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"What Went Right at Atari"
by Bill Haslacher hash@doglover.com
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Hi-Res was a short lived Atari Computer magazine. The handwriting on my galley
proof says, "Deadline for Issue 4 is Dec. 19, 1983." Well, to make a long story
short, Hi-Res folded and my unpublished column lay burried under a stack of
papers.
Until now.
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"Have you been playing video games?" It's 1980, my first week at Atari and the
boss wants to know if I'm playing video games.
"Um ... a few but I've a good start on the assignment you gave me," I mumble.
"Forget the assignment. You like chess?" Steve Harding, my boss, rushes around,
finds a chess cartridge and shoves it into the Atari Home Computer on my desk.
"And you've got to go to the picnic this afternoon ... no use staying around
the office because everyone is going to be at the park eating hamburgers and
drinking beer."
Lately, I've been thinking about my two-year adventure at Atari. It's the small
things about Atari that have stayed in mind.
HALLOWEEN : Everyone dresses up in costumes : Mine was a jester-fool outfit
complete with bells thatkept dripping down into my eyes. Milt was a Rock and
Roll singer, Embee was Cleopatra, and Glenda was a road (a white center strip
went up the middle of her bodysuit). A Ubangi warrior marched with a large
group of strange looking characters through the Atari marketing department. The
warrior kept pointing to a roll of toilet paper on his spear saying, "Atari
software, Atari software."
CAFETERIA. The engineering building had its own cafeteria. Great place to.
Programmers used to play word games with the movable letters on the "soup
of the day" sign. They would try to make a word or words that used all the
letters in "chicken soup," for example.
SCHLADGE CARDS. These handy cards got you in and out of the various Atari
departments. If you were not allowed into a department, the Schlage card
device would make a clicking sound and your attempt was recorded on a
computer somewhere. Rumor had it that Atari engineers tried to figure out
how the cards worked. They succeeded in making fake cards within fifteen
minutes. Steve Harding says one of the founding engineers forgot his
Schlage card one weekend day and kicked the door down to get in.
APPLE SIGN. One bright and sunny day an Apple Computer warehouse appeared
next to the cubic monolith that was Atari's engineering building. Some of
the Atari people grabbed a brightly colored sign with an Apple on it and
placed it in the Atari engineering department. Two months later, uniformed
police officers showed up to reclaim the sign.
T-SHIRTS. T-shirts and jeans were something of a status symbol at Atari. I
swear my boss had a whole T-shirt wardrobe. He even had a T-shirt with a
tie painted on it. A young lady named Carlina came up with the idea and
design of the "I'm a high strung prima donna T-shirt." The shirt had a
picture of an opera singer in response to a Kassar interview in the San Jose
Mercury-News. I remember my friend Milt made several outrageous prototyped
T-shirt designs for Carlina to consider. But Milt's designs, clever as they
were, lost out to Carlina's own design.
ASTEROIDS. In the lobby of the engineering building, someone changed the
flying saucers to flying turtles. OK, who changed the shape table in the
Asteroids game?
RUMORS. I'm not sure I believe it, but there was a rumor about two ladies
wrestling on the floor for the right to be a certain boss's secretary.
Alas, that was before I got there. Steve Harding and others tell me the Atari
I knew was a shadow of its former self. "Times are changing," they would say.
Someone at Atari showed me an old newsletter entitled "The Gospel According to
St. Pong." It gave Nolan Bushnell's vision of what a company should be like. I
don't remember much of the philosophy except that it seemed concerned mostly
with worker happiness.
In conclusion, let me give you an opinion -- Atari has done some things awfully
right.
----- ooOOOoo -----
A shakeout is happening in the video games industry. Shakeouts are to
electronics what earthquakes are to nature. Fox Video Games has decided to
call it quits. But Activision and Imagic seem to be weathering the storm.
There has been a flood of video games in the marketplace and a lot of price
cutting. Experts say this comes about because video game are not a mature
industry. In a mature industry like the cigarette industry, companies often
agree price cuts are like cutting each other's throats.
This predatory pricing means on can find some deals on video games right now.
I saw video games priced two for $2.95 at a recent electronics show. Better
shop for your video game bargains now. After the shakeout, video game makers
might start acting like the "mature" cigarette industry. Hint: The new Atari
chairman was an executive vice president of marketing at Phillip Morris.
Recently this Silicon Valley Reporter had a fun conversation with Jan
Martin-Risk of Activision's consumer division. She finds it interesting
that, historically, man has used his highest technology to amuse himself.
To Martin-Risk, games are an art form and entertainment. The test of the
success of a game is a question each person can ask. Is it fun? If you
think the answer is yes -- then the game you are playing is a success.
There is a rumor that when Atari's Steve Wright was on the "TODAY" show
with Martin-Risk he got very nervous about something. It's hard to imagine
Steve Wright (Mr. Confident) nervous about anything.
What evidently happened was the host asked about Activision's policy of giving
game designers credit for their games. Martin-Risk explained the author of a
game program is like the author of a book and deserved his or her name to be
known. In voicing the opinion a video game is a corporate product, Wright
became a little tongue-tied.
A programmer recently gave this reporter a photocopied masterpiece ...
"Real Programmers Don't use PASCAL:"
Highlights include:
* Real Programmers don't need comments -- the code is obvious.
* At a party, Real Programmers are in the corner talking about operating
system security and how to get around it.
* At a football game, the Real Programmer is comparing the plays against his
simulation printed on 11-by-14 fanfold paper.
* No Real Programmer works 9 to 5.
* Real Programmers don't know how to cook. Grocery stores aren't open a 3 a.m.
Real Programmers survive on Twinkies and coffee.
It seems video game players and programmers fit the description quite nicely,
too.
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