Nolan Bushnell Quotes

The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.

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 like games where you can use stealth and guile. As you get older, it's like the difference between playing squash and racketball. Squash is an older man's game, because if you're stealthy and wily, you can beat a better-co-ordinated and stronger, younger person.

The truth is just an excuse for lack of imagination.

I appreciate the fact that technology and games are a big part of life.

Any business that does not innovate will fail over time.

I believe that in games, when you're talking about pitting my wits and my brain against your wits and your brain, that simplicity of the game becomes a dominant factor.

Walk to work, even if it's four miles. Ride a bike to work. Drive a different way. On your way there, try to find beauty. You'd be surprised how much more of the neighborhood you can perceive and experience when you're looking for unique spots of beauty.

People like secrets. Creative people really like secrets.

I'd love to design a school.

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.

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 don't feel 70. I am still looking out from 14-year-old eyes.

I had an awful lot of my soul invested in Atari culture.

I believe there are Steve Jobses all around us. Really, what is happening is that they're being edited out of importance.

Being your own boss is much superior to working for the man. Including working for your father.

I'm glad to see the casual game play coming back now on the Internet, games that aren't violent, that aren't complex that you can sit down and you can have some fun.

I must confess I've always had a couple of pinball machines in my home and really have enjoyed some of the old classics, like Fireball.

Everybody believes in innovation until they see it. Then they think, 'Oh, no; that'll never work. It's too different.'

In 1980, business at my company, Chuck E. Cheese's, was thriving and I was feeling flush. So I bought a very large house on the Champ de Mars in Paris, right between the Eiffel Tower and the Ecole Militaire. The home was quite amazing: At six stories, it spanned 15,000 square feet and featured marble staircases and a swimming pool in the basement.

All schools will end up using game metrics in the future.

Creativity is every company's first driver. It's where everything starts, where energy and forward motion originate. Without that first charge of creativity, nothing else can take place.

In 1989, SimCity introduced an entirely new brand of game play.

Remember that we can only in our forebrains handle 5-7 items. Our backbrains can handle massive amounts. So when you're given a problem, think about it before you go sleep, and chances are you can solve it by the next morning.

'Grand Theft Auto', in its deification of antisocial behavior, is where I heap the most of my scorn.

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.

I basically look at PR as something you do if there's an object in mind. But my ego doesn't need it.

The idea is to become a best-selling author first and then the rest of my books will be slam dunks.

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.

Some of the best projects to ever come out of Atari or Chuck E. Cheese's were from high school dropouts, college dropouts. One guy had been in jail.

'Pong' hit the fancy. It was sort of the perfect storm of a game which has two players highly social, a game that women could play better than a guy, and sort of an acceptance of this social nature of games in a bar.

If you don't hire at least one or two people that are smarter than you are, then you're a terrible manager and I don't need you.

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.

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.

I've always been a tech-head.

You wanna build your IQ higher in the next two years? Be uncomfortable. That means, learn something where you have a beginner's mind.

The truly creative people tend to be outliers.

My perception is that I'm a guy who really does a lot of homework surrounding any project that I do.

I think 'Something Ventured' is a nice piece because it celebrates venture capital in a unique and powerful way.

People hate to and will not read instructions.

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.

A lot of what is wrong with corporate America has to do with a culture filled with antibodies trained to expel anything different. HR departments often want cookie cutter employees, which inevitably results in cookie cutter solutions.

Being successful is kind of dull.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I just want the future to happen faster. I can't imagine the future without robots.

Engrave this Quote The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.

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.

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.

People can buy a bottle of gin and drink it at home for about a buck a drink, whereas they are willing to go to a bar and pay 12 bucks for the same cocktail. The difference is that man needs to be social. So I believe that there is a strong demand for games that are social.

Can liberty be destroyed by the truth?

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.

The game business reinvents itself every five years.

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.

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.

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.

I want to fix education in the world. As soon as I work on that, I am going to work on world hunger and then world peace.

I guess I'd like to be known for being an innovator, fostering creativity, thinking outside the box. You know, keeping people playful.

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.

There are a lot of things about having money that are perceived to be cool but that aren't. Maybe if you're a CEO jerk who likes going coast to coast by himself in a G4, then that's fine. But that's not me. And it never will be.

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.

One of the big concerns I have is that most of the HR departments in a lot of companies are hiring away from creativity and they don't know it. For instance, they are requiring everybody to have a college degree. The most creative people I know couldn't deal with college.

I'm the only one who was predicting the Nintendo Wii would beat Sony's PlayStation 3.

We didn't do a square ball in 'Pong' because we thought it was cool. We did it because that was all we could do.