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
I never, ever, saw the evil Steve Jobs. He was always the most well-mannered and respectful guy I knew. And we got to be pretty good friends. He didn't suffer fools gladly. I guess he didn't think I was a fool.
A good interviewer is able to ferret out what the applicant is really passionate about. Ask them what they do for fun, what they're reading, try and find out if they have a life outside of work.
How about keyboards in your mouth? How fast can you type with your tongue? People will think you're just masticating, when you're really talking to your girlfriend.
Women were very, very good at 'Pong'. It was part of the dating scene. The number of people who told me they met their wife or husband playing 'Pong' was huge. They were shoulder to shoulder, talking and playing. It was body contact and verbal contact.
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.
Young adults love to play games and they're thirsty for social interaction, but a lot of bar and restaurant experiences are quite unsatisfactory on the social level. What young people need is a place that has the feel of an unhosted party where they find themselves interacting with like-minded strangers.
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.
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,
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.
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,
I'd love to design a school.
I try to get a vision of the future, and then I try to figure out where the discontinuities are.
I've always been a tech-head.