GDC Rescinds Award For Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell After Criticisms of Sexually Inappropriate Behavior (polygon.com)

The organizers of the Game Developers Choice Awards announced today that they have rescinded the Pioneer Award for Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, and announced the award will not be given this year entirely. "The decision follows a day of outcry after GDC organizers announced that Bushnell, 74, had been tapped for the GDCA's lifetime achievement honor," reports Polygon. "News accounts and histories over the past several years have documented a history of workplace misconduct and sexist behavior toward women by Bushnell, during Atari's early days." From the report: In a statement this morning, GDC said its awards committee "made the decision not to give out a Pioneer Award for this year's event, following additional feedback from the community. They believe their picks should reflect the values of today's game industry and will dedicate this year's award to honor the pioneering and unheard voices of the past." The Pioneer Award is for "individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history," according to its official site. Nine have been conferred since 2008, none of them women. Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 and installed the first coin-operated video game, Pong, shortly thereafter. He presided over the company's rise to dominate the early generation of home console gaming before selling it off and founding what is today the Chuck E. Cheese line of restaurants. Bushnell issued a statement on Twitter: "I applaud the GDC for ensuring that their institution reflects what is right, specifically with regards to how people should be treated in the workplace. And if that means an award is the price I have to pay personally so the whole industry may be more aware and sensitive to these issues, I applaud that, too. If my personal actions or the actions of anyone who ever worked with me offended or caused pain to anyone at our companies, then I apologize without reservation."

Comments

Prediction...

[Frosty Piss]

Right or wrong, this Politically Correct shaming is almost certainly going to backfire on women as fewer and fewer men in leadership positions risk bringing this kind of liability on board.

Re:Prediction...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rather cowardly how we default to publicly shaming people as well, but I guess it's more socially acceptable these days to possibly ruin someone's life because they made you feel uncomfortable or acted like an asshole to you, and then call others cowards for not wanting to take such a risk.

Re:Prediction...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is simple human survival instinct, not cowardice. Say you're are at a large dinner table and five people around you take a drink of the water everyone has been served and those five people almost immediately begin vomiting, do you drink the water? Not just no but hell no.

If you are a man and constantly see men of all stripes in the news being harshly penalized for mere public accusations of sexual misconduct often decades after the alleged misconduct took place, with little to no evidence of the alleged crimes happening (other people saying "yeah, that happened" is not evidence) and no criminal case ever being brought, are you going to assume that "I don't harass or abuse anyone so I'm okay!" is good enough? Not just no but hell no. Nearly half of all rape charges are thrown out or rejected for prosecution. Women can and do lie, and while it's not all of them, there are enough that if you run into enough of them you'll surely run into one of the unscrupulous ones.

What this "national conversation on sexual harassment" that feminists think is so great has actually done is force men in all walks of life to take actions for survival, and that means keeping women distant enough that an accusation from an unscrupulous woman will hopefully fall flat or won't be leveled in the first place because you simply didn't hire any female subordinates.

It's not a great way to live but it's the path we as a society have chosen. There is a reason that we required a certain level of proof before believing accusations of any stripe in the past and by throwing that out and letting the accusation equal automatic judgment as guilty, we're setting up a situation where those who can level accusations are a huge risk that simply is not worth taking. Be man all you want but the feminists got what they wanted here...and everything that comes with it. Enjoy your new world order.

Re:Prediction...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're discussing a matter that is over 40 years in the past. That's 14,600 days or 350,400 hours (233,600 of them awake.) It doesn't fucking matter anymore. People like you who keep trying to dig up ancient shit and make it relevant today are the hot sultry trash of our society. People can change quite drastically in the span of only a few years; in four decades there is not a single person that is the same way they were back then. It was a very different era. Looking at other decades and other cultures through the lens of your culture today is not an acceptable method of evaluation. Just because something is now a cardinal sin worthy of witch burning doesn't mean it was in the 1970s.

In conclusion, fuck off. The adults are having a discussion and you can't think on a high enough level to provide meaningful input. Garbage in, garbage out. Please see yourself out the door.

Re:Prediction...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh fuck me, here we go again with another giant steaming shithole who will parrot the letter of the law all day long while aggressively dodging the spirit of the law. You're one of those dumbasses that stomps around on Reddit and proclaims that websites shouldn't abide by the principles of free speech because they're not legally forced to, aren't you? Yeah, that's definitely the type you are.

Here's a really basic lesson since you clearly have no idea how a society works. The laws are supposed to reflect the ideals of the society. "Innocent until proven guilty" is not a magical legal thing some old dead "FUCKIN' WHITE MALES" dreamt up to keep the womens-folk in their place making sandwiches, it's a natural extension of the fundamental logical inability to prove a negative plus the belief (due to placing a high value on freedom and liberty) that it is better to have a system where several guilty people may not be punished than to have a system where even just one innocent person is punished for something they didn't do. You would have us harm people on the basis of potentially baseless accusations and exile them based on rumor and speculation. I don't feel like I should have to explain to you why this is incredibly fucking stupid.

Trying to cleave apart the underpinnings of the judicial system and the ideals that the society at large strives towards is futile unless your goal is to change those ideals and, eventually, change the underpinnings as a whole. What you propose is called tyranny. Please feel free to move to Russia if that's how you roll; your values are incompatible with those of America and are not welcome.

Re:Prediction...

[Mashiki]

Well that neo-puritan movement has been blowing up for awhile, around a decade and it's sure not the right pushing it. It's coming directly from feminism. Considering that Feminism has been pushing for women to "do whatever they want" but have no responsibility when they fuck up, this isn't surprising. You can see this with the increasing numbers of cases coming to light of false rape allegations ruining men. Hell it's so bad in the UK that they just launched a public inquiry into the rampant number of false allegations and cases being over-turned because women are lying. They're lying either because they "regret it"(up to decades later suddenly) "are told by a friend it ruins their social standing" "as a form of revenge" "sympathy" "increasing status" or "profiting off victimhood." Stuff like MRA's, MGTOW and so on, don't exist in a vacuum despite what the "male feminist allies" believe. They exist because there is something fundamentally broken in many cases. Whether it be the "college rape epidemic" lie, or posters saying "1 in 4 women is homeless."(Just ignore those men). Or the absolute clusterfuck in family courts, where a court will award custody of children to a women who was pimping out her own daughter to feed her drug habit.

At this point I'm not sure what feminists are playing at, but it sure looks like they're trying to infantilize women. AKA you're not responsible for your own actions, it's all the patriarchy's fault, etc.

Re:Prediction...

[Mashiki]

No sure where you get strange ideas like that from, but in any case the argument here is that human beings shouldn't have to put up with being grabbed by the genitalia or otherwise sexually assaulted.

That's not what the argument here is. But if you really want to make that the case, why don't you tell me why all those women when I worked a bar as a cadet, just couldn't stop grabbing my ass and dick. And I had zero recourse to do anything about it, I could not make a complaint. I could not detain, I could not tell them to stop. That's some pretty fucking exceptional leeway, now let's flip the gender and ask yourself what would happen? This happening to male police officers who work bars is so common it's stupid.

Having read about what guys like Weinstein and Nasser did, are you really saying that these complaints are without merit? Or for that matter, having read about what Bushnell admits to doing in his own autobiographical books...

You mean besides that Weinstein was basically selling roles, and women were selling themselves for roles? Nasser who actually *did* abuse trust, just like all those female teachers though right? Ever notice the sentencing disparity? I'll wait for you to look it up. Wait until you get to the cases where the women is the rapist and you see the tear works of: "that 13yr old boy I raped, ruined my life. And it's his fault I raped him."

No, they didn't. That is fake news.

Yeah, actually they did. And it's not the first time either, check your own news more often.

There have been problems with evidence that might help the defence not being turned over in good time, or at all.

aka perversion of justice. Not only did they not turn over evidence, in many cases they outright ignored evidence that showed that the defendant was not culpable. In at least 2 cases, the police hid exculpatory evidence from the court, defense, and crown in order to bolster the accusers case.

First thing to note is that it isn't evidence that the allegations were false - if it was, there would be prosecutions. The standard of proof required is "beyond reasonable doubt", and the evidence in question means that the prosecution could not reach that level. However, it also doesn't reach the standard for proving that the accuser lied, because as you know even if you agree to have sex with someone you can withdraw consent at any time.

So you're saying that a women 30 years from now who withdraws consent and then screams you raped her is acceptable?

First thing that you'd best pay attention to, women lie. Now let's look at the Jian Gomeshi case here in Canada, the women lied. The women colluded. They got together in order to fabricate evidence. Those women also *went back* for more sex with him, they bragged to each other over their S&M play, sent him photos after the alleged rape. This is not a case of he said/she said. But him? Career ruined, life ruined, end of story. Look at the last half-dozen cases in the UK that were high profile, what do we have but a pattern. How about that women in the UK who claimed she was raped by 10+ men in various different cases? Well she was eventually charged, convicted for those. But the lives she's ruined? Those men will never recover from those false allegations.

And in any case, do you know the percentage of cases that this affects? I'm guessing you don't or you wouldn't have used the adjective "rampant".

Well let's see, we can see as high as 70% of cases to turn out being false, that's here in Canada. That's cases of the accuser lied for various reasons, mad at the person, peer pressure, etc. Another 20-26% or so become "lack of sufficient evidence" the rest usually end up being convictions. Looking pretty rampant here.

On top of that, Canada, much like the UK, the standard in the case of allegations is "always believe" a

Classiest tweet possible, good for him.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one can take away what Bushnell brought to the gaming world and his response to losing this award shows that whatever may or may not have happened in the past, the man is currently a beacon of class.

moral character in good standing is required

[SchroedingersCat]

Anyone care to explain how personal indiscretions affect his achievements in developing "a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history"?

Re:moral character in good standing is required

[another_twilight]

Anyone care to explain how personal indiscretions affect his achievements in developing "a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history"?

It doesn't. What it affects is our current decision on whether to laud this person for those achievements and to hold them up as an example.

It is possible to respect someone's achievements while also criticising their manner or behaviour. By only acknowledging the achievements and making no comment on the negative behaviour, once that behaviour has been brought to your attention, then in silence you support that behaviour. Had this award not been rescinded, then the GDC would, at best, be ignoring the problem and at worst would be tacitly supporting the behaviour.

By withdrawing the award, specifically as a response to information about Nolan's behaviour, the GDC is not saying that Nolan wasn't influential or that he didn't achieve what he did. It's saying that his actions outside of those achievements are such that he isn't the person the GDC would like to hold up as a positive example.

---

Nolan's tweet in response is ... elegant. 'If' he offended or caused pain, he apologises. He neither confirms nor denies. He praises the actions of the GDC. It's a classy, clever response to an ugly situation. If it's sincere, I don't think you can ask more. If it's not, it's a damn fine piece of spin control.

Re:moral character in good standing is required

[Scarred Intellect]

They don't affect his achievements. But maybe if humans collectively stop glorifying, rewarding and celebrating known shitheads for their shithead behavior...

No one's glorifying, rewarding, or celebrating his shithead behavior here. Hell, I'm sure most of us never even heard of any of this.

Re:This is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

utter, total, bullshit. There's not ONE PERSON ALIVE who's not guilty of unsavory behavior of one kind or another...

Yes there are. They're a large group of pure individuals who can do no wrong called "women".

Re:This is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey kiddos, would do you some good to do some actual reading:

Steven L. Kent’s 2001 book The Ultimate History of Video Games describes how much Bushnell liked to have “fun” at work — sometimes, a very sexually aggressive form of fun — and “made sure that the men around him agreed with his philosophy.” They “held meetings in hot tubs, drank heavily, experimented with drugs... Sometimes Atari board meetings seemed more like fraternity parties than business meetings.”

The book also quotes Pong designer Al Alcon, who describes one such meeting. “Nolan needed some papers and documents so he called his office and said, ‘Have Miss so and so bring them up.’ We were in this tub [when she arrived], so he proceeded to try to get her in the tub during the board meeting. Nolan’s attorney was miffed [because] we got his papers wet. He was not in the hot tub and he was not amused by any of this. That was the sort of fun we had.”

And that's just one example from the article.

In the mean time, OP and the those that voted this +5 insightful can go back to r/incel or whatever cesspool you crawled out of.

Re:Frosty Piss = fake name massive human fail

[jedidiah]

> See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...

I have credits on several PC games and I think this nonsense is bullshit. The guy wasn't perfect but that doesn't erase his legacy. Political correctness has put us into 1984 territory where the Ministry of Truth is here to sanitize and erase the past.