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

it had to be said...

[Anonymous Coward]

Entertainment is often controversial. Whether one is speaking of stage productions, film, television, novels, or computer games, one often runs the risk that certain individuals will leap to the conclusion that the existence of negative behavior, self-destructive actions, and antisocial characters proves the approval of such behavior or characters. If there is to be conflict in a story, film, or game, there have to be bad guys. Bad guys make the art forms more interesting and the victory more satisfying.

In computer games, the gamer wants to experience and cause the results, not merely watch or hear. The easiest way to allow the gamer to cause the results is to build in cause and effect contingencies. Unfortunately, portraying violence and its reprehensible aftermath is the easiest and most commonly used means to give the gamer this opportunity to directly cause something to happen on the screen.

Probably not a lie

[Sangloth]

I worked for Nolan Bushnell at uWink, very quickly I heard his complaints about the excessive violence of first person shooters. His opinion never strayed. He praised non-violent games, and was disgusted with violent ones.

A quick look at the games uWink has should show his outlook. All the games uWink has are non-violent. The only games which could be an exception was Scarab and Baloon Popper, and they were:
A) Not in the least bit bloody.
B) Part of the Software aquired from Playnet. While Playnet technically had Nolan's name on it, it didn't have his active involvment like uWink.

All the games created by uWink don't even have a hint of meanness in them. They are all like Pong in spirit, in that they deal with falling blocks, cards, or mental puzzles. These are the types of games that Nolan wanted to create. If there was a bloody Atari game, it was probably created after the point where Nolan lost control.

Sangloth
I'd appreciate any comment with a logical basis...it doesn't even have to agree with me.

Re:A human in the vehicle

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

In a free society you should be able to manufacture and play whatever games you like.

Unless I'm missing something, he's not saying anything contrary to this. He's saying that Atari had a particular guideline, not that the government had a law. Also he's pointing out (correctly) that we can point at these violent games and say that they are harmful and should be shunned -- after all he is just excercising his freedom of speech here.

A lot of laws don't make sense, but a little social reproach can go a long way toward affecting positive change. If drug addicts were shunned like lepers (instead of being glorified through film and books), it would probably go further to reduce drug usage that the stack of penal code we currently have written.

Re:Custer's Revenge

[bigbigbison]

Atari didn't have a licencing program or any lock-out chips like nintendo, therefore anyone coupld make atari games without asking permission. atari did not make custer's revenge. i'm sure that bushnell was talking about games the he or his companies made, not games that were made for his company's hardware.