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Nolan Bushnell Condemns Grand Theft Auto

Posted by simoniker on from the who's-chuck-e-cheese's-daddy? dept.

Thanks to Newsweek for their extremely short, but somewhat illuminating mini-interview with Nolan Bushnell, timed to coincide with this weekend's Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. The founder of Atari and creator of the RoboCat briefly summarizes Atari's glory days: "Since we were so limited with graphics then, we had to focus on gameplay", but is dismissive of today's violent titles, saying: "I don't like the ones that glorify antisocial behavior, like Grand Theft Auto and Vice City. We actually had a rule at Atari, which seems kind of quaint now, that you could blow up a tank, a plane, a car - but you couldn't do violence against a human." There are more complete interviews with Bushnell archived at the San Jose Tech Museum site and at Joystick101.org.

6 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Bushnell's an idiot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    How long before we can see skins for Vice City with his face?

  2. From the rest of the interview. by darkmayo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Bushnell-" Violence against humans is something we never would have tolerated in our games.. but violence against Dots that was openly supported.
    Every day we had a new way to torment that dot from being smacked around by other dots or being eat by a big yellow duck."

    --
    "I am a kernel in the linux army"
  3. No, not against a human... by tgrotvedt · · Score: 3, Funny

    But what about all those aliens coming to Earth that only wanted to share their knowledge and love of flying in formation with us? Huh? Insensitive bastard...

    --
    What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
  4. Blowing Up Tanks by patch-rustem · · Score: 3, Funny
    We actually had a rule at Atari, which seems kind of quaint now, that you could blow up a tank, a plane, a car - but you couldn't do violence against a human.

    That's seems like some really relaxed rules you had. Where I work in the UK, the health and safety guy has banned us from blowing up anything.

    --
    Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
  5. Cheese by bjb · · Score: 2, Funny
    "All under the watchful eye of a 7 foot robotic rat."

    Makes ME feel safe leaving my kids there.

    --
    Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
  6. I had nightmares from Atari by chia_monkey · · Score: 2, Funny

    Suuuuure...no violence against humans. But criminy...how many of you had nightmares of being eaten by a blocky aligator like in "Pitfall"? I shudder to rehash those memories!

    Or of being a frog and trying to hop across the street. I'm afraid to cross highways now for fear of being squashed. Wait...now that I think about it...there were scary aligators in that too.

    --

    "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang