Working at Atari

It takes hard work and a lot of concentration and focus to embark on and then complete any creative project, and it was the same back then at Atari. All creative projects demand specialized knowledge and skills, too, as well as daydreaming, inspiration, accidental discoveries, and luck. All those things were true at Atari in the early days of making video games. Perhaps the one thing that was most different at Atari in those days, that I've never encountered anywhere else in my work, was the feeling of being on a frontier where there is no road map to look to as an example. Because the video game industry was new, we weren't repeating past successes, we were forging new ground each day. That can be unnerving and lead to feeling lost sometimes, but it is also exciting and innervating at the same time. I remember wanting to have time and energy to dream more and dream bigger. I wanted to find new ways to use games to make people happy and to teach them ideas and concepts at the same time. I think I've continued through the years to want to use digital tools in those same ways.

Most parts of the business I find are pretty straightforward, honest, serious people. In any business where there's a lot money, you find a few crooks. An interesting part of the game business now are the youtube channels that teach gameplay tricks and commentary. This is something very new and interesting - where it will lead, who knows. Minecraft is more fun after you take a few tutorials.