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" Atari showed that young people could start big companies. Without that example it would have been harder for Jobs and Bill Gates, and people who came after them, to do what they did. "
Nolan Bushnell
Start
Big
Young
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" All schools will end up using game metrics in the future. "
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" 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. "
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" When I was running Atari, violence against humanoid figures was not allowed. We'd let you shoot at a tank... but we drew the line at shooting at people, with blood splattering everywhere. "
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You
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" Selling Atari when I did - I think that's my biggest regret. And I probably should have gotten back heavily into the games business in the late Eighties. But I was operating under this theory at the time that the way to have an interesting life was to reinvent yourself every five or six years. "
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" Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference. "
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" Radical innovation is difficult to fund. It seems scary. And the really radical things seem even more scary. "
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Seem
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" Sometimes when you hire people who have to pass a Mr. Congeniality test, you end up losing some of the non-conformists who will give you different views and perspectives. "
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Will
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Losing
" I'm the only one who was predicting the Nintendo Wii would beat Sony's PlayStation 3. "
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" Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don't get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new. "
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People
Remember
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" 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. "
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Good
Fools
Friends
" My sweet spot is figuring out how to make a product that people love and how to refine it to make them love it more. All the rest is business noise. "
Nolan Bushnell
Business
People
Sweet
" 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. "
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Mouth
People
You
" Every company needs to have a skunkworks, to try things that have a high probability of failing. You try to minimize failure, but at the same time, if you're not willing to try things that are inherently risky, you're not going to make progress. "
Nolan Bushnell
Company
You
Time
" 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. "
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Good
Time
Thought
" I basically look at PR as something you do if there's an object in mind. But my ego doesn't need it. "
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Need
Something
You
" 'Grand Theft Auto', in its deification of antisocial behavior, is where I heap the most of my scorn. "
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Antisocial
Where
Theft
" People like secrets. Creative people really like secrets. "
Nolan Bushnell
Creative
Secrets
Really
" I was actually the manager of the games department of an amusement park when I was at college, so I understood the coin-op side of the games business very well. "
Nolan Bushnell
College
Park
Manager
" I founded Atari in my garage in Santa Clara while at Stanford. When I was in school, I took a lot of business classes. I was really fascinated by economics. You end up having to be a marketeer, finance maven and a little bit of a technologist in order to get a business going. "
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Finance
School
Up
" These days when you say 'videogame', people think of immersive games that take over your life and require three thumbs to control. My goal is to create games that almost retreat into the background. I'm interested in bringing them back to their role as a social facilitator, the way party games help people to interact. "
Nolan Bushnell
Control
Life
Think
" Everybody copied Atari products. So we started messing with them and it was fun. We bought enough chips that we could get them mislabeled. So we bankrupted at least two companies which copied our boards, and bought all the parts but they were the wrong parts, so they're sitting on all this inventory they can't sell because the games don't work. "
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Work
Sitting
Games
" Being your own boss is much superior to working for the man. Including working for your father. "
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Own
Father
Boss
" I guess I'd like to be known for being an innovator, fostering creativity, thinking outside the box. You know, keeping people playful. "
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Know
People
Thinking
" You wanna build your IQ higher in the next two years? Be uncomfortable. That means, learn something where you have a beginner's mind. "
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You
Learn
Uncomfortable
" 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. "
Nolan Bushnell
Technology
Always
Time
" In the early days of the video game business, everybody played. The question is, what happened? My theory - and I think it's pretty well borne out - is that in the '80s, games got gory, and that lost the women. And then they got complex, and that lost the casual gamer. "
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Game
Business
Lost
" 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. "
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Need
Today
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" The subtle generational cues that make one thing cool and another uncool aren't always obvious to a parent. My children are my dinner-table sounding board. I've come up with some wonderful ideas that they universally dismissed as 'lame.' "
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Ideas
Parent
Always
" I've been in navigation systems, robotics, restaurants, communications systems, touch screens, and now I'm back in games. I like to say I have five-year A.D.D. "
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Back
Now
Say
" In 1980, Atari was bringing in around two billion dollars in revenue and Chuck E. Cheese's some five hundred million. I still didn't feel too bad that I had turned down a one-third ownership of Apple - although I was beginning to think it might turn out to be a mistake. "
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Cheese
Mistake
Apple