ONLY SILLY BUT SO HIGHLY INACCURATE THAT IF HE ASSERTS HE IS A REPORTER HE SHOULD BE FIRED. THERE ARE MAN SOURCES THAT WILL BACK UP MY POSITIONS LETS GET STARTED WITH TRUTH.

Bushnell on the nature of criticism…

Atari is such a different company now than when it was just a silly portion of Infogramms. Look at Jef Lapins success. He is a very smart guy and is in my opinion making all the right moves to create a videogame company of the future. Remember, It is not what we have done historically that counts but what we do in the future. The problem that anyone that does something we are subject to the criticism of those who have never done anything. I love my involvement with Atari, Chuck E. Cheese and most of my 20 founded companies of which all except 4 were sold at a profit. Happy to take criticism from anyone that has a better track record. Other wise shut the fuck up.

Bushnell on being asked not to use caps all the time…

Sorry the Curt rant really pissed me off. Sometimes you have to yell or your head explodes. The inaccuracies and bile was a total shock.

Bushnell on the consumer experience…

You shouldn’t love your involvement with Chuck E. Cheese. Not only is the place crawling with pedos, but the service is crap. Worst of all, the price is incredibly high and the pizza tastes like shit.

don’t be an idiot. Chuck E. Cheese was not made for you it was made for kids. Ask your kids what they think about your favorite restaurant and they will say it sucks.

Bushnell on Internet Message Forums

Sorry new to the site and getting used to the system. Had a great rebut to Curt’s highly inaccurate and silly flame. It went poof. Will get it down. I am an old guy and need to learn these things.

Bushnell on innovation…

It is really me. If you doubt it try me at either nolanb2@yahoo.com or nolanb@uwink.com. Of course i am on facebook and will friend you.

The bottom line is that Atari is a great brand and has done some remarkable things some of which were mine and many of which were done by other Atarians. No one would dispute the contribution of Al Alcorn, Steve Bristow, Steve Mayer, Larry Emmons, and a hundred more that were truly brilliant. I think it is important to look always to the future. There are so many tools that a game designer has that were only dreams when I was running Atari. Innovation is about taking the technology that is accessible now and doing something that has never been done. I have about 20 ideas that have a chance of success. Only about half will work. I just wish I knew which half.

Remember that innovation is about accepting risk. New things are inherently riskier than evolution of a proven product. I embrace risk because it is the only way to innovate. Yes I was too soon for the Robot Business but I know some things about that that no one knows. Stay tuned on that.

What I would like to set strait is some very silly and not complementary things from Curt that were totally wrong.. I am puzzled because I thought that Curt was a smart and cool guy. What happened?

I would relish a one on one with Curt. I do not believe his assertions will stand up to scrutiny.

Nolan Bushnell on uWink not working…

The nickname of the largest individual is “Netman” One of the biggest problems of business is getting friends and family to invest into a company that does not stand up to its promise. uWink had two chances to become huge. One was based on the coin op world and we had a 6 million dollar backlog and machines on the water and demand on the street when 9-11 happened, Backlog to Zero, the the machines on the water land with no buyers. We were out earning the others but the business stopped. We restructured the company when we should have BKed it and did the restaurant thing. Just got it working and the Lehman crash happened. All restaurants dropped in earnings by about 30% except the fast food. Again restructure and we now have a stand alone software company that is starting to do quite well. Shit happens and if you stay in there you can take any adversity and fix it. What may don’t understand that new companies are highly flexible and potentially hugely profitable but they are also fragile. I like the potential upside but also understand the downside.

Nolan Bushnell on uWink becoming a software orientated

Understand that in the chain restaurant business you have to get to about 10 to have it make sense. When Lehman fell we realized that we could not get to ten with no access to outside capital. We closed the two restaurants strategically and kept one as a showcase for the software. Since a demo was necessary. The software business could grow without outside capital and it turns out that we were correct and as the economy comes out of the recession we have a huge opportunity. The code is robust and the market is proven. We just signed a huge deal in China and expect many more.

The moderator at Atari Age asked for Nolan Bushnell to prove he was Nolan Bushnell by revealing the largest investor in uWink. Bushnell responded with ‘Netman’ which satisfied the moderator that Nolan Bushnell was, in fact, Nolan Bushnell.

Bushnell on never giving up…

If you are Netman let me tell you that you were a true believer as was I. If it is any consolation I am sure that I lost more money so far than you did. However the last chapter is not written and the software is better than ever.

Nolan Bushnell on Missile Command

In this interview you claimed to have been involved with the development of the Missile Command coin-op…
http://videogames.ya…command/1390303

During said interview, you recalled playing the game in your office and even specific memories of the game’s development, such as…

Quote

We actually got some criticism, you know, “The End” [the game-over screen] – people thought it was a little too dire of a prediction.

By all accounts, you left Atari in December of 1978…this is a matter of public record. You couldn’t possibly remember the development of Missile Command, because the game never even reached the design phase until mid-1979 (it was released in July of ’80). How do you account for this anachronism?


There is often a confusion of dates between the coin op and the consumer. I had no involvement with the consumer version but a lot with the coin op.

Bushnell on spotting a new business opportunity… (With people questioning his identity, Nolan Bushnell comes up with a new business model out of the blue.)

I think the issue of identity is very interesting. How does one know that a hot 16 year old girl is not some 60 year old fat fart in his basement in a bathrobe. One way is to have a third party like 7-11 authenticate with a pix and drivers license and then have an encrypted authorization. Another way–less secure is to link facebook. The difficulty of a hoaxer to get all the pix and data make the gap much harder.

Nolan Bushnell on Natalie Portman

Pictured Above: Nolan Bushnell’s wife

The movie business is weird. I have been lobbying for Natlie Portman to play my wife (it is a fantasy thing) but it is so complicated that I don’t understand all the issues. Warner actually wanted to Green light the pix but felt that it would be difficult for them. I doubt that any movie studio will buy a game company for some time. They have always messed them up. Perhaps later there will become fashionable play again but not now.

Bushnell on the engineering of Computer Space…

The most silly things that Curt said is that Dabney did the original tech. Dabney was a good hardware engineer and a good friend. He was not a digital engineer. He did the tv interface circutry for Computer space and the sound module. Important things but clearly not patentable. The slip counter architecture that all game were based on until 1978 when the microprocessor took over were my invention and patented

Bushnell on Ralph Baer…

Ralph Baer was at most a pain in the ass. He is what i like to paint as a patent whore. Just one step from a ambulance chasing attorney. The real important guys upon whose shoulders I stood was Steve Russel from MIT who programmed the PDP1 to play space wars. His program was written in 1963 I played it in 1965 and loved it and it changed my life. I saw the Burlingame demo of the odyssey and thought it was crap and it was. I signed the register with my own name and have never denied it. It did spark the idea that the ping pong idea could be an interesting game if it were done well.

Odyssey only did as well as it did because people had played Pong in the bars and they though that was what they were buying. Magnavox discontinued odyssey because of all the returns they got. When we came out with consumer Pong the market was soured. We showed it at the toy show and sold none because of the bad taste that Odyssey gave them. If it hadn’t been for Sears the Magnavox Baer disaster may have spoiled the whole market.

Atari signed a license to get out of the Magnavox patent suit. I thought and still do think that Baers patents are crap but because we were raising money it was cheaper to settle for a “junk” settlement. We settled for less than it would cost to litigate and it amounted to less than .5% on sales. That is a junk settlement. Ask Ralph about that.

Bushnell on the need to make new gameplay…

If this is really Nolan, I would seriously like a job as a creative director. I have experience with 3D and have great ideas for games that would honor classic gaming, but use new tech and add story and humor. I would be willing to live in France if necessary.

A great game is easy to learn but difficult to master.

I would love to talk. But understand my bias. While 3d is interesting visually I am more interested in new game mechanic. Remember all the controversy and flames when I said that the Wii was much more interesting that the PS3 a year before it launched. The controllers were more interesting than the better graphics. Lets be serious the Wii has at best a poor graphics engine but it really kicks ass in new types of game play. Now we have the Iphone and I pat both of which have some really cool things that can be done. Watch this page cause that is where I am going.

Bushnell on the room Computer Space was built…

Okay, let’s take the issue of Bushnell’s involvement with the creation of Computer Space. Was it Bushnell or Ted Dabney who originally designed the hardware? Or what about Pong: is it true that Bushnell saw Ralph Baer’s TV Tennis before giving the game concept to Al Alcorn for implementation? If he did not, has he has claimed over the years, how did his signature end up in the guest book?

EDIT: I see you’ve already posted about Computer Space, although you didn’t entirely answer all of what Curt has written. Why does Bushnell claim that he converted his daughter’s bedroom into a lab for the development of Computer Space when Ted Dabney has stated that it was his daughter’s bedroom that was converted into a lab?
Perhaps it is because Ted Dabney does not have a daughter. My daughter was Britta and I put her in with her older sister Alissa. Both Ted and I did the hardware. Ted the analog and me the digital. See my other post about Baer

Nolan talks more on Missile Command…

At what time did Bushnell help to fine-tune Missile Command? And who were the other members of the development team who can verify this?
You got me, I cannot remember who was on the team. Sorry. But I remember the day when missile command was in the conference room with all of us around. It had to be after 1976 since we were on Borreagas avenue.

Nolan on the dangers of sugar-coating…

I am going to bed. I am not as much of a night owl as you guys. Post questions an I will try to answer them tomorrow. This has been fun. Dont worry about offending me. Ask hard questions. I am proud of my wins and sad about my failures but will not sugar coat either because both wins and losses are part of your game history and learning from both is important.

Ted Daney jumps into the forum and says Nolan is wrong to say he has no daughter. He wrote:

This person calling himself “NolanB” is either an idiot, a liar or a phony…
The real Nolan Kay Bushnell knows I have two daughters (Terri and Pam). He also knows that my digital skills are way beyond his.

Bushnell is great with the ideas but is very weak at implementation. His people skills are limited by his own ego.

I just got off the phone with Ted and yes his posts are real and he does have a daughter. She was older than mine and ted reminded me of the time they came up to my house and we were all around the pool. It was a senior moment that I forgot it. Ted was a huge help and a good engineer and we worked closely together. He thinks that the slip counter system was his idea and I think it was mine. I think that it was some melding of the two. But I think the real issue is that Dabney and I did Computer space and created the technology that powered the game business for 8 years. Al did most of the Pong work and Dabney was able to get the thing into production. Don’t forget we thought of ourselves as a studio designing games for others to manufacture.

Neither Ted or I thought the Baer patents were important and at most a distraction. The record shows that no one other than Magnavox used and of his circuitry.

Nolan destroys Ralph Baer:

I probably should not do this since there are some Baer lovers and I know that I will do nothing to change that but me and Don Quixote love to tilt at windmills.

1. What did I take from Ralph Baer? I came I saw I signed the book with my own name and never denied it.
2. What did I see that was new or unique. Nothing. I saw a blip moving back and forth. Had I see that before? Yes in 1965 at the University of Utah.
3. Did you see any circuitry—No
4. Did I or any of my people see any of Ralphs Circuitry before the patent suit No we did not and were frankly not interested.
5. Did the demonstration remind me of the ball and paddle game. Yes. It was easy to assign Al to do it as a training project had I not gone to the demo would I have assigned a ball and paddle game to Al? I will never know that one without a back to the future machine..
6. Did Ralph invent the ping pong type video game. NO there were several digital versions starting in the early 60 and Willy Higgenbotham demonstrated a stand alone unit in 1958.
7. Did Atari pay Magnavox a royalty NO we settled for a paid up license for 100,000 per year for 5 years which was less than our legal costs would have been. In our eyes it was a junk settlement. If it would have been a royalty it would have been less than a half a percent the first year and less in subsequent years.
8. Why do I get irritated with Ralph? He likes to claim that he invented Pong He did not Al Alcorn did most of the work and I helped with some details. It used circuitry that I invented two years prior to the Magnavox demonstration. He saw my game “Touch Me” patented a version and licensed it to Hasbro. Could I have sued him for that, probably did I no. (Do a search on Pong and notice the lack of Computer space which was in the market for a year before the Burlingame show, why??)
9. He claims that I will not appear with him on a public forum. The opposite is true he is the one that cancels. I am happy to have that discussion on the net, on a video conference. any forum. I would love to have Ralph interject on any of the above points.

Summation: People should claim their own work and give credit to those upon whose shoulders they stand. I have always credited Steve Russell and the guys at the U of U, Stanford and Mit that did the early video game programming that I played loved and got hooked.

Do a search on Pong and you with see Ralph all over them without any credit to Al or Atari. Ask yourself how that happens. The web is great for those that want to self promote.

I have been silent for 30 years in an attempt to be above the noise but I think that it is time to get the true record and history on the table.

Bushnell on Apple…

Steve Wozniak claims in his book that he basically offered the Apple II design to Atari via Al Alcorn but was told that Atari was too busy with the video game market to do it. Is that true and do you remember Al or anyone else ever mentioning it?
It is true. Remember that Atari at the time did not have the cash to fully exploit the 2600. We ended up selling to Warner so we could finance the inventory. We were growing very quickly and were always short on cash. (am I sorry for that mistake —you bet.)

Bushnell on a Bushnell designed and programmed game…

Did you program a game in college called Fox and Geese? Could you tell us about the game and the experiance of programming the game?
I programmed several games but the one that played the best and was sent around the country was Fox and geese. In the game the fox could move in any direction at twice the speed of the geese there was only one fox. The geese could move up to the right or the left. If a goose was alone the fox could eat it. If there were two geese adjacent he could not. The object was for the fox to either eat all the geese or escape past them. The geese won if they trapped the fox against the upper part of the screen. The number of geese was variable. 3 geese almost always lost 7 geese always won,

Bushnell on his favorite Atari games…

I was curious when was the last time you fired up the ol’ VCS and what are some of your favorite games for the console?
I fired one up about a year ago. It depends on who I am with what cart I use. I keep coming back to the early favorites like tank and breakout. Later titles are in my collection but seldom used.

Bushnell on the importance of sound in video games.

I notice that sound seems to have been very important to Atari’s early history. Of course the fantastically evocative Pong sounds quickly became iconic. But then there’s the fact that the 2600 was planned to have two speakers in it to provide stereo audio — a very innovative move back when TV was mono only. In these days of homebrew modifications to the Atari 2600, I can finally play Air/Sea Battle and hear those missiles launch and explode in stereo! I can’t even imagine how great that would have been in the 70s. And let’s not forget Atari Video Music, which I’d very much like to own some day. Not only is it nifty in its own right, but it’d be nice to show the whippersnappers that the iTunes visualizer is nothing new.

At any rate, what role did audio (music, sound design, audio engineering, etc.) play in the early days at Atari?
Thanks for the appreciation of Video Music it was the only product on my watch that was not profitable. I think we sold less than 100 at full price. Too far ahead of the curve.

the initial DNA of the company was coin op. We found that Music and sound if well done increased earnings drastically. The ability to make good sounds with the technology at the time was expensive and less than satisfying in many cases. Pong for example just used signals that were already available from the video drivers.

Wow, I didn’t know that Pong’s sounds came from the video circuits. There’s that theory that constraints make for great art, because we are forced to move beyond what’s easy and truly engage creatively in what we’re doing. Apparently the audio constraints of those early years did just that!

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
I thought of another interesting anecdote. I told Al to use the sound circuitry from Computer space to simulate a crowd clapping. (you do that by creating noise and then shaping the envelope of the sound wave) Al though it was too much trouble and started poking around on the board till he got the right sounds. Genus. Remember the prime clock frequency was 3.58Mhz and the counters counted down for horizontal and vertical sync. So any frequency that is a binary divisor of that number is available down to 60 hz which is frame rate.

Bushnell on the next new video game console…

You have said that you are very interested in new game mechanics (i.e. iPad, Wii controller etc..). I can only imagine what it has been like for you to vicariously watch the industry over the years up to this point now where companies are finally appearing to think outside the box once again. Given that you are a proven innovator in your field, would you care to elaborate on any ideas you may have about the future of video games in this regard?
Cant talk about things in too much detail but think about board games and then put an I pad in the middle of the table and everyone around the table has an Iphone that is connected to the iPad through bluetooth or Wifi. It becomes the universal board game videogame delivery platform.

Bushnell on how Atari games had such amazing cartridge artwork…

I’m just wondering in general about anything you could tell us about the early Atari artwork on the boxes and/or catalogs. Anything regarding how it was selected, who made the decisions, if there was any particular aesthetic goals… or anything else you may find interesting to share?

The early art was from a guy named George Faraco. Later George Opperman (who created the Fuji Logo) became the look and taste of Atari. He really had a great eye and none of us would second guess his genius.

Moral of the story: be careful what you say on your local ‘Gaming Message Forum’. The real life character might appear and totally own you.