BETA | WILL WRIGHT INTERVIEWS NOLAN BUSHNELL
Bushnell is most famous for founding Atari. And, according to Will Wright, thus killing the pinball market
NB: Yeah, and the money… in the mid-‘80s the technology of robots just didn’t want to work. We didn’t have the necessary multitasking software, didn't have a lot of sensors at the price we wanted it to be. It was too big a prospect. It was probably my biggest failure and the most painful – and yet at the same time I think that… well, I just can’t envision a future in which we don’t have little guys running around doing stuff for us.
NB: I think that we all, in working on the video game as an entity – all developers really enjoy the fact that they haven’t had to get a real job!
WW: But 25 years later, it’s still hard to do. It’s amazing you were attempting it back then with the simpler technology we had then.
NB: Yeah, and it turns out that that is one of the things I actually have a bit of a concern about. Video games in some ways are too powerful, they have too much resonance with kids. And it’s very easy to overdose on video games and to let the outside world go by. I am constantly trying to limit my kids’ video game play. Which kind of seems funny coming from me! [laughs]
NB: Yeah… no, it was foolish!
NB: Well it, like so many other things, it has so many extra things we can do, and we’ll kind of grow into our own skin a little bit. But I’m happy with the early results. WW: In your career so far, in all the things you’ve launched, what are the things you are most proud of personally? NB: My kids. I’m really proud of them, now that they are coming adults; the mature people they are turning out to be. I must admit that’s mostly my wife’s responsibility, but I am very proud. WW: You have quite a few kids, right? NB: Yeah, I have eight. From a technical standpoint I am proud that I made the video game happen faster, and Chuck-E-Cheese… I dunno, I always tell people I am most excited or proud of what I’m currently working on. And right now I’m working on a whole bunch of things. WW: On a related note, there is an old saying in autoracing that if you don’t crash every tenth race then you aren’t going fast enough. And I think the same is true of technology and entrepreneurship – unless you have a number of failures or risks you aren’t pushing the envelope. You’ve had numerous successes, and like anyone a few failures. So which of the failures were the most noble? Where did you take a risk that was a good proposition but didn’t really work out? NB: I’m not sure I would class it as a noble experiment, but I think my ‘Andy bot’ programmable robot – it was frustrating more than anything. I was 100 per cent convinced the market was ready for it, but I misjudged the technological difficulty. It was the only company I have ever had in which the technology just wouldn’t yield to me. WW: You couldn’t get it to work? 40 | MARCH 2009
WW: In terms of the future what are your thoughts? I ask because especially nowadays we face more and uncertainty, and at the moment there are people who are falling clearly into one camp or the other – even over the short term, the next 20 years or so, people speculate about issues financially, environmentally or socially. Would you say you are an optimist or a pessimist about the future?
I’m backing robotics. I just can’t envision a future in which we don’t have little robotic guys running around and doing stuff for us. NB: Definitely an optimist. I think we will constantly solve problems in an interesting way. I tend to be very sceptical about government’s ability to help us – but I think man will try and figure out its ways in spite of government. WW: So you are very much a libertarian. Well, that’s the end of my prepared questions.
WW: Yes, that’s very true. I’ve only just recently convinced my mother that I’m doing something worthwhile. It took her a while to get it. It’s a generational thing. I guess you see that in your kids – because you and I grew up with these things as we were young adults, but you see kids grow up with these things, they have a resonance with games. But I work with these things every day, but don’t have the resonance that I see my daughter or young kids have with games.
WW: Completely. You have two roles – one as a parent, and one in the games industry. And you see how captivating games are – you realise that we have discovered this circuit in their brain and we are kind of exploring and exploiting more and more effectively… NB: …taps into an endorphin pouch or something. WW: Right, yeah – and it’s a combination of pixels moving on the screen, they can capture your vision, and we have all these virtual worlds we are trying to deconstruct. It’s amazing how complicated these games are, and even a seven year old can get into these systems and engage with them and reverse engineer what is under the hood so quickly. That part I think is going to serve them well going forward in a technological future, where they need to deal with difficult systems and need to figure out the gestalt of a system very rapidly. NB: Yeah, I remember my four year old son once saying ‘I could understand this game a lot better if I could read!’ [laughing] He was only four or five at the time.
NB: Hmm. I don't know what else we should talk about.
WW: It proves that games can be a great motivator – I know people that have learned Japanese just because they liked playing import Japanese games; they learned katakana from reading the interfaces.
WW: It’s weird, I’ve done so many interviews, but never had the chance to be the one asking the questions.
NB: Exactly. I can remember bringing home a Nintendo one time and the kids had most fun trying to intuit what everything meant.
NB: Well, much in the way you’ve been asking me about my career – I’ve been a great fan of yours. I’ve been an aficionado of The Sims since… well, forever. I always rate you as one of the best game guys.
WW: Right. You try doubly hard when something is in another language – it’s another system on top of it.
WW: Well, I don't think any of us would have had a chance without your work.
NB: It just goes to show what a great medium we have built and which others are evolving.