Atari: Game Over Page #4

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The coin-op engineers at

Atari, they were great.

And on the consumer

side, Howard was

one of the best programmers.

He was one of the best

of those engineers.

At the heart

of the creative process

is the programmer.

I try to create, basically, a

sensory experience that evokes

a certain feeling in the user.

I mean, I tend to

program from a concept.

I mean, it was... I

was made for this.

I mean, was is what

I was made to do.

January 11, 1981, I showed

up for my first day of work

as a game programmer at Atari.

So, do you remember the

first day you showed up here?

Absolutely.

My first office mates were

Tod Frye and Rob Zdybel.

And I had an

understanding that there

was a lot of dope

that was smoked

at Atari, when we were there.

And so on my first day at work,

I brought a joint, because I

didn't want to be, you know...

Yeah.

I wanted to be a courteous

guest, and so I showed up...

Which by the way,

this is a good lesson

for our younger viewers.

If people are doing drugs,

bring your own, so you fit in.

Tod walks

in, shuts the door, and says,

I'm going to get high

in here, so if you

don't want to be around

this, you'd better leave.

No, actually, here, I said.

I brought a joint.

And he sort of looked

at me and he went pbtt.

I'm going to smoke real stuff.

OK?

That was my introduction.

That was my first day at work.

We wanted

people who worked hard, and yet

had fun at doing it.

How do we mix up, so that

we don't know the difference

between our work and our play?

The company's motto was,

we take fun seriously.

But we used to say, we

take fun intravenously.

And they didn't

like that very much.

No, I don't know why.

The party atmosphere

was actually

calculated plan to incentivize.

I would set quotas.

If the quotas were met,

I'd throw a kegger.

They

would just roll out in the car,

go to a liquor store,

and they gave someone

a company credit

card, and they came

back with a bunch of booze.

And we consumed it.

Over there is where

the hot tub was.

Inside, on the first floor,

there's some great stuff

that went on in that room.

Over here, here's the

hill that you know,

one day I was wearing

a dashiki shirt, which

I was very into back then.

And I would do

somersaults down the hill.

I might have had some cocktails

that afternoon, at that point.

Did you know that you were

entering this crazy party

atmosphere, that you'd be?

No.

Even though I was told I

was, I had no expectation

that it could really exist.

The

best recruiting tool

we could have for an

engineer, was to bring

him over to one of our parties.

Hey, What's happening, people?

Hey, how's it going?

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