Nolan Bushnell Condemns Grand Theft Auto

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.

Comments

No, not against a human...

[tgrotvedt]

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...

Blowing Up Tanks

[patch-rustem]

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.