Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Kay Bushnellis an American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters chain. Bushnell has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News “Innovator of the Year” award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America." Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth5 February 1943
CityClearfield, UT
CountryUnited States of America
We had some really powerful technology - Atari always was a technology-driven company, and we were very keen on keeping the technological edge on everything. There's a whole bunch of things that we innovated. We made the first computer that did stamps or sprites, we did screen-mapping for the very first time, and a lot of stuff like that.
I always loved both 'Breakout' and 'Asteroids' - I thought they were really good games. There was another game called 'Tempest' that I thought was really cool, and it represented a really hard technology. It's probably one of the only colour-vector screens that was used in the computer graphics field at that time.
Atari always was a technology-driven company, and we were very keen on keeping the technological edge on everything. There's a whole bunch of things that we innovated. We made the first computer that did stamps or sprites, we did screen-mapping for the very first time, and a lot of stuff like that. We had some of the most sophisticated sound-creating systems, and were instrumental in MIDI.
I appreciate the fact that technology and games are a big part of life.
Today, companies have to radically revolutionize themselves every few years just to stay relevant. That's because technology and the Internet have transformed the business landscape forever. The fast-paced digital age has accelerated the need for companies to become agile.
I think in terms of businesses, in terms of things that are really big and marry technology with entertainment. That's where I like to spend my time.
Blood and gore loses its cartoon defense. If you think we've got problems now, you'll see we have additional problems once the cartoon defense goes away.
Sonic and I were chatting back before we got on and he was telling me how proud he was to be inducted last year in the Walk of Game. The only thing he was a little concerned about was being walked on all the time. I said that's OK; it's par for the course.
literally thousands of people have told me over the years that they met their wife or husband playing Pong.
I'm here to pass the baton, so to speak, to some of these new inductees, many of which are guys that I respect in the business as being truly revolutionary.
Many kids with (attention deficit disorder) have been misdiagnosed, they're actually bored with teachers, as most won't even blink at concentrating on video games for hours,
Do I really want to do a mobile game that's one of 300,000, where discoverability is everything? You really have to have a little more sizzle on the steak. I would rather be one of 100 apps for Google Glass than one of 300,000 for iOS and Android.
It's a great project that allows a recurring revenue stream to happen in bars, restaurants and airline lounges. These aren't for arcades,
The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.